Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/472327
Voices channel 19 6 | Overdrive | March 2015 Visit Senior Editor Todd Dills' ChannEl 19 blog at overdriveonline.com/channel19 Write him at tdills@randallreilly.com. In Overdrive's January cover story, I took a closer look at the variety of pathways drivers follow through the trucking industry after coming off the road for whatever reason. While moving on from driving isn't likely to be the primary goal of this audi- ence, it's also true that a lifetime of driving's not for everyone. The stories told of various owner-operators and drivers now working in brokerage and/or dispatch, recruiting, site manage- ment, operations, training, safety, maintenance or oth- er roles at carriers. On the blog in January, I detailed three more: Jan. 13: Thinker-tin- kering – inventors among the trucker set. Charlotte, N.C.-based Chris Barbeau and his Dudad device for wire- less auto-notifications (aka "wake-up calls") at distribution center docks with red- and green-light notification systems. Jan. 22: Let's go lumping! Ever wonder how much of your payment to a lumper service actually goes to the lumper? Find out in this interview with Phoenix-based Universal Lumpers Operations Director Michael Croker. Jan. 26: Career ad- vancement for the long haul – one small fleet's growth story. While a family business is certainly not the only way to build a small fleet, it is one of the more common. You can read the experience of how one family handled it: Hartsville, Tenn.-based Old Time Express, with (pictured, from left) Mitch, founder owner-operator Bo, and Mark White. More 'roads not taken' The headline quote is from songwrit- er, author and former Army ranger Keni Thomas, who told a trucking audience that life and leadership get harder the more advanced you become in whatever you're doing. "Making a difference and matter- ing and giving an example to follow – it's easy in the uniform," he went on, referring to his military experience, when he was a staff sergeant Army ranger caught in a dire episode in Mogadishu, Somalia, made famous in the movie "Black Hawk Down." "But it gets hard when you come back to the other side." The same could be said for transi- tions in trucking, whether it's buying your first truck, jumping off the truck to grow a fleet, or breaking away from a larger entity and going out on your own with different partners. But just because life gets harder doesn't mean it's not worth moving forward. Thomas gets to that in a podcast you'll find in the Feb. 7 post on Channel 19, in which he also performs his "Hold the Line" song, captured at the Truckload Carriers Association/Conversion Interactive recruiting/retention conference last month in Nashville, Tenn. His tale boiled down to a theme of persistence – that sticking to the things you've learned actually works as the world throws you curveballs. Thomas illustrated that with a story from Mogadishu. As Thomas and his unit were run- ning through the city behind tire-less trucks that fateful day, de-fac- to unit leader Thomas found himself skipping protocol when crossing intersections – pause at corner, cover the man behind you, keep going – in an effort to keep up with the vehicles. Never- theless, the most junior member of the team decided to keep protocol, enabling him to shoot at Somalis aiming RPGs down a corridor as the group crossed it. That decision saved the lives of Thomas and everyone else around him. 'I don't get to wear the boots anyMore' Keni Thomas' "Get It On" book tells the tale of his involvement in the 1993 raid in Mogadishu, Somalia, that went haywire with the downing of a Black Hawk helicopter. It's available as an audiobook on Audible.com and in print in the usual venues. Scan the QR to hear an Overdrive podcast of part of his talk and musical performance at a TCA/Conversion Interactive conference.