July 1, 2025 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in the early 1980s, Brig and Jon Sorber, then high school students in Lansing, Michigan, started a local moving service using an old, beat-up pickup truck. They called it Two Men and a Truck—and their mom drew the original stick-figure logo. When the boys left for college, she took over the business, incorporated it, and—using the meager $350 profit from its first year—laid the foundation for one of the world's largest moving companies. Brig himself shares the remarkable story.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Up next a story from Brig Sorber, part of the
founding family of Michigan's owned two men in a truck
moving company. Let's get into the story.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Here's Brig.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
My first job was raking leaves when I was eight.
I knocked on a door and these two guys open
the door and they're looking at me. They go, what
do you want? I said, I can I rake your
front yard for a dollar?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
He goes, yeah, go ahead. I was just jacked, you know.
I was going to make a dollar. This is my
first job.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
And these guys had a car backed in and they
were moving stuff out of the house and then they took.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Off and said they'd be back, and I said, okay.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
So I kept breaking leaves and this another car pulls
up and he looks at his house, comes running out
and he goes, who the hell are you? And I go,
I'm raking your leaves. I The guy said, I can
break the leaves. What guy said, he you can break
the leaves? And I went the guy that was moving
stuff out of your house, he was being robbed and
(01:25):
I didn't know it, and so the cops came and
they were asking me questions.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I'm going, what is going on? Well, then the.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Cops left, took the report, and then I finished and
I knocked on the door and the guy answers the
door and he goes, what do you want? I went,
I want my dollar for raking your leaves. He goes,
for God's sake.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
M I just got robbed.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
I mean, I'm eight here, right, So the guy gives
me a buck and I just remember going home like
not thinking anything of it, and I told my mom
the story and she was like shocked.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
So that's how my working life started. Work was always
part of what us kids did.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Me and my buddies started mowing lawns. There weren't those
landscapers back then. It was just neighborhood boys cutting grass.
And so we just opened up the white pages and
I remember my buddy, uh Tim Valmer and I we
went through and said we needed to mow ten lawns
and then if we can mow ten lawns, two lawns
a day Monday through Friday, and then we can spend
the rest of the time at the beach. It's like,
(02:28):
let's do it. And it was uncanny, but everyone gonna call.
They went, well sure, I was.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Like, wow, this is easy.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
So we would haul our lawnmowers behind our bikes and
we had a couple horrendous wipeouts doing that. But a
lot of people looked at us and went like, man,
you guys are like going after it. And so we
loved being our own boss. I like me and my own.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Guy and bought us sixty six Ford pickup truck.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
From Michigan State University. It was an old agricultural truck,
just a beat her three on the tree, shifting us
up on the column. We made a lot of money
with that truck. My brother and I started getting into
a moving just trash and brush around. And then my
mom started a This is after she divorced. She started
another business. She would go to estate auctions and she
(03:20):
would buy furniture and then haul it to this little
store that she leased out, clean it out up and
resell it.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
And so she bought this.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Whole truck for for about three hundred dollars, like a
fifteen foot step van instead of just a pickup truck
and hold us, you know, if you want to use
after your moving go ahead, and that's what really got
us into moving like apartments and small homes. And when
John and I started the business, it was called Men
at Work Movers, and underneath that it said two men
in a truck twenty five bucks an hour.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
And then my mom drew on a napkin.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
A cartoon truck with two stick men in it, and
that's where our logo came from. Her logo to this
day is a drawing that my mom made on a napkin,
and she said, why don't you drop men at work
moms and just call yourselves what you are, two men
in a truck. So that's where our name came from.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
We were small guys.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I was probably five seven and maybe a buck forty.
We'd show up at someone's house and I can't tell
you how many times I'd get this. People would look
at me and their shoulders would slump and it's like, oh.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Crap, here we go again. Is there a problem, ma'am?
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Well, we were expecting a couple of scraping lads and
we're expecting two men.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Not two boys.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
It's like, I totally understand. I'll tell you what. Let
us work for you for fifteen minutes and if it
doesn't work out, we'll call the office and get a
couple bigger guys.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Here. Is that fair? Yeah, that'd be fair.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
And so John and I would go downstairs and we
would move the upright freezer.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
That's the thing that nobody can move. And then they
would just go like, we are so sorry. Usually been
a good tip.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
The funny part was we had no extra guys, we
had no office, so it was so like, you know,
we're walking a wire without a safety net there. But
John and I were both pleasers, and this industry was
very easy to please him.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
People would just do backflips if we even showed up.
John and I.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
This was beer and book money in that order, and
we were drinking green bottle beer as opposed to our
other guys drinking like the cheap beer.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
But it really.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Became because it didn't make any money, I mean for kids.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
For beer and book money, it was fine.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
But my mom loved it, and my mom quit her
job at the State of Michigan. She took all of
her qualified retirement money and cashed it all in. People
were screaming at her. Her own mother, my grandma was
just going, what are you doing the first two years
when she quit her job, she didn't pay herself anything
and she just lived off that qualified money and Ramen
(05:53):
noodles for two years.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
And if she was.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Sitting here in this room, she'd tell you it was
the happiest days of her life. She's crazy, but she
loved building the business.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
She finally made a profit her third year.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
I think she made a thousand dollars and she wasn't
sure how to do the taxes, cause she was like,
I've never had a profit, so it was the sweetest thing.
She wrote ten checks for one hundred dollars and gave
it to nonprofits in Lancing, and that got back to
the Chamber of Commerce and some other business people and
they went, who is this lady. It was at that
(06:29):
time that Lancing wrapped its arms around two minute truck
and went, this is our moving company, which was the
coolest thing. And Michigan State University had a bunch of
small businesses come in to talk to their business school,
and she went in there. My mom was very shy,
but God bless her, she got through it. And this
lady came to her and said, did you ever consider franchising?
