Chapter 46: The Company on Wheels

Cedar was a privately owned trucking company. A few years earlier, through bidding, it had won the operating rights to Sabine City’s public transportation system for the next four plus four years.

Why four plus four? The explanation given to the public was that if Cedar Company failed to do a good job in the first four years, the next four-year contract would not be renewed.

But in reality, the contract followed the term of the Federation President. Every President taking office, and every reelection, was never just about one man. It concerned the operation of the entire senior leadership of the Federation government.

The Cabinet Secretaries selected by the President would also choose the deputies they wanted. It was a process both extremely complicated and extremely simple. Put plainly, it was picking sides.

Perhaps at first, many people had not realized that becoming President brought things besides power. But now people knew. It brought wealth.

Every President, every eight years, produced an economic body built around presidential authority, though the public never knew it.

These syndicates, originally born under the President’s given name or surname, were often hidden inside other syndicates. Take the previous His Excellency, President Jotson. In places beyond the public eye, there was such a thing as the Jotson Corporate Group.

Around that corporate group, another syndicate served as cover, so most people would never directly see the name “Jotson.” What they saw was some subsidiary under some syndicate. The people at the bottom would never touch the truth.

Cedar was the sort of company that had benefited from something similar. Cedar’s boss had a connection with an aide in the President’s faction, not too close, not too distant. To call it close would clearly be an exaggeration, but to call it distant would be wrong too; they could still exchange a few words.

So he had taken Sabine City’s public transportation operating rights almost effortlessly, and in certain unseen places, he sent blood upward to demonstrate his loyalty.

Do not look down on urban public transportation. It was a big business. Sabine City had a total population of only seven hundred and sixty thousand, yet nearly two hundred thousand passenger trips were made by public transportation inside the city every day.

Suppose all of those trips were short-distance trips, meaning within five miles, and the fare was only twenty-five cents. Ticket revenue alone would exceed fifty thousand dollars a day. In a month, that was over a million dollars in operating revenue.