STS Hot Shots Grows in a New Direction

Despite my best intentions, I just seem to have trouble updating this with any regularity.  As I mentioned before, this blog began as a story of my travels around the US.  But as my business has grown and evolved, I am doing LESS traveling.  It is just very difficult to drive a truck AND do the other back-office duties required, especially when I have other drivers operating under my Authority.  So, in the words of my best friend, I am now "Office Boy."  Which - you would think - leaves me the time necessary to update my blog daily.  But it isn't the lack of time that is my problem.  It's subject matter.

Before last week, I was leasing on other Owner/Operators to run under my federal Motor Carrier Authority.  With winter moving across the US, I tend to 'hunker-down' in Florida.  I hate the ice and cold!!  But I don't make money when my truck is just sitting.  In fact it costs me money for it to sit.

Now I have my FIRST company driver.  My truck, my trailer, my freight, my expenses and his labor provides income for both of us.  Win/win.  Except for the part where my only transportation is my motorcycle, it's all good.  And that's only a problem when it rains.  I guess I need to buy another vehicle.  Perhaps another truck?  Then put it to work also?  Then another.  And another.

So last week was Thanksgiving.  My most favorite of all the holidays.  Food, Football and family -- what more can you ask for.  I went back to Illinois where mom cooked at my middle brothers house.  It was as good as usual. 

It was last year at this time that my dad really turned for the worse.  He wasn't feeling so good at Thanksgiving and then went into the hospital for a prolonged stay on Dec 9.  It amazes me how his passing has so impacted my life.  We were never really that close until the last couple of years.  And now so many of my everyday actions spark a memory involving him, somehow.  I see TV shows, or news events or even sitting at the bar last Sunday watching the Rams lose yet again -- and think of dad.  He sat with me last year in that very same barstool watching the Rams lose, yet again. 

I know these feelings will mellow with time, as his Yahrzeit approaches (1 year anniversary).  Much of my life is rooted in some very basic principles summed up in a single sentence.  For example, GETTING old is required; ACTING old is optional.  Or, "Dream as if you will live forever.  Live as if you may die tomorrow."  At this moment I am remembering that we frequently miss people the most when they are gone and it's too late.