(06:50):
My mom goes who would buy it moving franchise And
she goes, well, I'm a pet nanny.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
I take care of people's pets.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
I franchise, so I think if I could, you can,
And my mom said, let's do it. From my mom
once you started franchising two minute truck forty nine years old,
no college education, pretty amazing.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
And you've been listening to Brigsorber tell the story of
two men in a truck. When we come back more
a Brig and his remarkable life story here on our
American Stories. Lee hbib here, and I'm inviting you to
help our American Stories celebrate this country's two hundred and
(07:35):
fiftieth birthday coming soon. If you want to help inspire
countless others to love America like we do, and want
to help us bring the inspiring and important stories told
here about a good and beautiful country, please consider making
a tax deductible donation to our American Stories. Go to
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amount helps go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and give.
(08:09):
And we returned to our American Stories and with Brig Sorber,
He's part of the founding family behind two Men in
a truck, the largest franchised moving company in the world,
started in large measure by his mother. She had no
college education and no knowledge of the moving industry when
she poured her retirement money into the young business. Brig
(08:30):
now shares with us the story of how he met
his wife, Frand.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
I was on Northern Michigan's rugby team. We were having
a party. We needed hot dogs, and the party that
we were at was kind of like in the student ghetto.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
So there was like this random shopping cart on the
side of the road, and so Fran was walking by
with a couple of her friends, and we just went,
you want to go.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
You want to cookout? And they're like, okay.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
So me and my buddy picked up Fran and we
put her probably get arrested for this now, put her
in the shopping cart and just started pushing her down
the road all the way to the Blue Link party
store to get hot dogs. And then I got to
know Fran at this party, and my roommates were like, Brig,
we gotta go, we gotta go, We gotta get back.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
To the house.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
And so they they picked me up and threw me
in the car like college guys do. And I unrolled
the window and I yelled, Fran. She looked and I went,
I'm gonna marry you someday.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
And she was like that guy's drunk.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
And I didn't see her for a couple months and
I saw her at a party and we went out
that night and we just started dating. And I loved
her because she was very independent. She paid for her
own apartment, she paid for.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Her own school.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
She was the only one out of the fourteen kids
that went to college. She would study in the only
bathroom that they had. She'd flip the toilet seat down,
sit on nat and put the clothes hamper there as
a desk at night when all the lights around. She'd
study in high school because she wanted to go to college.
I was a kid that by the time I went
to school, my parents would be perceived as upper middle class.
(10:09):
So a lot of the things that she worked hard
on I took for granted.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
I went, that's really cool that she does that.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
I ended up getting Fran pregnant and I don't mind
sharing this. And I asked her if I could share this,
and she said, as long as.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
That helps people. Yeah, I don't like you're running around,
but yeah, I guess.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
So when we were younger, we wouldn't share this, but
now we share it because when she told me, she went,
I'm having this baby. You don't have to marry me.
I'm going to have this baby. And I just went,
that is so classic, Fran. I just fell in love
with her more and I went, well, come on, Fran,
we'd probably get married anyway, which we probably.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
I really truly feel we would have.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
And she's like, well yeah, and I said, well let's
get married. Little did I know, I'm thinking I'm doing
her a favor. She took on like two babies.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
You know.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
I mean I was like a kid, and and she
really kept our family buoyant because I wasn't. I'd go
to church with there on occasion at college, but I
didn't think anything of it, you know.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
And we had this baby and I just worked my off.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
I mean, I went from one hundred and seventy pounds
so I graduated from college, to one hundred and thirty
five pounds. I remember that when we found out she
was pregnant, we had no insurance or anything, and it
was like a welfare baby.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
We couldn't afford it.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
And they sat me down and I said, I'm not
taking any welfare. I was very proud they went. The
state worker was just probably sick of working with people
like me. He's like, shut up, she needs attrition for
that baby. And he gave me like a hundred dollars
to go buy some groceries, and then he goes, what
(11:44):
are you gonna do with the rest of your life?
And I was like, I'm graduating from college in like
a month.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Just shook his head, walked away from me, and I said.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
I will never take welfare money again. And that was
in itself a sin right the way.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
I was thinking it was cause of pride.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
I didn't, by the way, but man, I worked my
off to make sure that that never happened.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
But I'm glad it did.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
It gave me an appreciation when I see people down
on your lock and I am not judging them.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
So that was like a wake up call for me.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
But watching Fran live her Catholic faith, it was like
she was never mad.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
She took care of that baby.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Fran kept us all buoyant until I kind of got
my crap together. And it wasn't that I was out
with my friends. I wasn't drinking all the time. Thank
god I didn't have those things on me. It was
more I was just more greedy about my own life,
like poor me, Like how hard my life is with
these kids. It's like, dude, you brought it on, you know.
And Fran didn't have to take this, by the way,
(12:42):
she decided to have the baby and take.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Your useless butt when you were in college.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
I mean god, I really thought success was freedom and
the only way to freedom is money. I will never
say that we were poor. Poor is when you have
no hope. We were broke.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Maybe I dipped my toe into being.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Poor, because there was times I felt like I was
losing the hope. But I don't know, I just there
was something deep inside of me. I was like, I
don't want to be like this. How do I get there? Well,
I just got to make a lot of money, you know.
