Chapter 29

We were all going to the meeting, but Shawna and Annie would only be joining us for a brief time while Beth, John, and I'd be there all afternoon. We showed up for a buffet lunch. It was a casual affair, and everyone left the coats and ties at home. We had all been together the night before, so there was no urgency to see or talk to anyone. After lunch, we gathered in the large conference room, I introduced Shawna and William Timmons, and gave a description about what they did for us.

Mr. Timmons spoke first, and talked about the work they had done, about the private club that they were creating, and that we'd be charter members and part owners of this new project. He then let Shawna talk. She went through many statistics about who we had met with, and some of the themes and results. It was September, and the elections would eat up the rest of the year in the House of representatives. There were some questions, but nothing difficult or negative.

Annie and Susan stood up next and talked about being our PR firm, and some of the advertising messages getting set to air soon. I hadn't heard too much about them, so it was interesting to hear what they were working on. They told the story about Andy Stewart, and the board approved the way that I handled it, and the help from the PR firm to smooth things out.

They all left the meeting, and then John our attorney stood and talked about any legal areas that we needed to discuss. He mentioned that there was a trucking company in California that's trying to put together a class action law suit against us, but they don't have any money, and those they're trying to get to join them are low on funds as well. In the near term, he anticipated a settlement proposal that would make the attorneys some money, but do little to help the people we put out of business. Next, he explained the pros and cons of such a settlement, but we didn't made any decisions, because the suit was just a possibility at this time.

Craig was next. He spoke for an hour. Over the first fifteen minutes, he spent time thanking the other divisions for making his job easy. This included thanks for Fred White for what his bank was doing to make payroll so simple, and helping his employees buy their first homes now that they'd be home to enjoy them. Next, he thanked the insurance company for again helping his employees with all the issues they dealt with, from broken arms to fender benders.

Following this, he talked about the low amount of problems with the actual trucks, and gave miles per gallon reports that exceeded expectations. IBM was not in the meeting, but he raved about the computer-based data management system that Joe was running and how quick and simple the reporting was for payroll, taxes, maintenance, and sales tracking.

When he finished patting everyone else on the back, he did a little for himself. He showed a graph the business plan's projected sales, and then the actual sales. A week after we went live, the gap started, and it has continued to expand. Manufacturers are talking to distributors and distributors are talking to retail. Retail is requesting us from their distributors and the same back to the manufacturers. We're having little trouble finding the best drivers, and training new ones wherever needed. The biggest problems have been around where some of the drivers live. The bank has stepped in and created specialized departments to start funding new housing near the truck stops. They've also worked with commercial realtors to bring in new stores to support the new communities.

We were delivering the freight faster, safer and more profitable than before, and it was paying off. Craig spent time talking us through the balance sheet for sales, deliverables, accounts receivables, expenditures, payroll, overhead, and everything else.

All I took away was that we were growing fast. Simply using our current rates, we were undercutting the competition, and still seeing an almost thirty percent profit margin. We had many employees, and the cost of payroll was huge. We needed to work on a way to decrease the time that an account was in receivables.

The going rate was just over a dollar a mile our pricing brought it back to ninety-nine cents a mile, and the distinction was huge. The problem was that we were ramping up to be driving about 750,000 miles a minute. If you multiply that by thirty days, that's over thirty-two billion dollars that we were waiting for payment on. The good news is that we weren't driving that many miles yet, but it was growing. A second good thing is that we had the line of credit to cover payroll, and the third good thing was that cost was only seventy percent of that number. We weren't paying out the remainder. The interest on the seventy percent was just short of a hundred million dollars a month.

However, the best news was that after three months, the profit would eat away at the amount we had to borrow to where we'd be cash positive, and not have to use the line of credit. The nine plus billion in profit would go towards saving up to pay off the investors. If we continued on that track, it would be a minimum of three years to raise the funds to pay off the investors. It has already been over two getting the business up and running. If I played it safe, and waited four more year to build up the nest egg, I'm looking at six years total, and I projected ten years.

We were ahead of schedule, and I was a happy boy again. I wasn't the only one playing on the calculator, and I looked to see the bankers, show a sign of relief, and the investors a smile of happiness. Marshal was just as happy as he was proud of helping me, and I felt like they had lifted a three-hundred billion pound weight off my shoulders.

When I looked up the room was quiet. Craig was looking at me. Everyone else looked at me. Craig said, "I was approached almost four years ago by Joe, and he told me the story of a kid that just showed up one day and asked for a job. Six weeks later, he'd totally redone the tracking system for the Port of Seattle. Joe said that he was still in school, but when he graduated, he was looking for people to join him in changing the shipping industry in every way. He told me to get my affairs in order because he'd already recommended me to make it work. Although this amused me, and I was a little interested in what might happen, I didn't quit my day job. I met Britt a year or so later, and he told me that he wanted to change the world and he gave me some insight into how he intended to carry out that plan. I asked him what he wanted me to do, and he said that first off, I had to move to Nashville. Next, he said, I want you to make my dreams a reality, and in return, you'll make more money than you and your family could ever spend."

