The Third and Final Time I Quit

Sufficient time had passed for me to declare bankruptcy without affecting my business partner so I went ahead and got that done. It was a relief for me to finally get that monkey off my back.

At work, we had been having some issues with the owner of the office we were renting, not least the air conditioning situation. After our yearly lease was up, we moved to a much nicer office, five minutes away from where we were living. Now, not only could I take a lunch because we had enough staff, I could actually get away from the office and go home. The huge weight we had been under for the past year was finally easing up. 

Not that things were perfect. There were still the multiple foibles of the trucking industry, which still created pressure for George. Although he had mellowed significantly, he could still lash out at times. It wasn’t directed at me anymore so I found myself trying to act as the peacemaker again. Because of what we had been through together, I had learned somewhat how to navigate the complexities of our office dynamics.

But I began to realize that there were some pressures in the trucking business that were never going to change. The main one was owner/operator issues. The truck drivers were independent contractors. When they were hired on, they only drove for us, but they could leave at any time.

The trucking business has ebbs and flows. It will go from too much business where you don’t have enough drivers, to very slow and your drivers start to quit. Then it picks up again and you don’t have enough drivers again. 

Over the year and a half I had been there, I saw it happen again and again and I realized that it was never going to change. It caused a lot of tension in the office because when there are not enough drivers, delivery deadlines get missed and the shipping company blisters us.

I also saw that the small pool of extra money we had from the sale of our house was quickly dissipating. I wasn’t making enough to cover our lifestyle but I didn’t know what I could do. I inquired about a raise. Jimmy would have agreed but the parent company said no.

I was talking to a friend at church about all this one day when he said,

        “Why don’t you come work with me?”

This was not just any friend. This was my former Care Group leader and manager at Integrity Auto Specialists, the guy who trained me how to do dent repair, one of my best friends, Chris Parsons. After I left, Integrity had hit some hard times with the economy and they decided to let Chris go. He had started his own dent repair business.

The issue was that I thought all his accounts were out of town, which would take a lot of money for gas. Also, the only vehicle I had was an older truck that might not be the most presentable on the lots. He put both concerns to rest. His accounts were in town and my truck would be just fine for now.

It was summer when all this happened. Spring and Summer are usually the busiest times with dent repair. You typically don’t want to start in the Fall because then you’d be heading into winter, which was typically the slowest time of the year. But I was such an integral part of Expedited Direct, I wanted to give plenty of notice so they could cover all my responsibilities. 

I asked Chris about starting in the Fall but he said if we were going to do that, he would rather wait until the following Spring. There was no way I would be able to make it that long psychologically. We set a start date of August 1 and I told George.

He wasn’t happy. We had been through a lot together over the last year plus and he didn’t look forward to the prospect of running the company without me. But I wasn’t making enough and despite the atmosphere being much better than it had been, it still felt like the job was killing my soul.

George and I would still see each other and we still went to the same church. My last day came. I said my good byes and went on to my new venture. A few years later, George started a church back in upstate New York where he was originally from and he did some international travelling as an evangelist.


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