So we worked really hard and two minute truck continued
to grow and it took a bump and pay and
I thought.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Man, I finally made it.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
That's why I went out and I leased Audi A
four because I was like, you know, it is a
sophisticated European vehicle. I went out and I got a
Frank Sinatra CD to play in.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
It isn't that horrible? I mean the funny part. I
ended up kind of liking them. And then I thought
that successful guys drank scotch.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
So I went out and bought a bottle on Johnny
Walker Black and I want to try in a country
club to you know, rubb elbows.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
With other rich guys tell war stories. I mean, seriously,
I did all this. It literally happened like that.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
So I had my first scotch on the rocks and
the cigar, and man almost puked when I drank that scotch.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
It was whoa. I mean, I was afraid to pour
it on the grass. It'll burn my grass.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
But I finished my cigar and I thought, well, how
are you supposed to feel? I don't know, maybe this
is something you have to grow into.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
I don't know. I'd finish my cigar and I thought
about that.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
It was at that point it was like, within a
couple of days that I slipped into depression, and it
was it was horrible. You know, I wouldn't wish that
on anybody. I went to go see a doctor. I went, well, cheez,
I probably have cancer. Now you know, something's wrong with me,
you know, my life is perfect, so that something's wrong
with me. And the doctor went, no, you're just depressed,
(14:45):
and he just simply wrote me a prescription for depression,
like it was like nothing. And I looked at that thing.
I got my car and I just went, no, I'm
gonna put that in my wallet. I'm not gonna take
this pill. And again, I don't wanna be little depression.
But for me, I was like no, I was not
depressed up until like now, and it was bad. I
mean I wasn't gonna kill myself, but if I got
(15:06):
hit by a bus, it wouldn't have bothered me. I'm
not gonna wrap my arms around this. And I remember
my wife just going like, what is the deal. I mean,
we're doing really good. She goes, why don't you work
out again? So I got my workout bench to work
out and I just I literally just broke down. And
I'm not talking about man pouting here. I'm talking about sobbing.
(15:27):
I was just like, God, what is going on here?
You have given me more than everything I've asked for,
But why am I feeling like this?
Speaker 2 (15:37):
It was all about being validated.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Was so important to me. It was very important what
people felt about me. I did believe in God, but
I didn't think he was a loving God. I thought
it was more of an angry God that you gotta
work hard, you know, the harder you worked, and more,
I'll love you, and kind of thing. Do right, treat
people good, they'll treat you good. It's like, man, I
can play that game. I'll work hard, it'll be nice
(15:59):
to be ill, throw money in the you know, in
the pod at Christmas time, you know why they're ringing
the bell. I'll do all that stuff. So on the
news there was a story about the Left Behind.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Series of books.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
It's like Revelation, and I was always kind of into that.
So I started reading into these books about how what
if Jesus came back in this lifetime and he took
back all the Christians and left behind all the non Christians.
And I went, oh, man, I'd go for sure he'd
take me up, because I'm like the man. I mean,
I'd give money to all this stuff. And they would
(16:33):
refer to the Bible. So I would open up the
Bible and it's like, well, okay, it kind of says that.
It says that and there in this and I thought,
you know, you need to start reading this Bible.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
And then I.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Realized, man, Brig, you have no relationship with Christ at all.
And so I really started taking a look at how
trying to validate myself with God was totally useless. You know,
we can't do anything, We can't do any good things
that the wind God's favor. Otherwise we would be Christ.
(17:02):
And that's when I realized I need a relationship with Him.
And then while all this is going on, all this
business chaos is going on, I thought I'm gonna start
praying on the business too.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
And you're listening to Brig Sorber tell one heck of
a personal story, and we love these kinds of stories
because well, he's not doing a lot of self flattery here.
He married a way above his pay grade, beautiful woman
who let him know she was pregnant and she was
having the baby with him or without, and that as
a threat, just as a statement of fact. And he
(17:38):
was dragged along by her into manhood and adulthood, but
not without an encounter with the Lord. He bound money.
But something was missing when we come back more of
Brig Sorber's story here on our American story, and we
(18:08):
returned to our American Stories and the final portion of
our story with Briggsor were part of the founding family
of two men in a truck, the world's largest franchise
moving company. When we last left off, Brigg was telling
us about how he met his wife friend and the
struggles he had as a young father and later a
(18:28):
wealthy man. It was because of these struggles that he
turned to God, a decision that would benefit him greatly
during the two thousand and eight recession, a dark time
for his company. Let's return to the story here again
is brig.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
We were so broken.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Our website was so bad that we found out that
we had an eighty percent drop off rate. Eighty percent
of the customers using the website got so frustrated they
left it. And the two years before that, we won
the JD Power Associates for Customer Satisfaction, and we had
those trophies proudly displayed.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
In our corporate front foyer.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
And when all those things went down, I went put
those damn things in the closet.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
They went why, and I went, because we suck.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
But there was so much business it heights the brokenness.
And you gotta understand, the recession really started with the
collapse of the mortgage industry. Well, when the mortgage industry collapses,
people can't get money, they can't buy houses. Well, the
next thing people will say, well, people are losing their houses,
so they were calling you to move them. Well, when
people lose their houses, they can't afford a mover. So
it cut us down dramatically. We were hemorrhaging cash and
(19:39):
I'm looking around and going like, oh my gosh, what
are we gonna do here?
Speaker 2 (19:44):
We had about seventy eight employees. We went down to
about fifty two.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Most of the people there were really really working hard,
and there were some people that were doing nothing. They
were coming in here literally doing nothing. I prayed about
these things, Lord, what are we gonna do with your
business today?
Speaker 2 (20:01):
What are we gonna do with your business today?