"Today I stand before you, and I see the first steps on this path. We see proof that the numbers do make sense. We see that people buy into the idea that we're doing it a better way. I see us continuing to grow, and continuing to face problems and overcome them. I see that everyone needs to focus on training people to do what we do. It would be very disappointing, if, when I finally retire, that I find that our 'thing' that we all worked so hard to build, fell apart. Three or four more years, and I'll have met my goals that Britt set out for me. It was many long hard hours. However, it was all worth it. We're on the right track. Any questions?"

There were no questions, just applause. We were clapping for Craig, they were clapping for me, and we were all clapping for each other. The rest of the CEOs stood up, but thankfully were brief. Their charts and graphs mirrored Craig's everything was ahead of schedule, and everyone was making money except Travel and me, but we were small potatoes.

After the meeting, we went out for drinks, and took over a good portion of the bar at the Hay Adams. I left my car there another day. The girls weren't in the meeting for Craig's speech, but they overheard enough of the conversations to know that they didn't have to worry about receiving their pay at the end of the month.

Drinks turned into dinner followed by more drinks. We still had a long way, and a long time to go, but we had set the path. We had laid down a measuring stick, and we could track our progress as we continued to grow.

When we made it home, I took Craig aside, and thanked him for the kind words and the great job that he'd done. We hugged like brothers, and he said, "My wife can't decide if she loves you or hates you for what you've done to our lives, but in three or four more years, I know which way the pendulum will be when she makes up her mind."

I was sitting on the side of my bed when Beth knocked on the door. She came in, sat beside me, and put her arm around me. She asked, "Do you feel better now?"

"I do feel like a lot of pressure is off me. I also wonder if maybe she could have waited six years. I didn't want her to wait for ten, but maybe six would have been OK."

"Britt, you have to let April go. Six would have been too long as well. Six years with the unknown of what could happen, is a long, long time."

She kissed me and then went back to John. I picked up the phone and called Darcy. She was home and asked if something was wrong.

"Darcy, I just called to see how you're doing, and to tell you that I've missed you very much."

I could hear the big smile in her voice when she said, "I know that you have meetings this weekend, so I was going to call you tomorrow or Monday. Recently, I auditioned for a new job and got it."

"Are you going to New York?"

"I wish. It is a different 'Great City'. The San Francisco Orchestra hired me. I'll play there for a couple of years, and then audition for New York. I'm good enough to play in New York, but they make you pay your dues. I was lucky that San Francisco let me in."

"I'm happy for you, baby. I knew you were good enough. I don't see you enough now, and with you moving to the left coast, I'll see you even less, but I love you and I'm sure proud of you."

"I'm going to miss you too, but we're both on our career paths. I'm flying out next week to look for a place to live."

"You'll do great. I'm glad that I called."

"Thanks, Britt. How are your meetings going?"

"They're over, but there are still people here. The meetings themselves went well. We're moving in the right direction."

"I'm proud of you, too. Keep up the good work. Try to get out to San Fran if you can."

"Bye, Darcy. I love you."

"I love you too."

Two women married, and now one is gone to the other side of the country. I felt like a man without a home. I wanted to cry again, but just said, "Fuck it!" to myself and rolled over for another restless night. The morning came, and I put on my happy face. We had breakfast, and Marshal and Peggy showed up. We ate pancakes and bacon, we drank coffee, and we chatted. It was like a big family. Soon taxis started to arrive, and people left for the airport. Beth pulled me in for a hug to say goodbye, and I told her that Darcy was moving to California. She just hugged me tighter, and when we broke the hug, she was the one with tears in her eyes.

She said, "Britt, when you finish here, there will be someone there for you. I'm not sure who it will be, but there will be someone, I promise."

"If not, then it's only a few years before Mary is eighteen."

"Don't even talk about my baby. She already thinks that she's eighteen and her uncle Britt is her favorite boyfriend. She tells me all the time. Sometimes I think you tell her what to say just to upset me."

"Give her a hug and a kiss for me. Not too much tongue, she's only seven."

I got a smack on the arm for that. I shook everyone else's hand and waved to all the taxis. It was Sunday noon, and I wanted to swim, but I still had my stitches. I asked the girls if they wanted to do anything, but they were to beat. I was stir-crazy, so I put on some shorts and walked over to the mall. There were a great number of people walking around. I saw a few playing Frisbee, so I went over and asked if I could join in. At that point, I didn't have a care in the world except keeping the disc heading in the right direction. I played catch for an hour until they decided to leave. After that, I walked over to the air and space museum, and just walked around and read about history. I was lost in my own thoughts until they closed at five-thirty, and I walked home.

