More Than a Career

Submitted by Karlie Abernathy on 09/03/2020

One conversation. That’s all it took to make, what you thought was your temporary job as an auto hauler, bloom into a permanent career that you continue to grow passionately in. You often look back at your very first day on the job. Although ten years into your career now, you still remember this delivery as if you had just finished that drive down highway seventy-five. You were making your last delivery for the day to the small town of Cartersville, Georgia. It had been a long trip, around three hundred miles to be exact, and it showed. You were tired and pretty agitated with the traffic, considering it made the commute take about an hour longer than it should have. You were dropping off four vehicles to a small car dealership down in the lower part of Cartersville. Once you pulled into the car dealership, the owner insisted you come in to have a few donuts they still had left over from that morning, discuss how the drive treated you, and maybe sit for a few minutes. You of course tried to politely object, knowing you had around a three-hundred-mile drive back, but the owner used his southern charm to ease you inside. That’s when you saw her.

She had a baby perched on her hip who looked to be around two years old. The baby, with the brightest eyes that reflected the sky, was staring up at you attentively, but that’s not what you noticed. What caught your eye, was the way this young mom was looking at one of the cars you just dropped off. It was as if she had seen a new world, and you just couldn’t understand what she was seeing that you couldn’t. You didn’t want to pry, but after a few minutes you couldn’t help but listen in to what she was saying to the car dealership owner. You find out that she plans on buying this car that you just delivered. She praised everything about it, the exterior, interior, price, everything. You had really never seen someone seem so hopeful and excited about a car. You eventually give in to your curiosity and had to ask, “ma’am, why do you like this car so much?”. Her response was quick and steady, as if she didn’t even have to think about her response. She looked up at you with determination in her voice and said, “this car is my new beginning”.

After a few minutes of sharing conversation, as well as donuts, you learn that the young mother’s name is Sarah. She is a single mom who has been struggling on her own for a while now. She tells you that she’s been working around forty hours a week for the past year to attempt to save up, but its hard because she doesn’t have her own vehicle. After months of hitching rides to multiple different jobs, she had finally saved enough money for a down payment. This is especially important to her now, because she’s been offered a new job that would really increase her income, but she can’t continue to rely on hitching rides. In her eyes, this car is her fresh start for her and her child. This car will secure her transportation so that she can commit to a job that provides so much more for her and her child. With a smile beaming from ear to ear she continued to discuss her hopes with you. Now with this secured transportation to her job, she plans to save up and move into a home, rather than the small apartment she’s been in. She also wants to set money aside to start saving for her child’s education in the future.

This fifteen-minute conversation changes your entire outlook of your career. It’s easy to see a vehicle and assume it’s just a piece of medal, but there’s more meaning to those pieces now. You are still transporting cars, but you now understand that within that transportation is a piece of someone’s life. Like for Sarah, these cars can be the beginning of new opportunity. Without transportation, you can’t secure a job, schooling, or a social life. The automobiles you haul during your career could be the key to someone’s future.

Now that you know you are not just delivering a car, but you’re in fact delivering something so crucial to customers, you take even more pride in your career. With this pride comes the determination to have the best equipment available in order to ensure the best delivery for future car owners. The security features that your own transportation provides for these cars allows you to be confident that you will successfully get your job done, thus ensuring a positive experience for others. Among many features, your trailer, the Boydstun 9107, has an updated deck design. This makes it easier for you to operate the trailer and overall improves the functionality.

It also has a new frame design which includes all knew frame rails. This improves strength, creates a seamlessly lighter load, and allows easier access to multiple different parts if maintenance needs to be done. The new Bendix disc brakes give you confidence that your vehicle will not falter, which ensures that there won’t be potential damage to the automobiles your transporting. Your favorite features though might be the Boydtsun’s rapid ratchet as well as the extra length of your trailer. This faster and more efficient securing system allows you to secure the weight of your cargo much faster, while the extra length allows you to load larger/additional cargo to your trailer. This is crucial because the less time it takes for you to load up the cars your transporting as well as the more you can load, the more time you save that could be used to transporting more vehicles and making a difference for additional customers.

As you continue to transport cars during your career, you realize the auto hailing industry is not often thought about by people outside of the actual auto haulers and their related businesses. Yet, it is one industry that we all rely on. Whether it comes to purchasing, renting, or car repair, the auto haulers are involved in each process. They must transport the cars to each location from which the cars will be bought/rented/used from. Once the consumer acquires these cars, they are used every day. The cars you transport are something that is functionally very hard for a consumer to live without. You leave each day of your job fulfilled, knowing that while the consumers may not think about what you do during their day to day lives, they definitely are still impacted by the automobiles you deliver.

Submitted by Karlie Abernathy on 09/03/2020