Speaker 3 (20:03):
We did have three million dollars in a money market
I was told it was a money market account. It
was actually a bond securities account. I went, all right, Lord,
what are we gonna do today? Although I had the
three million in the back of my mind, Well, I
can buy new equipment.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
I can do this. I can do this cause I
have three million dollars.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
A couple of days later, the banker took me out
to lunch and said, hey, brig, well just want to
know all the things going. I said, pretty good, we're
gonna need to get at that three million. He's like, fantastic.
A week later he calls me out and he goes,
I got some bad news. I said, let's say that,
and he goes, well, that bond security account actually takes
there's an auction.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
You have to auction those things to get to those things.
The auction collapsed this.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Week, and so you may never see that three million
dollars again. And I had a few words of the
banker cause I found out later. I said, well, you
were having this lunch talking about your golf game. There
was other bankers that were pulling their people out of
this account. He's like, I just don't want to tell.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
You, Brigg. So I actually want to shut the door.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
And I just cracking up. I'm going, okay, God, now
you have my attention.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Because it was like, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Is like, because I could see God working in the business,
and I went, this is awesome.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
I mean, now I've got nothing. I've got I had
a half a million dollars in cash and that was it.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
And I was in the process of letting these people go,
and I'm praying over them, and then I get this
feeling God's going like a bridge.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
You got to take care of these people you're letting go.
Remember they didn't cheat or steal from you. A couple
of them.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Weren't doing anything, but the majority of them were working
really hard. It's a recession and you're letting them go.
You need to severance the It's like, all right, how
much money have I got five hundred thousand. So I
severunced out half of the five hundred thousand dollars right
during the recession, so we had nothing. But I did
(21:49):
that because I knew it was the right thing to do,
and it was on my heart and I knew enough.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
I know God's voice when I hear it, I know it,
and I know that this was right.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
And I said, this is God's business. And people thought
I was crazy and.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
It was just like.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
So then I brought in a couple outside executives because
I needed help right away. Well, the first thing is
the outside executives is they said, let's take a look
at all the agreements.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Too many truck's hand. They were appalled at a.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Lot of these agreements. They go, we are getting hosed
here big time. I went, here's the deal. I go
rewrite the ones that we can rewrite, get out of
the ones that we can get out of. But we're
doing nothing illegally. And they're like, I went, no, we
stay above board. If we cheat, we are immediately looking
at God and saying, you won't take care of me. Lord,
I'm gonna choose to cheat because you're not capable of
(22:41):
taking care of us. It's that simple. So no one
of this was this lady. She was like an angry lady,
but she was damn good.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
She got a hold of some of the vendors. They
all know who she is.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
She said, Bill, this is so and so, Hey were
you at two minut of a truck.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
They get really quiet and she goes, you know, we're
not going to do this anymore.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
And he goes, but I figured somebody's going to come around,
and they signed it. We saved without breaking any rules.
We saved about four hundred thousand dollars in bad contracts
in about two months, which more than offset what I severance.
(23:28):
We got a hold of the Attorney general at Mike
Cox at the time, and we talked to him about
what happened with.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
This bound security thing. He's like, give me that, and.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
He made a couple of phone calls, and the bank
called up and said, we want to come over.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
We got balloons, we got the cake, and we have
a check to give you back for your money. And said,
you can stick your balloons in your cake. Just bring
a check over. It's not your money. That's God working
in the business. God made us more than a whole
in that whole thing. When all that stuff was going down,
(24:02):
and I let a lot of those employees go.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
I brought the departments in and man, some of these
younger employees were in tears. It was like, look, there's
a lot of barrels that we're gonna cut off this
boat and throw in the ocean, things that we don't need.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Then we're gonna save this company.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
And I stole this line says ships are safe in port,
but that's not what ships were built for. This two
minute truck boat has been important long enough. And I
know we're broken, but we're going out in deep blue
water right now because we are going to die here.
I know a lot of you been working for two
minute truck. You work for a moving company. You didn't
sign up for this adventure. But guess what, you're in it.
(24:42):
Some of you will survive it and some of you won't.
Some of you will excel in it and become great.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
But we will see what happens.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
He with the people I had left, So you know,
the fancy Christmas parties they're over. The big buses to
the Detroit Tiger games are over. And I had a
couple of employees coming my office and just go, you
were destroying the culture. And I went, no, I'm keeping
our company. Do you want to send your kids to college?
Do you want to buy a cottage someday and retire
(25:10):
and some really cool thing? These are the things that
we can work for. But we got to cut this
stuff out. We have to get to what we're good at.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
And they said okay.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
And the beautiful thing was that year we had enough
money to bonus employees during recession, even when we lost money.
I remember coming in right before Christmas and I had
a stack of bonus checks on my desk and I'm
telling you right now, tears came out of my eyes
(25:38):
and hit those checks and it was just like, we
have an awesome God.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
I can't believe this.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
And I just prayed over those checks and thank God
for them to this day.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Our CEO now he hands out the checks. He's also
a strong Catholic, and I told him.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Pray over those checks. Never never take those things. Do
I have a few employees here that take them for granted. Yeah,
it's human nature, right, But I had employees coming in that.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
First year in tears because they got these checks. We're
just happy to have a job. So I'm just happy
to have you guys in this adventure.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Those checks have gotten bigger, We've got a lot more
people to distribute them, but they're a constant reminder of
the blessings when we listen to God into our business
and through over halfway through the recession, up until now,
we've had one hundred and seven months of month over
month growth.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
We haven't stopped.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
We're still growing from that, from doing these things and
from praying over the business.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
And a terrific job on the production editing and storytelling
by our own Monty Montgomery, And a special thanks to
Brig Sorber, who shared with us the ups and downs
of his life and was very candid about the things
he did wrong. The thing he wasn't prepared for, and
in the end, his own personal shortcomings and how his
(27:06):
reliance on God got him through his toughest times. And boy,
that recession of two thousand and eight was the big
one for two men in a truck and for himself personally,
the story of so much more, the American dream, success
and what success really means. Here on our American stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Up next a story from Brig Sorber, part of the
founding family of Michigan's owned two men in a truck
moving company. Let's get into the story.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Here's Brig.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
My first job was raking leaves when I was eight.