The girls were out back smoking a joint. I joined them, and then had a glass of wine. Wine makes me sleepy, and since I hadn't slept well since Friday, I washed off and was asleep by eight-thirty. I slept for nine hours, and it felt great until I realized that it was only five-thirty in the morning. Seeing that I had caught up on everything I started a pot of coffee, went out and got the paper, and read the front page while I drank a cup. I went for a run and had done everything I could do when Annie bounced in at seven to go over to the gym. She looked cute dressed in her aerobics outfit. She asked if I wanted to go, but I passed. Shawna was not far behind her. She stopped for her coffee fix, and then said she had a meeting to attend. She said that I should try to get back before noon. We had a lunch meeting with a senator from Nevada.

I took the Wall Street Journal up to my office and started to look at stocks. I had the trust for my friends and family, as well as a few extra million lying around. It would be chump change when I had the income from the trucking company coming in, but it was wasteful not to invest it. I bought Ford, Wal-Mart, and for my personal account, I bought ten thousand shares of Berkshire Hathaway at $750 a share. Peter was happy to take my trades, but when he started to carry on about other stuff, I told him that I had to go and hung up.

I called Beth, but she had nothing new for me, and told me that she liked the house and the party. I told her to bring the kids up soon, and we just talked about nothing for a while. I finally had something to do after being up for six hours. Shawna and I met with the Senator. We talked about trucking, and the different locations we had in his state. We talked about the number of employees that we had, and different jobs they did. He'd stopped by the party, but I didn't talk to him while he was there. Paul Laxalt was a nice guy and said that he liked what we were doing as an employer, and how we were helping lower costs for his state. He said that if there was legislation that we thought he needed to know more about that his door was always open. He let us pay for lunch, but didn't ask for any contributions.

I was still on limited action with my shoulder, but I sat in on the tae kwon do class and did my running and sit ups every day. Annie started to schedule me in for meetings about advertising. I wanted to show the benefits of all of our companies without doing a straight sales pitch. That's for most of the companies except the travel agency. That was an ad where we needed to sell their services. Many people travel the interstates. Most don't know exactly where they'll be when they finally stop for the day, so I wanted an ad that says, 'Stop for gas, and we'll find you a place to rest your head at night.' With our stops every four hours, we could have them specialize in the surrounding areas. If you stop for gas at two PM, and want to drive for three more hours west before you stop, then we could make a firm reservation, so when you finally stopped, your room was ready, and you wouldn't have to worry about the dreaded no vacancy sign.

For most of the other businesses, we wanted to thank people and get name recognition. We'd run ads that were part public service and part name recognition, similar to the American Indian shedding a tear over the polluted land. Some of the ads would be about our beautiful country, and talk about what we were doing to reduce pollution by forty percent over our competition.

In some of the ads, we thanked veterans for their service, and gave them free coffee for a month at the Stop and Go truck stops. The insurance company sponsored a large gift to the Shriner's hospital for disabled and burned children. For the year, for any gifts dropped at our offices, we'd match them. We had collection containers at each branch. When people would stop by to give, we'd thank them, and offer to give them a free quote. The matching gift was over twelve million from us or almost twenty-five million total. We rounded up to twenty-five. The follow-on ads were 'thank you' ads for the twenty-five million that they helped raise for the worthy cause.

Annie and Susan would work on the message and its tone based on what they thought would be best for us, and then work with the advertising companies to come up with ads to present the message to the public. It was hard work, with a lot of hours going back and forth before the ad was ready, and on the air.

Wednesday, I finally got the OK to get my stitches removed. Once they finally started working on them, it took all of five-minutes, and they gave me the OK to use my arm. I should have just done it myself at home. They wanted me to wait a week before sparring in class, but I was free to swim and do push-ups again. I was happy, and since I finished early, I went for a swim. I took it easy, but it felt good to be in the pool.

Thursday was uneventful most of the day. I stopped by and checked out the private club. I didn't help with the name, but they decided to call it the Congressional Club. It was just a short walk to the capital building at 215 Constitution Ave. Before we purchased the building, and converted it into a club, they had used the six-story building as apartments. The lobby and main areas were complete as was the kitchen and dining room. They were still completing some of the private meeting spaces. They had also completed the smoking lounge and the rooftop patio. I had helped design the rooftop. The roof was flat, and had a lot of structure to handle any large volumes of snow that might accumulate in the winter. There was a large pergola near the center of the roof. The thick beams crisscrossed to create shade in the summer. There were eyebolts to hang flower baskets, and a large gas outdoor fireplace to create warmth and ambiance on those cool nights.