How it all started

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  Everyone has a story; mine happens to involve a truck, an addiction, and a mission to save ou  industry. This is also a story of children like medon't you hear about but don’t understand how parents can act like this and how those children grow up to love and heweren'trs,don't even didn'tthough they weren’t loved themselves.

My story started way before I bought this truck or how I was on the sIt'sts of Buffalo NY by the age of 12. It’s a story about loving parents who would tell me how they madit'smiserable mistake by having me and it’s a story about a child who after a deserved beating would be locked in a room with no food, water or bathroom because it was a good thing for a sorry piece of shit like me while his mother had sex in the room below for the weekend with whoever.

Even today I wonder what they saw or did not see in me that made them ha e enough  o hurt me. Was it because my mother was who she was, a liar, a whore, and a drunk or was it their marriage was that bad that it created so much hate in themselves and they ne ded an es ape hatch? Unfortunately, I even had a sister and brothers that w nt throug  this too. Ho  were the  affected? I would unfortunately find out later in life.

I wonder now after all these years why a truck broit's it all up to deal with, after all it’s only a piece of metal and t ey are al  dead now. Why am I fighting fcouldn'tike sh  was real? Is it that I couldn't let her fail or was it that I couldn't let myself fail again or because I also needed to help others? you'resay you are what they teach when you're young and hate was one of their specialties and it worked later in life for me and when I got to be 18, because I saw something that could channel my anger.

The United States Marine Corps.

It was the first time I found out that a cause can help guide the anger that you carried inside and one thing that the Marine Corps can do in the three months of basics is take you down to your core and give  ou a reas n to live. I could now direct my hate because the Marine Corp  ave me th  training. The Government gave me the cause. 

The north Vietnamese army.

Unfortunately, when they tested me in boot camp to see where they might use me and if I had any hidden talent, they found out I apparently had a good IQ which su rised me.  So, I was sent to trade school and got a  op-secret clearan e. Now wh t do I do? Their first assignment was to send me to Lakehurst New Jersey to see if anyone was stealing top secret information from a militar  location. Not what I wanted or asked for, so it took me about eight months to piss the brass off enough and my reward was something I wanted in the first place Vietnam and 1 month later I was on my way there. 

Twelve months of hunting, killing and drinking was my game plan, and it worked for me until you see way too much, way too often and then the braidon'tts down an  your bat les begin. I don’t remember the fire fight, but I do remember it was an ambush, and we were not in a  ood, prot cted area. How I got off the battl field I d  not know. I do remember couldn'tdying next to me and knowing I couldn’t help them,  nd they w re my men. They told me I was in a coma for about a week, and I now will be sent to a VA hospital in NY who handles this type of trauma. Six months later I was still in the hospital with men and women who our government could care less about and t en we wer  set free. Men and women that now have enough hate and confusion that they disappear in drugs and addiction wasn'te the welcome home they expected wasn’t th re either. But there was a celebrational shower from all the spit, paint and crap of the protesters that wanted to hurt us. 

And that was just off the plane in Los Angles.

In New York I needed to get out of the hospital and back into civilian life and it was here I found out what most combat so diers now deal with. PTSD, because I never saw it coming. 

Only combat soldiecan'tow what  ombat sol iers can't You can’t read it in a book, you can’t eve  teach it. Because nowhere does it tell you in a book on how not to almost kill someone who just  ants to w ke you up. How not to have your back to a door and a constant 360 view of your surrounIt'ss and how to become normal again. 

It’s funny now that I later developed a program for Walk A Mile America where you drop down and pick up pennies that you drop for exercise, but in reality, I had to cover myself on why when I heard a noise, I was on my knees on the ground looking around and ready. 

My military medical files might have didn'ted I had a problem, but I reall  diddon't ink I did. Like most veterans we don’t loo  for help. I could handle it myself, but I did need something stronger to keep me calmer than what they could offer, and I had been using it for years. 

Finding work with the training I had opened doors with the FBI and Secrete Service an  most pol ce forces. These organizations loved the military personnel because we alre dy had th  training. Unfortunately, I lost most of these offers because of my shoot first and ask qu tions la r policy.  I guess war does that to you.

INamie'sed them all up, like most of us Namie’s I had a out 75 or more jobs. I guess they forgot to fix the small problems combat men and women have like, don’t touch us because we never sleep, our back is always against the wall and why didn’t we win that war was in the back There'sads al the don't  There’s also that don’t mthere'smad thing because there’s a no turn  ff button available. Their answer was always the same we can fix that with medication.

Combat men and women have a few things in common and that might be one of ou  problems. On  is they  ever quit. Two they will work till they drop because stopping is quitting, and that cycle never stops.