I knocked on a door and these two guys open
the door and they're looking at me. They go, what
do you want? I said, I can I rake your
front yard for a dollar?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
He goes, yeah, go ahead. I was just jacked, you know.
I was going to make a dollar. This is my
first job.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
And these guys had a car backed in and they
were moving stuff out of the house and then they took.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Off and said they'd be back, and I said, okay.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
So I kept breaking leaves and this another car pulls
up and he looks at his house, comes running out
and he goes, who the hell are you? And I go,
I'm raking your leaves. I The guy said, I can
break the leaves. What guy said, he you can break
the leaves? And I went the guy that was moving
stuff out of your house, he was being robbed and
(01:25):
I didn't know it, and so the cops came and
they were asking me questions.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I'm going, what is going on? Well, then the.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Cops left, took the report, and then I finished and
I knocked on the door and the guy answers the
door and he goes, what do you want? I went,
I want my dollar for raking your leaves. He goes,
for God's sake.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
M I just got robbed.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
I mean, I'm eight here, right, So the guy gives
me a buck and I just remember going home like
not thinking anything of it, and I told my mom
the story and she was like shocked.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
So that's how my working life started. Work was always
part of what us kids did.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Me and my buddies started mowing lawns. There weren't those
landscapers back then. It was just neighborhood boys cutting grass.
And so we just opened up the white pages and
I remember my buddy, uh Tim Valmer and I we
went through and said we needed to mow ten lawns
and then if we can mow ten lawns, two lawns
a day Monday through Friday, and then we can spend
the rest of the time at the beach. It's like,
(02:28):
let's do it. And it was uncanny, but everyone gonna call.
They went, well sure, I was.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Like, wow, this is easy.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
So we would haul our lawnmowers behind our bikes and
we had a couple horrendous wipeouts doing that. But a
lot of people looked at us and went like, man,
you guys are like going after it. And so we
loved being our own boss. I like me and my own.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Guy and bought us sixty six Ford pickup truck.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
From Michigan State University. It was an old agricultural truck,
just a beat her three on the tree, shifting us
up on the column. We made a lot of money
with that truck. My brother and I started getting into
a moving just trash and brush around. And then my
mom started a This is after she divorced. She started
another business. She would go to estate auctions and she
(03:20):
would buy furniture and then haul it to this little
store that she leased out, clean it out up and
resell it.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
And so she bought this.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Whole truck for for about three hundred dollars, like a
fifteen foot step van instead of just a pickup truck
and hold us, you know, if you want to use
after your moving go ahead, and that's what really got
us into moving like apartments and small homes. And when
John and I started the business, it was called Men
at Work Movers, and underneath that it said two men
in a truck twenty five bucks an hour.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
And then my mom drew on a napkin.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
A cartoon truck with two stick men in it, and
that's where our logo came from. Her logo to this
day is a drawing that my mom made on a napkin,
and she said, why don't you drop men at work
moms and just call yourselves what you are, two men
in a truck. So that's where our name came from.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
We were small guys.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I was probably five seven and maybe a buck forty.
We'd show up at someone's house and I can't tell
you how many times I'd get this. People would look
at me and their shoulders would slump and it's like, oh.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Crap, here we go again. Is there a problem, ma'am?
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Well, we were expecting a couple of scraping lads and
we're expecting two men.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Not two boys.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
It's like, I totally understand. I'll tell you what. Let
us work for you for fifteen minutes and if it
doesn't work out, we'll call the office and get a
couple bigger guys.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Here. Is that fair? Yeah, that'd be fair.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
And so John and I would go downstairs and we
would move the upright freezer.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
That's the thing that nobody can move. And then they
would just go like, we are so sorry. Usually been
a good tip.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
The funny part was we had no extra guys, we
had no office, so it was so like, you know,
we're walking a wire without a safety net there. But
John and I were both pleasers, and this industry was
very easy to please him.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
People would just do backflips if we even showed up.
John and I.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
This was beer and book money in that order, and
we were drinking green bottle beer as opposed to our
other guys drinking like the cheap beer.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
But it really.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Became because it didn't make any money, I mean for kids.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
For beer and book money, it was fine.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
But my mom loved it, and my mom quit her
job at the State of Michigan. She took all of
her qualified retirement money and cashed it all in. People
were screaming at her. Her own mother, my grandma was
just going, what are you doing the first two years
when she quit her job, she didn't pay herself anything
and she just lived off that qualified money and Ramen
(05:53):
noodles for two years.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
And if she was.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Sitting here in this room, she'd tell you it was
the happiest days of her life. She's crazy, but she
loved building the business.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
She finally made a profit her third year.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
I think she made a thousand dollars and she wasn't
sure how to do the taxes, cause she was like,
I've never had a profit, so it was the sweetest thing.
She wrote ten checks for one hundred dollars and gave
it to nonprofits in Lancing, and that got back to
the Chamber of Commerce and some other business people and
they went, who is this lady. It was at that
(06:29):
time that Lancing wrapped its arms around two minute truck
and went, this is our moving company, which was the
coolest thing. And Michigan State University had a bunch of
small businesses come in to talk to their business school,
and she went in there. My mom was very shy,
but God bless her, she got through it. And this
lady came to her and said, did you ever consider franchising?
