Truckers are the greatest people.

I am not sure this is true or not but I know so many truckers that would give you the shirt off thier back or a meal so you wouldn't go hungry that I had to post this. I wanted to just send it on Facebook or Twitter but it is too big so I hope you take time to read this to show what great people truckers are and to hopefully brighten your Christmas.

The Folded Napkin - A Trucker Stop Story.

If this doesn't light your fire, your wood is wet!

I try not to be biased, but I had my doubts about hiring Stevie. His placement counselor assured me that he would be a good, reliable busboy. But I had never had a mentally handicapped employee and wasn't sure I wanted one. I wasn't sure how my customers would react to Stevie.

He was short, a little dumpy with the smooth facial features and thick-tongued speech of Downs Syndrome. I wasn't worried about most of my trucker customers because truckers don't generally care who buses tables as long as the meatloaf platter is good and the pies are homemade.

The ones who concerned me were the mouthy college kids traveling to school; the yuppie snobs who secretly polish their silverware with their napkins for fear of catching some dreaded 'truck stop germ'; the pairs of white-shirted business men on expense accounts who think every truck stop waitress wants to be flirted with. I knew those people would be uncomfortable around Stevie so I closely watched him for the first few weeks...

I shouldn't have worried. After the first week, Stevie had my staff wrapped around his stubby little finger, and within a month my truck regulars had adopted him as their official truck stop mascot.

After that, I really didn't care what the rest of the customers thought of him. He was like a 21-year-old in blue jeans and Nikes, eager to laugh and eager to please, but fierce in his attention to his duties. Every salt and peppershaker was exactly in its place, not a breadcrumb Or coffee spill was visible when Stevie got done with the table.
Our only problem was persuading him to wait to clean a table until after the customers were finished. He would hover in the background, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, scanning the dining room until a table was empty. Then he would scurry to the empty table and carefully bus dishes and glasses onto his cart and meticulously wipe the table up with a practiced flourish of his rag.

If he thought a customer was watching, his brow would pucker with added concentration. He took pride in doing his job exactly right, and you had to love how hard he tried to please each and every person he met.

Over time, we learned that he lived with his mother, a widow who was disabled after repeated surgeries for cancer. They lived on their Social Security benefits in public housing two miles from the truck stop. Their social worker, who stopped to check on him every so often, admitted they had fallen between the cracks. Money was tight, and what I paid him was probably the difference between them being able to live together and Stevie being sent to a group home. That's why the restaurant was a gloomy place that morning last August, the first morning in three years that Stevie missed work.

He was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester getting a new valve or something put in his heart. His social worker said that people with Downs Syndrome often have heart problems at an early age so this wasn't unexpected, and there was a good chance he would come through the surgery in good shape and be back at work in a few months.

A ripple of excitement ran through the staff later that morning when word came that he was out of surgery, in recovery, and doing fine.

Frannie, the head waitress, let out a war hoop and did a little dance in the aisle when she heard the good news.

Bell Ringer, one of our regular trucker customers, stared at the sight of this 50-year-old grandmother of four doing a victory shimmy beside his table.

Frannie blushed, smoothed her apron and shot Bell Ringer a withering look.

He grinned. 'OK, Frannie , what was that all about?' he asked..

'We just got word that Stevie is out of surgery and going to be okay.'

'I was wondering where he was. I had a new joke to tell him. What was the surgery about?'

Frannie quickly told Bell Ringer and the other two drivers sitting at his booth about Stevie's surgery then sighed: 'Yeah, I'm glad he is going to be OK,' she said. 'But I don't know how he and his Mom are going to handle all the bills. From what I hear, they're barely getting by as it is.' Bell Ringer nodded thoughtfully, and Frannie hurried off to wait on the rest of her tables. Since I hadn't had time to round up a busboy to replace Stevie and really didn't want to replace him, the girls were busing their own tables that day until we decided what to do.

After the morning rush, Frannie walked into my office. She had a couple of paper napkins in her hand and a funny look on her face.

'What's up?' I asked.

