10-4 Magazine - For Today's Trucker

JANUARY 2006 TRUCKER TALK
STUDENT/DRIVER
By Writers and Owner Operators Rod & Kim Grimm

The beginning of a new year is a good time to evaluate your life and make changes where necessary. Sometimes, those changes can include going back to school to better your future. While driving a truck to earn a living, Joe Fitzgerald of Sheboygan, WI is also a college student taking a full-time, online, accelerated class load to earn a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration, all the while doing a Wisconsin to California turn around every other week.

The company that Joe drivers for, Spoerl Trucking in Ixonia, WI hauls truckload and LTL freight. The LTL freight worked perfect for Joe to set up a study schedule. Leaving Wisconsin on Friday, he starts delivering on Monday and spends Monday through Friday dropping then reloading. He then delivers back in Chicago or Wisconsin on Monday or Tuesday. While his wife Christy (who is an Emergency Manager for the Emergency Lodge of the Salvation Army) is at work and his sons Zach and Uriah are in school, he has time to study at home. When they get home, Joe spends as much time with his family as he can before having to hit the road (or the books) again.

His classes are held asynchronous (meaning you don’t have to be there at a certain time). There are presentations to make, papers to write and assignments are due just like a regular classroom. Class discussion is done on a message board, with comments and responses posted online. Joe started classes at the University of Phoenix, but as of January 1st, 2006 he will be transferring to The American Intercontinental University.

Coming from a trucking family, Joe told me how his grandpa Ralph drove a local delivery truck for his great grandpa. While doing this, he met Joe’s future grandmother at the Woolworth lunch counter, where she worked and he ate lunch. He then started driving team for CF, and over the years also worked for Advance, Badger and retired from Barry Trucking as the safety director. He didn’t stay retired though – he’s now a driving instructor at Milwaukee Technical School. Joe’s father Bill is an owner operator leased to D&G Transportation in Germantown, WI.

After getting out of the Army, Joe started working as a mechanic. Not making enough money turning wrenches, he started driving for Kreilkamp. Four years ago he had the chance to go to work for Spoerl Trucking. Joe is very happy that he seized that opportunity.

Talking with Brad Holt, Asst. V.P. of Spoerl, he told me that they are seeing huge growth right now. A year ago they had 20 trucks and now, counting owner operators and company trucks together, there are 55 total – with another 20 new trucks on order! New offices and warehouse space is now being built and hopefully there will be a new shop that Joe can be in charge of after he graduates.
Most of the company’s trailers are dry vans, but they also have a few step-decks and covered wagons in the fleet. Brad says this offers some of their drivers a chance to “mix it up a little bit, instead of always pulling the same freight.”

President and CEO Steve Spoerl and Operations Manager Cletus Hansen (as well as Brad) have all been drivers. They all do their best to treat the drivers right, because they’ve been there and done that. They know and remember what it’s like being on the road. I was impressed when Brad told me he has a mahogany steering wheel that he held for 500,000 miles in the last truck he owned and drove hanging on his office wall. When asked once why it hung there, he told them, “It’s so I don’t forget where I came from.”

Brad bragged about the company’s great drivers, and about Joe he said, “Because of the kind of driver Joe is, we let him put his truck together the way he wanted it. He takes good care of the equipment, the freight and the customers. We never have to worry about him being late, and if there is a problem, he doesn’t make a scene, he makes a phone call and resolves the problem.”

When Joe started driving, he nearly doubled his income from his mechanics pay. His wife was in school and not working, so they were a one income family. Now that she is out of school and working, he’s still driving to pay for his schooling that will one day soon enable him to stay in the trucking industry yet get off the road. When he had the opportunity, he took it – and we think he will make the most of it.

So, if any of you drivers, dispatchers, mechanics or whatever out there wished that you had went to college, this may be something for you to think about. Get a computer and go online and get a further education that may help you get a better job in trucking, or if you really want to get out of the business (we hope not), could get you another job you might like better. Maybe this might be something to consider for your New Year’s Resolution. Happy New Year. Here’s wishing you and yours safe travels throughout all of 2006 and beyond.