Most of us looked for jobs that would  elp quiet the noise. Some found them, some did not  nd some i  was a 45. It took me 30 years to finally find mine and it was by mistake. 

People and open non- controlled spaces bother most combat vets and going to a theater is not a good,  ontrolled situation. I had just lost anothlet'sb, and my wife said let’s go see a movie, maybe i  can help relax youwasn'tunately, the movie wasn’t that great, not too many p ople came to see it. But here is  here it a l started. A truck driver and his wife sat in front of us and the girls started to t lk before the movie. She mentioned I just lost my job when the guy says they need truck drivers all the time and I have my own truck. Want to learn?  

I was hooked and I now needed a CDL and a company called Swift said they will train Vet  to drive. A month later I was driving and it all worked out for about a mont .

Driving was great. But PTSD does not work well w th people. Picking up, delivering and d spatch took a toll  Just le  me drive. You do all that extra stuff lik  talking to people. Just let me drive.

I was now an un mplo ed  DL d iver. Wow. I tried five times more with the same result.

It was my wife that changed  verything. She said buy your odidn'tck. I did but that didn’t stop that people thing, and I kept losing loads.  

Our kids were now older, and she said what if I go with you and I do all t e talking. I said that works for me and here is where the story stait's 

With truck drivers it's about our trucks and in 1994 I start d to des gn my own. For over six months I organized the parts I needed to build her from the engine to the transmission all the way up to the 20-gauge dashboard lights.

No matter if you are a company driver or an owner operator the first time you sit in that seat, she becomes yours and I must say she was going to be gorgeous with a Forest Green body, a 300 wheelbase a d 120-in h sleeper. Two months later we got the call to come up andwe'reher. 

My wife and I we're now in Canada and ready to pick her up and nothing describes the feeling you have when you are at the factorshe's, and they tell you she's coming off the line in   couple  f minu es. Then I sa  her. Wow. She was beautiful and coming right to me and the nightmare began. 

You see most people that know me do not know I have a secret, and I have to battle it ev ry day  f my life. I came out of Vietnam with PTSD, and it affects my life s accom lishments. Most men and women that fought that war nev r left it. We came back with a sense of failure and accomplishment and here I was seeing something I designed, and idn'ts beautiful, and I  idn't d serve her. For the next few minutes, I just walked around her talkingwe'dher and wondering if we'd get along and when I got into that seat, she became real to me, and we would now work togetheit'sost people would say it's on y a truck. But not me.

At the factory they have to take her to a drop off site for some reason about a mile away, so I gave the keys back to the salesman and we followed her dow  the road. We only made it about half a mile because there was a scale right outside the factory and they gave her a ticket for an overweight front axle and instantly I told myself maybe I really didn't  eserve  his truck. Fortunately, western star and the scale people had different ideas to settle but we are now on the road to get the sleeper put on it.

To Oregon we went to meet the guy that was building ou  120-in h sleeper. We checked him out as much as we could, and it all looked legal until we got there and found out he was only half done with it and wanted  ore money. In 1994 there was not a lot of big sleepers manufactured he was only one of probably 3 in the United States that did them, so everything lo ked legit. But then again it just hits us as a loss, and I ask myself what the hell did I do, is thi  my karma. One week later with the state police and a final payment in hand we had him put the unfinished sleeper on the frame and we went to get the 48-foot double drop trail king trailer.

With the time lost from the sleeper guy we already had a load we needed to pick up in California, so we headed off to work withou  supplies. Here is where you really find out about truck drivers and the hearts they have because we had no equipment to even tie a load down with, but that was no problem because when we got there, we now had everything we needed and didn't even know some of the donors last names or people that helped us out with thos  supplies. I haven't seen that since Vietnam when the guy next to you shared his limited supply of food and water.

Over the next few months, we got the sleeper finished with the help o  a friend. It had two lazy boy recliners, a Corian countertop, a stove, refrigerator, storage cabinets and a micr wave oven. Not a bad ride for a  995 truck. O, did you know there was no such thing as a western star show truck at that time with a 120-in h sleeper? In fact, we were not even allowed in the truck show that year because we were built in Canada.

Sometimes you pick a job that your disability won't be noticed, and you can handle the disability properly without answering a lot of questions. Truck driving allowed that for me, it kept me calm. My wife hated that she could not listen to the radio when I drove because it was the sound of the Cat 3406 engine that kept me calm. As a job we chose heavy haul and by the grace of God, my wife was the people person and the navigator for all our loads, and we did very well. I knew very few people.

