“Gift Of A Lifetime”
It was January 1988 and my first of 600 weeks with a Missouri-based carrier. Destined to make a major splash in the world of NAFTA, the company back then was just another trucking firm trying to profit from the eighties. Those of us in orientation class were, at best, a motley bunch of renegades, wranglers, and rookies fresh off the reservation.
Before the week was out, two different drivers hit me up for a loan. It was only a few bucks, and both promised a quick repayment. Besides, after five years with stepchildren, I could use a few friends.
I never saw either driver again. One didn’t even make it through orientation, and the other abandoned his truck in Texas. Losing the money disappointed me, but the greater frustration was losing their friendship.
Thus began a ten-year lesson in distrust, unforgiveness, and damage control. Some driver would ask for money to buy something, and I would readily oblige. Then almost immediately they would scurry out of sight in a cat-and-mouse game that could go on for months.
As a new owner-operator, I bought a 5-year-old Peterbilt with solid but worn seats. I decided to switch out the seats for new ones, and a husband-wife team spotted the old ones on the shop floor. I planned to throw them away. No, not the couple. Just the seats!
Anyway, would I be willing to sell them, they asked, and I said um, okay. Thinking it over briefly, I said well, how about a hundred bucks for each, and they said okay. Then they asked if I’d take monthly payments, and being naive, I said okay.
Sure enough, they disappeared quicker than a cat in a rocking chair factory, leaving me more puzzled than angry. Catching sight of them at a terminal or truck stop, they would disappear in the parking lot faster than a dollar bill destined for my wife’s Origami projects. That may have been about the time I started talking to myself or listening to Dave Ramsey.
Corroborating with the echo of Ron Blue and Larry Burkett, these three icons of money management shared a single value that resonates with me to this very day. I don’t know what could be simpler and didn’t know how I missed it, but once I learned this basic truth, it took only days to put it to the test.
A fellow driver and great musician wanted to borrow a thousand bucks to buy a banjo. I wouldn’t loan the money, I said, but would gift him a grand. He declined the offer and soon thereafter did a stint in prison, but that’s a whole ‘nother story. The point is, he did his time debt-free, and I lived through that period without another instrument I couldn’t play.
Another driver experienced a tragedy in Oklahoma when his home burned down. I heard about it and went shopping on my own without telling anyone. I ended up with a pickup truck filled with food, blankets, toys, tools, and coats. I left it all at the Joplin terminal where the driver could pick it up at his convenience.
Fast-forward six months, and there’s five of us at the El Paso terminal playing poker in the drivers’ lounge. Suddenly some guy across from me starts reminiscing about his house fire, and how some other driver he’d never met stepped up to help. Let me say thirty years later, that he still hasn’t met the guy, and we both feel awesome!
You can reach Roger at [email protected]