Chapter 58

The rest of the semester went along without too many hiccups. I drove home for Thanksgiving and Christmas. My sister drove home with John, but stayed at our house. During my time at home, I made the rounds and spent time with my friends. I went to a New Year's party with John and Cathy. At the party, I walked over to get a beer at the keg.

I was in line when Billy Dean walked up behind me. I said hello. We hadn't seen each other in three years so I asked what he was doing now.

"I'm working over at the office supply house. I'm in the Management Training program. Susan and I got married right out of high school and we have a two-year-old boy."

"That's great." I said. "Have you been at the supply house since high school?"

"No, I was driving a truck but I couldn't take it anymore. When you drive over the road, you pick up a load and drive it to its destination. However, it isn't always easy to return home."

"What do you mean?"

"Let's say I pick up a load in Orlando that's going to Memphis and off I go. I finally get to Memphis and drop my load. If everything is perfect, I pick up another load and take it back to Orlando."

We were at the front of the line so I filled my cup and his. We walked away from the keg but this new information and his insights interested me and I wanted to learn something new, so I encouraged him to continue.

He went on. "So now I'm in Memphis and there are no loads going to Orlando. There's one for Myrtle Beach so I can either sit in Memphis and not get paid, I can drive home without a load and not get paid or I can drive to Myrtle Beach and get paid. So, what do I do?"

I jumped right in. "You drive to Myrtle Beach."

"Exactly, but when I get there guess how many loads are waiting to go to Orlando? Zero. I can head either to Cincinnati or to Miami. So I pick up a load for Miami, and off I go down I-95. Miami is a good place because of the port, so I can usually find a load heading to Orlando or maybe Tampa. Then I could finally limp home empty after the last run. That's a week on the road, but sometimes it ends up being two or three weeks if I don't want to sit around and wait for a load going directly to Orlando or the surrounding towns. With a wife and son I couldn't do it anymore so I decided to find something where I could be home at night."

I felt bad for him, but also was glad that I had another chance at life. The first time through, I would have been that guy changing what I wanted to do to accommodate my family.

I started to think about transportation of goods and services. I know that the richest men in the world were the shippers, both by boat in the old days and then the railroad owners. Trucking didn't seem to have the same level of profits, but maybe it was because of how they did it. My mind had something to wrap itself around and I started to form a plan. I started thinking about ways to change the world. I had been back at school for three weeks and was lying in bed when Darcy asked, "Where do you go?"

"What do you mean?"

"You leave me. You leave the present and go somewhere in your mind. Are you thinking about someone? Was it someone you met over the holidays?" she asked.

I stopped for a second and said, "I guess it isn't really someone, but what someone said. I think I have the beginning of my fifteen-year plan, and the problem is that it's so huge that my brain has to break it down into small parts, then analyze those parts and then rebuild the plan to accept the changes to the plan. It's consuming me."

"Can you tell me what it is? Will your company become as large as Mr. Petersen's?"

"If I can make it work, my projections have my company making a five to seven percent positive impact on GDP. It will do in a day what Mr. Petersen's companies do in a year. It will employ over three million people. My profits will be $200,000 a minute twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. That's two billion dollars a week. Now I'm trying to figure out why it can't work. The problem is that every time I find a flaw or a problem, I figure out a solution that makes me more money, employs more people and saves the people of America more money."

"What is it? Please tell me," she begged.

"I think I want to go into the trucking business."

"I don't know anything about that. However, I do know that you'll be the best trucker in the world. I don't know how you're going to make the money you say you will, but I believe you."

"I'm sorry if I leave you. I wish I didn't have to think so hard. I could do this in five years if I had enough money. I'll spend the next eight years investing, raising money and investing in land so I can build what I need to make this work. However, first I need to start on my business plan. I want to quit school now but know I should get an MBA and go to logistics school. The Navy has one of the best schools. I have to weigh my options and make some decisions about how to make this work."

School was on autopilot. I had my classes and my class work down to a science. When I would finish my homework, I would work on my business plan. I called Ken and told him I would like some of his time. I offered to either fly to New York or fly him and his wife to visit April. They took me up on my offer and came the following weekend. I got them a room at the Holiday Inn.

Ken's firm handled all kinds of engineering projects from structural, to electrical, civil, mechanical and he was breaking into computer engineering as a new division. I think that my question is in the mechanical field. He came to my apartment and his wife went up to visit April.

I said, "Ken, I'm interested in motors for trucks. Really, trucks in general, motors, brakes, aerodynamics and design. I know that if I want to become a trucker that today, I could go and buy a truck that I could take up and down mountains, across long flat stretches and everywhere in between. I know that under a standard load, I would get an average of six mpg. Let's say I provide you with information about my route, such as, the trip will take four hours out and four hours back. It will be over perfectly flat ground with an exact speed and an exact weight in the trailer. Is there any additional information that you would need to design a truck to optimize it to run more efficiently using those parameters? The gearing could be larger since there are no hills or mountains. The brakes could be smaller since there would be no mountains to go down. The engine could be smaller since you weren't going up mountains. I wouldn't need a sleeper cab since I would sleep in my bed at night."

Ken said, "That's an interesting concept but we do have mountains in this country and hills. In theory though, if you knew your route and it wasn't going to change, if you knew the weight and the speed, we could design a completely efficient truck to the demands you set forth. I could see, in the total flat area you used in your example, a decrease of almost fifty percent in fuel."

Next, I said, "Let's use the same example but change the environment to the Rocky Mountains or the rise to the Rockies. This would be up and over in the morning and then turn around and go up and over on the way back. This isn't a normal mpg, but if the mpg was five now, if we could make a change in design would it be more efficient and more importantly safer? Very often, trucks going down a mountain are very dangerous if their brakes fail. To resolve that issue, could we also design brakes that creates energy that we could use elsewhere?"