(06:50):
My mom goes who would buy it moving franchise And
she goes, well, I'm a pet nanny.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
I take care of people's pets.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
I franchise, so I think if I could, you can,
And my mom said, let's do it. From my mom
once you started franchising two minute truck forty nine years old,
no college education, pretty amazing.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
And you've been listening to Brigsorber tell the story of
two men in a truck. When we come back more
a Brig and his remarkable life story here on our
American Stories. Lee hbib here, and I'm inviting you to
help our American Stories celebrate this country's two hundred and
(07:35):
fiftieth birthday coming soon. If you want to help inspire
countless others to love America like we do, and want
to help us bring the inspiring and important stories told
here about a good and beautiful country, please consider making
a tax deductible donation to our American Stories. Go to
Ouramerican Stories dot com and click the donate button. Any
amount helps go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and give.
(08:09):
And we returned to our American Stories and with Brig Sorber,
He's part of the founding family behind two Men in
a truck, the largest franchised moving company in the world,
started in large measure by his mother. She had no
college education and no knowledge of the moving industry when
she poured her retirement money into the young business. Brig
(08:30):
now shares with us the story of how he met
his wife, Frand.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
I was on Northern Michigan's rugby team. We were having
a party. We needed hot dogs, and the party that
we were at was kind of like in the student ghetto.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
So there was like this random shopping cart on the
side of the road, and so Fran was walking by
with a couple of her friends, and we just went,
you want to go.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
You want to cookout? And they're like, okay.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
So me and my buddy picked up Fran and we
put her probably get arrested for this now, put her
in the shopping cart and just started pushing her down
the road all the way to the Blue Link party
store to get hot dogs. And then I got to
know Fran at this party, and my roommates were like, Brig,
we gotta go, we gotta go, We gotta get back.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
To the house.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
And so they they picked me up and threw me
in the car like college guys do. And I unrolled
the window and I yelled, Fran. She looked and I went,
I'm gonna marry you someday.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
And she was like that guy's drunk.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
And I didn't see her for a couple months and
I saw her at a party and we went out
that night and we just started dating. And I loved
her because she was very independent. She paid for her
own apartment, she paid for.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Her own school.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
She was the only one out of the fourteen kids
that went to college. She would study in the only
bathroom that they had. She'd flip the toilet seat down,
sit on nat and put the clothes hamper there as
a desk at night when all the lights around. She'd
study in high school because she wanted to go to college.
I was a kid that by the time I went
to school, my parents would be perceived as upper middle class.
(10:09):
So a lot of the things that she worked hard
on I took for granted.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
I went, that's really cool that she does that.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
I ended up getting Fran pregnant and I don't mind
sharing this. And I asked her if I could share this,
and she said, as long as.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
That helps people. Yeah, I don't like you're running around,
but yeah, I guess.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
So when we were younger, we wouldn't share this, but
now we share it because when she told me, she went,
I'm having this baby. You don't have to marry me.
I'm going to have this baby. And I just went,
that is so classic, Fran. I just fell in love
with her more and I went, well, come on, Fran,
we'd probably get married anyway, which we probably.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
I really truly feel we would have.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
And she's like, well yeah, and I said, well let's
get married. Little did I know, I'm thinking I'm doing
her a favor. She took on like two babies.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
You know.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
I mean I was like a kid, and and she
really kept our family buoyant because I wasn't. I'd go
to church with there on occasion at college, but I
didn't think anything of it, you know.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
And we had this baby and I just worked my off.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
I mean, I went from one hundred and seventy pounds
so I graduated from college, to one hundred and thirty
five pounds. I remember that when we found out she
was pregnant, we had no insurance or anything, and it
was like a welfare baby.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
We couldn't afford it.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
And they sat me down and I said, I'm not
taking any welfare. I was very proud they went. The
state worker was just probably sick of working with people
like me. He's like, shut up, she needs attrition for
that baby. And he gave me like a hundred dollars
to go buy some groceries, and then he goes, what
(11:44):
are you gonna do with the rest of your life?
And I was like, I'm graduating from college in like
a month.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Just shook his head, walked away from me, and I said.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
I will never take welfare money again. And that was
in itself a sin right the way.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
I was thinking it was cause of pride.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
I didn't, by the way, but man, I worked my
off to make sure that that never happened.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
But I'm glad it did.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
It gave me an appreciation when I see people down
on your lock and I am not judging them.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
So that was like a wake up call for me.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
But watching Fran live her Catholic faith, it was like
she was never mad.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
She took care of that baby.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Fran kept us all buoyant until I kind of got
my crap together. And it wasn't that I was out
with my friends. I wasn't drinking all the time. Thank
god I didn't have those things on me. It was
more I was just more greedy about my own life,
like poor me, Like how hard my life is with
these kids. It's like, dude, you brought it on, you know.
And Fran didn't have to take this, by the way,
(12:42):
she decided to have the baby and take.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Your useless butt when you were in college.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
I mean god, I really thought success was freedom and
the only way to freedom is money. I will never
say that we were poor. Poor is when you have
no hope. We were broke.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Maybe I dipped my toe into being.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Poor, because there was times I felt like I was
losing the hope. But I don't know, I just there
was something deep inside of me. I was like, I
don't want to be like this. How do I get there? Well,
I just got to make a lot of money, you know.