'I didn't get that table where Bell Ringer and his friends were sitting cleared off after they left, and Pony Pete and Tony Tipper were sitting there when I got back to clean it off,' she said. 'This was folded and tucked under a coffee cup.'

She handed the napkin to me, and three $20 bills fell onto my desk when I opened it. On the outside, in big, bold letters, was printed 'Something For Stevie'.

'Pony Pete asked me what that was all about,' she said, 'so I told him about Stevie and his Mom and everything, and Pete looked at Tony and Tony looked at Pete, and they ended up giving me this.'
She handed me another paper napkin that had 'Something For Stevie' scrawled on its outside. Two $50 bills were tucked within its folds. Frannie looked at me with wet, shiny eyes, shook her head and said simply: 'Truckers!!'

That was three months ago. Today is Thanksgiving, the first day Stevie is supposed to be back to work.

His placement worker said he's been counting the days until the doctor said he could work, and it didn't matter at all that it was a holiday. He called ten times in the past week, making sure we knew he was coming, fearful that we had forgotten him or that his job was in jeopardy.

I arranged to have his mother bring him to work. I then met them in the parking lot and invited them both to celebrate his day back.

Stevie was thinner and paler, but couldn't stop grinning as he pushed through the doors and headed for the back room where his apron and busing cart were waiting

'Hold up there, Stevie, not so fast,' I said. I took him and his mother by their arms. 'Work can wait for a minute. To celebrate you coming back, breakfast for you and your mother is on me!'
I led them toward a large corner booth at the rear of the room.

I could feel and hear the rest of the staff following behind as we marched through the dining room. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw booth after booth of grinning truckers empty and join the procession. We stopped in front of the big table. Its surface was covered with coffee cups, saucers and dinner plates, all sitting slightly crooked on dozens of folded paper napkins 'First thing you have to do, Stevie, is clean up this mess,' I said. I tried to sound stern.

Stevie looked at me, and then at his mother, then pulled out one of the napkins. It had 'Something for Stevie' printed on the outside. As he picked it up, two $10 bills fell onto the table.

Stevie stared at the money, then at all the napkins peeking from beneath the tableware, each with his name printed or scrawled on it. I turned to his mother. 'There's more than $10,000 in cash and checks on that table, all from truckers and trucking companies that heard about your problems. 'Happy Thanksgiving.'

Well, it got real noisy about that time, with everybody hollering and shouting, and there were a few tears, as well.

But you know what's funny?
While everybody else was busy shaking hands and hugging each other, Stevie, with a big, big smile on his face, was busy clearing all the cups and dishes from the table....

Best worker I ever hired.

Plant a seed and watch it grow.

At this point, you can bury this inspirational message or forward it, fulfilling the need!

If you shed a tear, hug yourself, because you are a compassionate person.

Well.. Don't just sit there!

Send this story on!

Keep it going, this is a good one!

The good the bad and the ugly

First of all I must not be very creative to call a post that. I mean has any title been more used then that but I wanted to talk about the SEMA show and that is the only way I can describe it.

First of all the good. The Show was great. More people then I expected and the buzz about our product was great. We had so many people stop by it was amazing. We met the national champion BBQ cook and also a 7 year old that drives monster trucks. My wife got his signiture and we took a picture of him with some of our collapsible cones and duroflash. He seemed like a really nice boy.

The bad was two fold. If you remember last year when I was at the SEMA show we had a break in at our home. The burgalars let the dogs out and one was hit by a car and killed. They also stole some valuables we had and upset my wife and kids so much that I drove home each night from Vegas to LA just so my family could sleep. This year it seemed like all was going well. The show ended and we got started to moving our truck around so we could pick up our booth. I made it almost to the front of the line and was sitting in my truck with the engine off and all of the sudden the guy in the truck infront of my decided he needed to back up. He backed right into me and really messed up the front left side of my Sequoia. I had several witnesses come down as it happened right in front of everyone and gave me their cards and asked if I needed a witness. The police came over and asked me if I was okay but because it was on private property they told me to work it out with the owner of the truck and they could not write a report. I went up got the owner and he said not to turn it into the insurance company that he would pay for the damage. I thought all was okay until today when I sent the guy the estimates and then he changed his tune and said I ran into him. My car was in Park and even though it is a Toyota I can tell you it was not moving when I got hit.

