A Man Named Jeff

Today's Thoughts 10/10/11 A Man Named Jeff

I figured out the other day as I was driving down the road listening to a radio talk show why it is that they mandate seatbelts in motor vehicles. It is so when someone on the radio says something so far out that you do not fall out of your seat at highway speeds.  A caller from California had called in and was explaining to the host why he thought it was that the Occupy Wall Street crowd was right in their line of thinking. His point of view was simply this. That because his parents had paid for his college education and he took the time out of his busy life to go get that education, that the social contract guaranteed him a high paying job without him having to put any effort at all into getting it. He went on to explain that every student should get a college education for free and be given a lucrative job just because the world owes it to them. What prey tell are our kids being taught in college today. Sure does not seem to be how to stand on your own two feet.

I want to tell you a story about a man named Jeff. Just like millions of Americans before him, he found himself looking out into the world with no money, no credit, no experience and most of all, no clue. He dropped out of high school at the age of sixteen and went to working three full time jobs at the same time. Not long after that he joined with a few of his brothers and started a roofing company. All this was done before the age of eighteen when he decided to give the army a try where he learned to drive a truck.

After the Army gig was up and Jeff found himself sitting back home at Momma's house, basically where he was just a few short years before, he set out to conquer the world. What Jeff wanted was a trucking career. To one day own his own truck strolling across America's beautiful highways. Have you any clue what a truck cost. Just a basic one back in those days was one hundred thousand dollars. So with nothing but Jeff's Army truck driving experience, he set out to make that dream come true.

The first road block Jeff bounced into was his age. To be an over the road trucker you had to be twenty five years old. Only time was going to fix that so instead of giving up, Jeff worked on other aspects of what he would need to one day realize his dream. Experience was needed before anyone would give him a job. Ok, let's see how many raise your hand because you have had to deal with this yourself. Before we can give you the job, you need one year of on the job experience. Well you ask, how can I get that experience if you do not hire me? Back in those days truck driving schools were few and far between. So Jeff found himself quitting job after job as he moved from small six wheeled milk delivery trucks on up into ten wheeled dump trucks. While everyone was telling him he was screwing up his work record, Jeff finally worked his way into a single axle truck pulling a single axel trailer. Jeff picked up furniture in state for a gentleman that was screwing him out of over time because federal regulations state that truck drivers do not get overtime pay. What Jeff did get though is his one year over the road in state experience in a tractor trailer combination. He just had to figure his unique way into solving the no experience problem. No one did it for him; he had to do it himself and at age twenty five, he walks in and for the next eight years he drives a full grown eighteen wheeler as a chicken hauler.

But Jeff is not satisfied just as yet. He still wants to own and operate his own truck. Trucks cost big bucks and company drivers make little bucks. No credit and no idea as to what to do to make this happen. But Jeff if nothing else according to him (some would beg to differ) has half a brain. He starts researching every possible way of buying a truck. First he tries getting a loan. Funny thing about that, if you do not have money, that won't loan you money. Let's not let a little thing like that get us down though. Looking at other options Jeff finds that he can go to the big trucking companies and do a lease purchase. So he starts investigating that aspect and learns that most people that try this avenue fail and lose the truck. But he keeps digging and asking questions and formulates a little plan in his half of a brain.

Walk in and lease the truck, then when they start cutting your miles and starving you out, instead of giving them the truck back, just move it to another company. It's all there in black and white in all the information Jeff gathered. But when he went out and talked to more drivers to see if his plan was feasible, everyone told him that it could not be done. It had never been done as far as anyone knew. As far as Jeff could see though, if he was going to own his own truck, there was no other way. So he took that big step, a huge risk and he went down to sign the lease on a brand new truck for one hundred and two thousand dollars payable in a five year time period. All he needed was a five hundred dollar down payment with no credit check. Like I said before, these leases are set up to fail. The companies make money reselling that truck time and time again.

And six months into the lease, just like Jeff's research had showed him, the company started to drop the miles he could run and made it very difficult to make the truck payments. This was expected though and Jeff had been working very hard to overcome this when it did happen. Working the system, once you're in a truck and it starts showing a decent cash flow, credit cards companies are very much interested in you having their credit card in your pocket. Remember Jeff's earlier problem, you have to have money before you can get money. Well there is a lot of money floating around big trucks and this big company trying to scam drivers into leases put big bucks into Jeff's pocket. So now Jeff has two credit cards to put his fuel on and a maintenance account that has been growing because it was never used and now Jeff has a fifteen thousand dollar down payment.

The contract with the leasing company says that if you make a fifteen thousand dollar down payment, you can move the truck to whatever company you want to. So Jeff did what everyone told him could not be done. He was making payments to one trucking company leasing their truck and took that truck and leased it on to another trucking company and was pulling their freight. Instead of being starved out, Jeff was making big bucks with his new truck.

But Jeff is not done here. The new company had deals where you could lease purchase trailers for just one hundred and fifty dollars down. Jeff jumped right on that and now he was driving a brand new truck pulling a brand new trailer for only six hundred and fifty dollars of his own money. A year before and he could not get a loan for a soda pop. But now that he had this nice equipment with a nice cash flow, he went back to the banks that told him that he needed money to get money, got a loan and paid off both the truck and trailer making them his own. Just two and a half years later, Jeff paid off the bank and they were his own.

So, that’s my story about a man named Jeff. As for our Occupy Wall Street crowed, I'm not sure who it was that said you had a social contract with me that makes me take all the hard work I did to make it and give it to you. I don't recall signing any such paper. This is America. It is what you make off it. I'm quite sure that once you stop crying about how hard the word is and apply your college educated brain to actually accomplishing something for yourself; you should be able to do much better than this high school dropout did. Personally I think you can do it. Well the most of you any way. There is no guarantee of success in anything we do in life. Unless that is if you plan to fail. That works just about every time.

Be safe peeps …

Jeff Head.
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