So we worked really hard and two minute truck continued
to grow and it took a bump and pay and
I thought.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Man, I finally made it.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
That's why I went out and I leased Audi A
four because I was like, you know, it is a
sophisticated European vehicle. I went out and I got a
Frank Sinatra CD to play in.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
It isn't that horrible? I mean the funny part. I
ended up kind of liking them. And then I thought
that successful guys drank scotch.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
So I went out and bought a bottle on Johnny
Walker Black and I want to try in a country
club to you know, rubb elbows.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
With other rich guys tell war stories. I mean, seriously,
I did all this. It literally happened like that.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
So I had my first scotch on the rocks and
the cigar, and man almost puked when I drank that scotch.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
It was whoa. I mean, I was afraid to pour
it on the grass. It'll burn my grass.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
But I finished my cigar and I thought, well, how
are you supposed to feel? I don't know, maybe this
is something you have to grow into.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
I don't know. I'd finish my cigar and I thought
about that.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
It was at that point it was like, within a
couple of days that I slipped into depression, and it
was it was horrible. You know, I wouldn't wish that
on anybody. I went to go see a doctor. I went, well, cheez,
I probably have cancer. Now you know, something's wrong with me,
you know, my life is perfect, so that something's wrong
with me. And the doctor went, no, you're just depressed,
(14:45):
and he just simply wrote me a prescription for depression,
like it was like nothing. And I looked at that thing.
I got my car and I just went, no, I'm
gonna put that in my wallet. I'm not gonna take
this pill. And again, I don't wanna be little depression.
But for me, I was like no, I was not
depressed up until like now, and it was bad. I
mean I wasn't gonna kill myself, but if I got
(15:06):
hit by a bus, it wouldn't have bothered me. I'm
not gonna wrap my arms around this. And I remember
my wife just going like, what is the deal. I mean,
we're doing really good. She goes, why don't you work
out again? So I got my workout bench to work
out and I just I literally just broke down. And
I'm not talking about man pouting here. I'm talking about sobbing.
(15:27):
I was just like, God, what is going on here?
You have given me more than everything I've asked for,
But why am I feeling like this?
Speaker 2 (15:37):
It was all about being validated.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Was so important to me. It was very important what
people felt about me. I did believe in God, but
I didn't think he was a loving God. I thought
it was more of an angry God that you gotta
work hard, you know, the harder you worked, and more,
I'll love you, and kind of thing. Do right, treat
people good, they'll treat you good. It's like, man, I
can play that game. I'll work hard, it'll be nice
(15:59):
to be ill, throw money in the you know, in
the pod at Christmas time, you know why they're ringing
the bell. I'll do all that stuff. So on the
news there was a story about the Left Behind.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Series of books.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
It's like Revelation, and I was always kind of into that.
So I started reading into these books about how what
if Jesus came back in this lifetime and he took
back all the Christians and left behind all the non Christians.
And I went, oh, man, I'd go for sure he'd
take me up, because I'm like the man. I mean,
I'd give money to all this stuff. And they would
(16:33):
refer to the Bible. So I would open up the
Bible and it's like, well, okay, it kind of says that.
It says that and there in this and I thought,
you know, you need to start reading this Bible.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
And then I.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Realized, man, Brig, you have no relationship with Christ at all.
And so I really started taking a look at how
trying to validate myself with God was totally useless. You know,
we can't do anything, We can't do any good things
that the wind God's favor. Otherwise we would be Christ.
(17:02):
And that's when I realized I need a relationship with Him.
And then while all this is going on, all this
business chaos is going on, I thought I'm gonna start
praying on the business too.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
And you're listening to Brig Sorber tell one heck of
a personal story, and we love these kinds of stories
because well, he's not doing a lot of self flattery here.
He married a way above his pay grade, beautiful woman
who let him know she was pregnant and she was
having the baby with him or without, and that as
a threat, just as a statement of fact. And he
(17:38):
was dragged along by her into manhood and adulthood, but
not without an encounter with the Lord. He bound money.
But something was missing when we come back more of
Brig Sorber's story here on our American story, and we
(18:08):
returned to our American Stories and the final portion of
our story with Briggsor were part of the founding family
of two men in a truck, the world's largest franchise
moving company. When we last left off, Brigg was telling
us about how he met his wife friend and the
struggles he had as a young father and later a
(18:28):
wealthy man. It was because of these struggles that he
turned to God, a decision that would benefit him greatly
during the two thousand and eight recession, a dark time
for his company. Let's return to the story here again
is brig.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
We were so broken.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Our website was so bad that we found out that
we had an eighty percent drop off rate. Eighty percent
of the customers using the website got so frustrated they
left it. And the two years before that, we won
the JD Power Associates for Customer Satisfaction, and we had
those trophies proudly displayed.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
In our corporate front foyer.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
And when all those things went down, I went put
those damn things in the closet.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
They went why, and I went, because we suck.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
But there was so much business it heights the brokenness.
And you gotta understand, the recession really started with the
collapse of the mortgage industry. Well, when the mortgage industry collapses,
people can't get money, they can't buy houses. Well, the
next thing people will say, well, people are losing their houses,
so they were calling you to move them. Well, when
people lose their houses, they can't afford a mover. So
it cut us down dramatically. We were hemorrhaging cash and
(19:39):
I'm looking around and going like, oh my gosh, what
are we gonna do here?
Speaker 2 (19:44):
We had about seventy eight employees. We went down to
about fifty two.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Most of the people there were really really working hard,
and there were some people that were doing nothing. They
were coming in here literally doing nothing. I prayed about
these things, Lord, what are we gonna do with your
business today?
Speaker 2 (20:01):
What are we gonna do with your business today?
Speaker 3 (20:03):
We did have three million dollars in a money market
I was told it was a money market account. It
was actually a bond securities account. I went, all right, Lord,
what are we gonna do today? Although I had the
three million in the back of my mind, Well, I
can buy new equipment.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
I can do this. I can do this cause I
have three million dollars.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
A couple of days later, the banker took me out
to lunch and said, hey, brig, well just want to
know all the things going. I said, pretty good, we're
gonna need to get at that three million. He's like, fantastic.