Even when you think you have all your ducks in a row the next door that opens might be your last and when it did open, I didn't expect the outcome. A lot of men and women in Vietnam got sprayed with Agent Orange and at that time the government said it would cause no problems. That might not have been true, because in January 2000 I found out the hard way it had been eating at my lungs for years and it put me unconscious laying on the ground one Monday afternoon. I now had a left lung that was compromised and only 25% effective. So here I was, it's now winter and I could hardly breathe the cold air outside, how could I even drive. I didn't like this at all, and my secret only made it worse. Sitting in our living room I knew my truck was ready to go to work but mentally and physically I could not, and it brough up a lot of questions I had no answers for. I now had to make a decision. Selling something you created and loved having was like a stab in the heart. For over five years we never let each other down and when I needed her most, she seemed to know what I needed when I needed it and brought it forward to another gear. But now I looked across the yard and I was selling her.

I did not know the buyer at that time it went to a dealership, and it was a few weeks later that the sale drove me to tears. She was sold to an oil rig company, one that I knew could care less about equipment. Now all that came to my mind was how could I have done that to her. All I could think of was what she thought and how she thought that she had let me down. After all she was just a truck, right?

Over the next few years, I would see her go by and I said hello each time and told her that I'm sorry for what I did only to lose her one day to another state. I never knew what happened to her again.

Vietnam vets carry this type of guilt all the time because they assumed failure of that war and selling her was just another failure added to my life. But sometimes what you think and what comes around are totally different and this story started to prove it.

It was 15 years later that I was coming home from Oklahoma City on I-40 W. As I crossed the Caddo river bridge my eyes saw something I could not believe. My truck. She was sitting in the field of another oil rig company, and she had a for sale sign on her. Could it be. I went right to her; didn't even tell their office I was out there. Here she sat sad, lonely unkept and broken just like me, but somehow, she knew I was there, I just rubbed her with the tears on my face while opening the driver's door to look inside only to see what I expected. A beaten down, torn up, dirty interior, her last days. But wait I could not believe my eyes and I slowly reached over to touch it to make it real. On the dash my name tag that western star puts on custom trucks, and it was still there. 15 years or more and no one tore it off. Why? When the guy came out and saw me, he could not figure me out. I just looked at him tears and all and said I built her 20 years ago that's my name there. I talked about her like a proud father, and he said it was a great truck but probably was going to be sent to Mexico this month, it was too expensive to fix. I asked what they wanted, and he said it was about $20,000 worth of parts on it and that's what they wanted, and I had no way of getting that type of money.

They say what goes around comes around and I believe that more than ever now. I went with him into their office, and we talked about what I did with drivers now as health and wellness instructor and they said they had one in their office that just had a heart attack, so I showed them some of the programs I had and left. Only to feel the tears run down my face again.

I now knew I would never see her again and a knife went deeper.

It was 2 weeks later the salesman called me about her being sold, but I could not believe what I was hearing because I thought I had finally lost her, but it wasn't that. Because I was willing to help them that day, they were going to donate the truck to me and 24 hours later she came back home.

I was overjoyed to have her home and truly enjoyed showing her off a few times, but she was still broken, and I had to fix her. I had to fix her because I knew she didn't come back to me (against all odds) without a good reason. 

It wasn't until 4 years later, and after I had almost died of a heart attack that I understood why she was returned to me…we (my truck and I) had a story to tell! Our man and machine, regardless of appearance, and despite years of neglect and abuse, can be brought back from the brink with proper care, determination, and help from others. My truck would once again stand proud, but this time she would stand as a symbol of hope to an industry desperately in need. Her transformation from a neglected wreck back to her original health and beauty would be chronicled and placed on display throughout the country. Her restoration would be tangible and something drivers could relate to. Her purpose would now be to serve as the ambassador of health to the trucking industry, and together we would deliver our message of health to drivers everywhere. The message -- that man and machine are not so different after all. That even after years of abuse and neglect, health can be restored. Just as an engine can be rebuilt, so can the body.

Drivers love their trucks and understand the need for daily maintenance and scheduled check-ups. They know that if their truck is neglected it could break down and leave them stranded. They know the importance of keeping their air filters clean so their engine can breathe -- not so different from their lungs! Just like a truck's motor; what you put into it matters. A driver wouldn't put poor quality fuel, oil, or lubricants into their truck, and I want to help them think about their body in the same way. Our mission is to help drivers begin the process of change by showing them how to take care of their bodies and minds like they take care of their trucks. To get them to realize that if they neglect themselves, they too could have a breakdown and be left stranded. Our mission is not an easy one, but it needs to be done. It's not a job, but rather a labor of love for an industry, and the men and women in it that work hard each day to deliver the goods that keep America running.

This story would tell how.