That is the ugly part of this whole thing. I trusted a guy and then he got me to a spot and took off. This is just like a hit and run. He would not give me his insurance information or the drivers, drivers license when we spoke. I had mine already pulled out to exchange information. I was trying to do the guy a favor by not turning it in to his insurance and then he pulled out this on me. I feel bad. I feel bad that I am so trusting. I also feel bad people cannot be trusted. The money is the money. I turn it into my insurance company pay my deductible and get it fixed. I give them all the witnesses etc and they investigate the guy. I just wonder when it became a bad thing to trust people?

Have you ever heard anyone on line admit they did not know something?

First of all I would like to say that I just got back from China and I have some very interesting products to possibly add to the line.

But my main interest of conversation today is internet marketing. I am on a few of the social websites. Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter are the main ones. The one that I find the most useless is linkedin. The reason is that everyone on that site proclaims to be a professional and they are all perfect. I brought up a question on one site about a problem I had with a certain type of employee and I received over 250 responses. They ranged from telling me it was my fault for letting the employee get away with that behaviour to saying that I should never hire that type of person to began with. Only one person in the over then 250 response ever admitted to actaully making a mistake themselves.

The reason I bring this up is not because I fault the people for hiding their warts but it makes me wonder how much I can trust of what I see on line. You cannot see their eyes when they tell you something or other body language that could tell you the accuracy of what they are saying. I think currently the way the internet works is the opposite of how I was raised which was trust first until they gave you reason not to trust. The internet is teaching us to not trust first until we get a reason to trust. It has made skeptics of us all and I am not sure this is a good thing.

I have a great but simple plan to help working people make some extra money. I am not talking about $50,000 a month but I am talking about $500 - $1000 per month pretty easily. The problem is whenever I try to present it I get rejected by most people who are not even willing to look at the idea.

I guess the whole key is to deal with people you trust. On another note I would really like to learn how to drive big and specific traffic to a website. I see all the offers of people who say they have this skill and I would pay for someone who I really felt would deliver results but I am just as skeptic as those I complained about in that I do not know who to trust and who not to trust. I guess the internet has made all of us that way.

I love Toyota

If anyone has been following this story here is a recap. Coming home from my daughters Birthday party the ball joint broke on my Toyota Sequoia. It was pretty scary and could have been much worse had we taken the freeway home instead of local roads. Here is a youtube of the incident. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utL0z2SWiNs I was concerned about this so I posted about it on my facebook, youtube and twitter accounts. (I have two facebook accounts (personal and company) with about 2000 friends/fans each and my twitter account has over 7000 followers. )


Two days later I got a call from a very nice lady at Toyota. She told me that someone had seen my situation on line, and that the ball joint, on my Sequoia had a recall out on it. She asked me if I had seen the notice, and I said no. She then told me that Toyota wanted to cover the damages. I told her that would be great but I also explained that I had over 220,000 miles on the Sequoia. She said it did not matter but I was skeptical. She then told me that I needed to take it in to check and make sure the work was done correctly. I took my Sequoia to a local Toyota dealer, that she set up the appointment for and they told me my repairs were done not using genuine Toyota parts. (I am getting ready for the other shoe to drop at any moment) and then they tell me they will change the parts for no charge as it is a recall. WOW.

So I get the parts changed and asked when they were going to reimburse me for my out of pocket expenses. They said it would take 8-10 weeks. I was still doubting this would really happen. Then last week I got an email from the nice customer service lady saying they needed a copy of my title or registrating to show that I still owned the vehicle. So I think okay when are they going to tell me that I am not getting any money back?

