Chapter 10

It really didn’t take much effort to reach an agreement with the mayor. I agreed to add four more hunting teams as soon as I could get them organized. Mary and Billy were sent on recruiting missions for four more drivers and hunters. I shook up the local dealer where I had previously bought the electric powered trucks by ordering four more and saying that I hoped to need more of them in the near future, but that was not a promise.

The dealer immediately alerted the main office for the southeastern sales district about my order and asked for help in finding the four trucks that I wanted before I gave up in disgust and went with another brand. The sale of four more of the trucks was going to make the Dothan dealer the top seller of those particular trucks in North America.

I got a phone call from Atlanta to make sure that I was serious about buying the four trucks. One would have to come from as far away as Virginia. I got a very effusive “Thank you” from the woman at the other end of the line when I confirmed the order.

The next day, I got a phonecall from the same woman asking me if I would be interested in being in a TV commercial for the trucks once I had them in service. She emphasized that there would be a significant payment for my appearance. I said that I would call her back. I discussed the matter with Jo and Jim, and they wanted me to go for it. Jim pointed out that it would be free publicity for HHH when the commercial showed up. Their comments agreed with what I thought, so I called the woman back and agreed to the TV commercial.

By this time, virtually everybody in Dothan and the surrounding towns had heard about HHH, so there was a flood of applicants for the eight jobs we offered. We wound up hiring four combat veterans, two of whom were Black. We had to turn down the applications from several other vets who did not want a female boss who was “still a kid.” One of the Black vets was a former female Marine.

The drivers were all White males, all vets, and not any were over 22. They accepted Billy as the boss without any comment. The fact that Billy was not yet 18 did complicate things a little bit, but the State had signed off on a waiver so that he could be a commercial driver even though he was not legally an adult.

The training did not take long, and we were ready by the time the freshly painted new trucks arrived. We spent a week making sure that all of the new people were fully familiar with the way HHH operated, and we spent another month making sure that the trucks were going to hold up under the kind of work we did.

Once that Mary, Billy, and I were fully satisfied with the whole operation, I called the woman in Atlanta to tell her that we were now ready to tape the commercial whenever she was ready. More effusive thanks and she said that she would get back to me with the details as soon as they were ready.

Two weeks later, I received a script for the commercial for my approval. I tumbled to the fact that such an approval was unusual, and there was nothing in the script that I thought needed changing, so I immediately gave it my okay. The next week a TV crew showed up to start the taping.

The task for the TV crew for this day was to follow a hunting team as they patrolled for wild hogs around an elementary school. We were very lucky in that the team found and killed two hogs, a boar and a sow, at the same school. The taping crew was able to record both kills, and they were sure that they would have some very good footage to use in the commercial. That was enough footage for a 1-minute commercial, so that was all they needed to have.

About two weeks later, I was asked to show up at the local TV station to tape my part of the show. That was when I saw the full commercial, and, Man, was I impressed with what the TV people had done with the footage they had! Of course, virtually every moment of the tape had some illustration of the truck in action, but there was plenty of exposure of our company name. All in all, we were very happy with the amount of TV time we got, and it showed the service that we were providing.