A 2m-high stack of cardboard sat in the back of it which he stares at with frustration.
'Six days. It's been six days and that's all I have. This is terrible,' said the 50-year-old, with a grimace.
That half-lorry load is what he used to be able to collect in a single day, explained Mr Jia.
He used to make as much as 5,000yuan (S$1,000) a month buying used paper from offices and homes and selling it to recycling companies. That has since dropped to 1,000 yuan.
In the chill of approaching winter, starting at 7am and rarely ending before dusk, he and wife Chen Haizhong, 46, waited for cardboard-bearing clients in a back lane in Beijing's downtown Sanlitun area.
Not far away is a glitzy new mall housing the world's largest Adidas shop and China's first Apple store.
With foreign orders for made-in-China products dipping and a slowdown in the country's property and construction sectors, China's demand for scrap cardboard and old newspapers has eased.
That's bad news for street-side scrap collectors like Mr Jia.
Recycling companies have slashed the amount they will give him for his loads while customers are hoarding used paper, metal and bottles in the hope that they will bring in more money later.
'Right up until the Olympics in August, I was buying used paper for 0.8 yuan (17cents) a kilo and selling it to the factories for one yuan a kilo. Now, sometimes, I pay 0.5 yuan a kilo and sell it for only 0.6 yuan,' he said.
'Even worse, nobody wants to sell their paper now because the price is too low,' lamented the farmer from the impoverished central province of Henan who came to seek his fortune in Beijing 15 years ago.
Still, trading in scrap is more profitable than his previous jobs, selling vegetables and ferrying sacks of rice on a trishaw.
His three children, aged 16, 18 and 20, who go to boarding school in Henan - a 14-hour train ride away - need at least 400yuan a month.
He and his wife live in a tiny 6sq m flat rented for the same amount.
Mr Jia, a high school graduate, said: 'At first, when I read in the newspaper about the financial crisis in the United States, I thought, 'What's that got to do with me?' But when prices of scrap here started to fall in late September, I knew I was finished.'
On some days, his phone rings every few hours. Usually it brings more bad news - that the prices of scrap paper and metal have fallen yet again.
He said: 'For now, I'm taking on any other jobs I can find, like ferrying people in my van, for 40 to 50yuan a trip.'
He is also tightening his belt and cutting meat from his meals.
Thanks to such measures, the daily food bill for him and his wife is down from 20yuan to just seven yuan.
'I don't know where this world crisis will go, or how the situation in our country will be. I can take only one step at a time now, live one day at a time. Who knows what will happen?' he said.
This article was first published in The Straits Times on November 02, 2008.
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