A week later he calls me out and he goes,
I got some bad news. I said, let's say that,
and he goes, well, that bond security account actually takes
there's an auction.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
You have to auction those things to get to those things.
The auction collapsed this.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Week, and so you may never see that three million
dollars again. And I had a few words of the
banker cause I found out later. I said, well, you
were having this lunch talking about your golf game. There
was other bankers that were pulling their people out of
this account. He's like, I just don't want to tell.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
You, Brigg. So I actually want to shut the door.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
And I just cracking up. I'm going, okay, God, now
you have my attention.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Because it was like, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Is like, because I could see God working in the business,
and I went, this is awesome.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
I mean, now I've got nothing. I've got I had
a half a million dollars in cash and that was it.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
And I was in the process of letting these people go,
and I'm praying over them, and then I get this
feeling God's going like a bridge.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
You got to take care of these people you're letting go.
Remember they didn't cheat or steal from you. A couple
of them.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Weren't doing anything, but the majority of them were working
really hard. It's a recession and you're letting them go.
You need to severance the It's like, all right, how
much money have I got five hundred thousand. So I
severunced out half of the five hundred thousand dollars right
during the recession, so we had nothing. But I did
(21:49):
that because I knew it was the right thing to do,
and it was on my heart and I knew enough.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
I know God's voice when I hear it, I know it,
and I know that this was right.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
And I said, this is God's business. And people thought
I was crazy and.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
It was just like.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
So then I brought in a couple outside executives because
I needed help right away. Well, the first thing is
the outside executives is they said, let's take a look
at all the agreements.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Too many truck's hand. They were appalled at a.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Lot of these agreements. They go, we are getting hosed
here big time. I went, here's the deal. I go
rewrite the ones that we can rewrite, get out of
the ones that we can get out of. But we're
doing nothing illegally. And they're like, I went, no, we
stay above board. If we cheat, we are immediately looking
at God and saying, you won't take care of me. Lord,
I'm gonna choose to cheat because you're not capable of
(22:41):
taking care of us. It's that simple. So no one
of this was this lady. She was like an angry lady,
but she was damn good.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
She got a hold of some of the vendors. They
all know who she is.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
She said, Bill, this is so and so, Hey were
you at two minut of a truck.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
They get really quiet and she goes, you know, we're
not going to do this anymore.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
And he goes, but I figured somebody's going to come around,
and they signed it. We saved without breaking any rules.
We saved about four hundred thousand dollars in bad contracts
in about two months, which more than offset what I severance.
(23:28):
We got a hold of the Attorney general at Mike
Cox at the time, and we talked to him about
what happened with.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
This bound security thing. He's like, give me that, and.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
He made a couple of phone calls, and the bank
called up and said, we want to come over.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
We got balloons, we got the cake, and we have
a check to give you back for your money. And said,
you can stick your balloons in your cake. Just bring
a check over. It's not your money. That's God working
in the business. God made us more than a whole
in that whole thing. When all that stuff was going down,
(24:02):
and I let a lot of those employees go.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
I brought the departments in and man, some of these
younger employees were in tears. It was like, look, there's
a lot of barrels that we're gonna cut off this
boat and throw in the ocean, things that we don't need.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Then we're gonna save this company.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
And I stole this line says ships are safe in port,
but that's not what ships were built for. This two
minute truck boat has been important long enough. And I
know we're broken, but we're going out in deep blue
water right now because we are going to die here.
I know a lot of you been working for two
minute truck. You work for a moving company. You didn't
sign up for this adventure. But guess what, you're in it.
(24:42):
Some of you will survive it and some of you won't.
Some of you will excel in it and become great.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
But we will see what happens.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
He with the people I had left, So you know,
the fancy Christmas parties they're over. The big buses to
the Detroit Tiger games are over. And I had a
couple of employees coming my office and just go, you
were destroying the culture. And I went, no, I'm keeping
our company. Do you want to send your kids to college?
Do you want to buy a cottage someday and retire
(25:10):
and some really cool thing? These are the things that
we can work for. But we got to cut this
stuff out. We have to get to what we're good at.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
And they said okay.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
And the beautiful thing was that year we had enough
money to bonus employees during recession, even when we lost money.
I remember coming in right before Christmas and I had
a stack of bonus checks on my desk and I'm
telling you right now, tears came out of my eyes
(25:38):
and hit those checks and it was just like, we
have an awesome God.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
I can't believe this.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
And I just prayed over those checks and thank God
for them to this day.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Our CEO now he hands out the checks. He's also
a strong Catholic, and I told him.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Pray over those checks. Never never take those things. Do
I have a few employees here that take them for granted. Yeah,
it's human nature, right, But I had employees coming in that.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
First year in tears because they got these checks. We're
just happy to have a job. So I'm just happy
to have you guys in this adventure.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Those checks have gotten bigger, We've got a lot more
people to distribute them, but they're a constant reminder of
the blessings when we listen to God into our business
and through over halfway through the recession, up until now,
we've had one hundred and seven months of month over
month growth.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
We haven't stopped.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
We're still growing from that, from doing these things and
from praying over the business.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
And a terrific job on the production editing and storytelling
by our own Monty Montgomery, And a special thanks to
Brig Sorber, who shared with us the ups and downs
of his life and was very candid about the things
he did wrong. The thing he wasn't prepared for, and
in the end, his own personal shortcomings and how his
(27:06):
reliance on God got him through his toughest times. And boy,
that recession of two thousand and eight was the big
one for two men in a truck and for himself personally,
the story of so much more, the American dream, success
and what success really means. Here on our American stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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