Ken said, "Using your idea I think a fifty percent savings could be achieved, but we would need to do extensive testing."

"Lastly, trucks can run for many miles. If I were again designing the perfect truck, could we design it so that when parts wore out that we could replace them in a systematic fashion?"

He said, "That's what they do now."

"I know but I was thinking that when a truck hits a certain mark that we could almost snap out a major part or the design was such that it came apart easily and put back together easily so the truck would not be out of service for more than a couple of hours. Then the engine could be overhauled in a factory instead of by a guy lying on his back under the truck."

"I see where you're going with this. It's about fleet optimization, scheduled maintenance and the cost of downtime. If you were building your own trucks I could see that you could increase up time by three percent over the life of the truck off of the top of my head."

"I know I already said 'Lastly, ' but I take it back. There is one more thing. When the truck's end of life arrived, I would want a truck that it is as close to 100% recyclable as possible. We could melt metal down and recast the molten metal as new parts. All of the fluids would be collected and recycled. My intent is to keep things out of the junkyard, but also to decrease my cost of raw materials. I'd like to leave no old trucks on the roads that pollute the environment, or aren't safe. And then I don't want them there to compete with my new trucks for the loads that we need to haul."

Ken said, "I was skeptical when you asked me to sign an NDA. I thought a non-disclosure agreement from a college kid ... he must think pretty highly of himself. After our talk though, I see what you're thinking, and if you could set up the routes and loads, and you have enough trucks in your fleet to make sure that the maintenance schedule works, you could put most trucking companies out of business before they knew what hit them. My company made a lot of money on that Mickey Mouse project you roped us into, so I was just being nice and using you for a free trip to see April. I would like to, under the NDA, have one of my engineers look into this a little further and come up with some numbers."

"If you're going to do that I think it's important to get some numbers from the DOT and weigh stations. There's a maximum load for truckers. If I'm hauling ping-pong balls, I'll never get to maximum weight. If we can see what percentage of trucks come through at maximum weight and then in increments down to the smallest weight and even an empty trailer, we may have two or four different models for each route and an even higher level of efficiency."

"That's a great point. I'll have him work on it between other projects if you aren't in a hurry."

"No, I'll need more money to buy a truck manufacturing company, the land, and other stuff to get started. If I can find some financing, it would be three to four years before I'm ready to start building. If I finance it myself it would be closer to seven to ten years for that part of my project."

"I'm excited to see how it goes and I'm excited to work on this. When I get tired of throwing money at it, we can sit down and you can pay me for the work, or we can sell it and settle up."

"Sounds like a deal." We shook on it and then he looked at some of the pictures on the wall.

He said, "I like the art but I'm going to stop looking before I see someone I know."

We went up to visit with April and her mom. We all chatted for a while and then I left them alone. Darcy came back from walking with Sheryl. Sheryl had made her target weight but I wasn't into it after the incident with Kari. I told her about my meeting with Ken and based on our discussions, what he was going to do.

She said, "It sounds like things are coming together one step at a time. What's next?

"I want to move up the time-table so I can finish my goals sooner. I have it all laid out, but I still need capital. The one person I know with the connections is Marshal. When I go home next time I'll stop by and talk with him."

Darcy went with me to the track meets and we cheered for Dani. We left out the chicken and waffles this year but she still ran hard and did well in most meets.

When spring break rolled around, I wanted to go to Hawaii. Alaska was an option but February isn't the time to go there. I asked to see who wanted to go with me, and everyone said yes as long as I was paying. April said she would go but she was going to visit Angus. After his mom's death, he dropped a couple of classes and then finished but it took an extra semester. He had graduated and gotten a job working for April's dad. She was going home to see her folks and her man.

Darcy wanted to go but her parents were against it. I didn't want to become the wedge in their relationship so I told her to let them win this battle and fight the war to get out of the dorm next year.

I asked John and he said he'd already made plans with Cathy to go to Daytona. I thought about putting an ad in the paper but decided to go alone. It was another beach, but really just a way to cross the state off my list of places to visit. I then booked a first class ticket. It was expensive but with such a long flight, I wanted the comfort.

When the time came, I caught an early flight, connected through Atlanta, and then changed again at LAX. I had the aisle seat on the first leg. I had the window on the way from ATL to LAX and I just counted trucks as we flew along the highway. The truck count fueled my desire to finish school and build my business. In Los Angeles, I bought a book, FOOLS DIE by Mario Puzo, and since I was one of the first to board the plane, I started reading while people filed past me on their way to the back. I let a lady into the window seat, but it was an interesting part of the book so I didn't really pay attention. I finished the chapter and looked up to see what was going on.

I looked past the lady sitting next to me to see if we had pulled back from the gate yet. When I refocused, I looked at the lady and said, "Hi, my name is Britt."

She said, "Hello, I'm Carole. Are you enjoying the book?" She spoke with a French accent. She was a pretty girl in her early twenties. Looking outside I noticed that we had just left LA. She could have been from anywhere but I took a shot.

"It's about corruption in Las Vegas, New York and Hollywood. I have spent time in both Las Vegas and New York but not Hollywood. You look like you could be an actress so I won't go on about what the book says about the movie industry."

"I'm an actress, but just starting out," she said.

"Have you been in anything I may have seen? I don't get to the movies much but I hear the titles."

"I was just in a foreign film called Object of Desire. I'm taking a break before I start my next film, "Il Cappotto di Astrakan". It's a French film."

"I don't speak French but I'm a student at the University of Florida. I'm finishing up my degree and decided to take some time and relax."

She said, "That's nice. What are your plans when you are in Hawaii?"