Then yesterday I got a check for $2493.27 that covered %100 of the repair. I was estactic and amazed. Good things like this never happen to me. I am usually the nice guy that never finishes first. I have to give major props to Toyota for standing behind their product and also for keeping their word. They did not let this get into some department that would cancel the payment on some techicallity that I could do nothing about. I have to say I LOVE TOYOTA.

I will be singing their praise for a long time after this incident. They treated me with respect and fairness.

What are people thinking

In the past month I have posted a lot of articles on my facebook page about texting while driving. It seems like I could post one a day. Many of them are fatalities. I worry about this a lot being a father of daughters in their early 20's and having a teenage daughter who drives.

I find it interesting that the laws that have been passed seem to make people more worried of getting a ticket so they stop texting. Is getting a ticket worse then getting in an accident and having something far worse happen? Why don't people understand that the reason we should stop texting while driving is because of the dangers involved and not the fear of getting a ticket.

One of my daughters and I drove from Columbus Ohio to Lehi Utah. It was strange that when we got out in the wide open country of South Dakota (I know we took the long scenic route so we could see Mount Rushmore) and Wyoming there was no one texting while driving but when we got into the metro areas it seemed like 1 out of 5 drivers were doing it.

I remember a device that came out many years ago to keep truckers from sleeping at the wheel. When they lowered their head to nod off a buzzer would sound. I wonder if we could do something like that to keep texters from lowering their heads and not seeing traffic or other dangerous situations when they drive.

Distracted Driving. The new DUI

For the past month I have done a lot of studying on distracted driving. I have 4 daughters and I am very concerned about their ability to put down the phone while they drive. I try to show them things all the time that show how bad texting while driving is. I show them the stat that you are 23 times more likely to be in a crash if you text and drive. I show them videos with blood and gore to scare them away from texting and driving. I have them play Mario Cart and text them to show them how it make them a worse player. I tell them how test show that texting and driving is worse then drinking and driving and we all know how bad drinking and driving is.

The problem I have here is that I think my words are falling on deaf ears. I do not want to be a parent who is on a crusade because I have already lost a child to texting and driving. I want to be the proactive parent who sees the danger before hand and warns them so that they can avoid this dangerous action.

I have a facebook page that only deals with distracted driving and I post articles there everyday. I send out twitters everyday with posting of the dangers of texting while driving. I talk to my kids and they tell me that they understand and that they will not text while driving but I want to be sure.

Maybe I should buy them a lock box and tell them to put their phones in the lock box while they drive. Avoid the temptations of hearing the phone buzz so they will get used to not taking calls or texts while they drive.

Maybe I am just paranoid. Maybe I am talking to myself as at one time I was a huge offender of this law. I heard it took a generation to understand why we need seatbelts. It took a generation to help people see the evil of drinking while driving. I hope we can shorten the learning curve on this.

Does everything have to be regulated?

I was thinking over the weekend as I was driving and saw a disabled big rig with 3 reflective triangles set up (Two that were blown over) just how ineffective these were and the only reason that people used them is because they were regulated or mandated and they would get a ticket if they did not have them. There are a lot of better products on the market to warn drivers of a disabled vehicle but everyone just uses the triangles because of the law.

It got me to thinking about other things that we should just do because we know it is safer. The seatbelt law is a good example. We should just wear our seatbelts because we know it is safer. We should not be wearing them out of fear of getting a ticket. What about the new cell phone and texting laws. Everyone with a brain understands the danger of texting while you drive. Distracted driving is a huge problem and I think it will get worse before it gets better. I have also heard the arguement of talking on the phone while driving and have seen many discussion on this. Some say that you are just talking and if it is hands free there is no difference between that and talking a passenger in the car. Someone else might say that the passenger can see the danger and knows the situation and understands when to shut up and the person on the phone does not have that ability.

Back to my basic tenet that is why do we have to be told to be safe. None of would go home and eat rat poison and there is no law against that. Why can't we just do what is safe without someone having to make a law to force us to be safe. Our we so stupid that we cannot protect ourselves? Does the Government know better then we do what will make us safe so we need to listen to them.

BTW they did not have the part for the Toyota. I will take it back this week and give you a report later.