August 29, 2024 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Brig Sorber tells the story of Two Men in a Truck—and his remarkable life.
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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, Can I rake your front
yard for a dollar? He goes, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
They took 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. The guy said, I can break
the leaves. What guy said, he you can break the leaves?
And I went the guy was moving stuff out of
your house. He was being robbed and I didn't know it,
(01:26):
and so the cops came and they were asking me questions.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
I'm going, what is going on?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
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 breaking your leaves. He goes,
for God's sake, M I just got robbed. 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
(01:54):
and she was like shocked.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
So that's how my working life started.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Work was always part of what us kids did. 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,
said we need to mow ten lawns. And then if
we can mow ten lawns, two lawns a day, Monday
(02:25):
through Friday, and then we can spend the rest of
the time at the beach.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
It's like, let's do it. And it was uncanny, but
everyone gonna call. They went, well sure, I was 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.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
And so we loved being our own boss. I like
me and my own 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.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
She leased out, clean it out up and resell it.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
And so she bought this whole truck for for about
three hundred dollars, like a fifteen foot step van instead
of just a pickup truck.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
It would hold us.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
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. And then my mom drew
on a napkin a cartoon truck with two stick men
in it, and that's where our logo came from. Her
(03:55):
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 movers 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 4 (04:09):
I was probably five seven and of maybe a buck forty.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
We'd show up.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
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 crap, here
we go again.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
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, not two boys. It's like, I
totally understand, I sh 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. That's the thing that nobody
can move. And then they would just go like, we
are so sorry. Usually been a good tip. 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
(05:03):
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.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
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.
For beer and book money, it was fine. 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?
Speaker 2 (05:45):
The first two years.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
When she quit her job, she didn't pay herself anything
and she just lived off that qualified money and Ramen
noodles for two years. And she was 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 4 (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 a 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 like wrapped its arms around two minute
track 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.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
She went in there.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
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? My mom goes, who would
buy it? Moving franchise, and she goes, well, I'm a
pet nanny. I take care of people's pets. 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
(07:07):
college education, pretty amazing.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
And you've been listening to Brig Sorber 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. This is Lee Habib, host of Our
American Stories, the show where America is the star and
(07:35):
the American people, and we do it all from the
heart of the South Oxford, Mississippi. But we truly can't
do this show without you. Our shows will always be
free to listen to, but they're not free to make.
If you love what you hear, consider making a tax
deductible donation to our American Stories. Go to our American
Stories dot com, give a little, give a lot. That's
(07:56):
our American Stories dot com. 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
(08:17):
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 now shares with us
the story of how he met his wife Fran.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
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 4 (08:56):
Do you want to cookout?
Speaker 2 (08:57):
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
to the house. And so they they picked me up
(09:21):
and threw me in the car like college guys do,
and I unrolled the window and I yelled, Fran.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
She looked and I went, I'm gonna marry you someday,
and she was like that guy's drunk, and uh.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
And I loved her because she was very independent.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
She paid for her own apartment, she paid for her
own school. 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
(10:04):
I went to school, my parents would be perceived as
upper middle class. So a lot of the things that
she worked hard on I took for granted. I went,
that's really cool that she does that. I ended up
getting Fran pregnant and I don't mind sharing this. I
asked her if I could share this, and she said,
as long as it helps people. Yeah, I don't like
(10:25):
you're running around, but yeah, I guess 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, I really truly feel we
(10:46):
would have. 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,
you know.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
I mean I was like a.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Kid, and and she really kept our family buoyant because
I wasn't. I'd go to church with her 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 a hundred and seventy pounds
so I graduated from college, to a hundred and thirty
five pounds. I remember that when we found out she
was pregnant, we had no insurance or anything, and uh,
it was like a welfare baby. We couldn't afford it.
And they sat me down and I said I'm not
taking any welfare. I was very proud, and they went.
The state worker was just, uh, probably sick of working
(11:33):
with people like me.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
M He's like, shut up, she needs attrition for that baby.
And uh. He gave me like a hundred.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Dollars to go buy some groceries.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
And then he f f goes, what 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.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Away from me, and I said, I will never take
welfare money again. And that was in itself a sin
right the way I was thinking it was cause of pride.
I did, 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 their 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 your useless
butt when you were in college. I mean god, I
really thought success was freedom and the only way to
freedom was money. I will never say that we were poor.
(13:06):
Poor is when you have no hope. We were broke.
Speaker 4 (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, man, I finally made it.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
That's why I went out and I leased at Audi.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
A four cause I was like, you know, it is
a sophisticated European vehicle. I went out and I got
a Frank Sinatra CD to play in it isn't that horrible?
Speaker 2 (13:41):
I mean the funny part.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
I ended up kind of liking them.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
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, rub elbows with other rich guys
tell war stories. I mean, seriously, I did all this.
It literally happened like that. So I had my first
scotch on the racks and the cigar, and man, it's
almost puked. When I drank that scotch.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
It was whoa.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
I mean, I was afraid to pour it on the grass.
That'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 finished 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.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
And it was it was horrible.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
You know, I wouldn't wish that on anybody. And I
went to go see a doctor. I went, well, geez,
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,
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
(14:54):
gonna put that.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
In my wallet.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
I'm not gonna take this pill. And again, I don't
wanna be little depression. But for me, he 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 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,
(15:18):
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. 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?
It was all about being validated was so important to me.
(15:39):
It was very important what people felt about me.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
I did believe in God, but I didn't think he
was a loving God.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
I thought it was more of an angry God that
you gotta work hard, you know, the harder you worked,
and more I love you, and kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Do right, treat people good, they'll treat you good.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
It's like, man, I can play that game.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
I'll work hard, I'll be.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Nice to be people will throw money in the you know,
in the pod at Christmas time, you know, while they're
ringing the bell.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I'll do all that stuff.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
So on the news there was a story about the
Left Behind series of books. 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,
(16:27):
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 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. And then I realized, man, but
you have no relationship with Christ at all. And so
(16:48):
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
to win God's favor. Otherwise we wouldn't be Christ. 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
(17:11):
praying out of 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 one, and that
as a threat, just as a statement of fact. And
(17:38):
he was dragged along by her into manhood and adulthood,
but not without an encounter with the Lord. He found money,
but something was missing. When we come back more of
Brig Sorber's story here on our American stories, 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 the 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 (18:51):
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 in our corporate front foyer. And
when all those things went down, I went put those
(19:12):
damn things in the closet. They went why, and I went,
because we suck. 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, Purple Wild say, well,
people are losing their houses, so they were calling you
(19:32):
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 I'm looking around and going like,
oh my gosh, what are we gonna do here?
Speaker 2 (19:43):
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 of was a money market account.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
It was actually a bond securities account. I went, all right, Lord,
what are we gonna do today?
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Although I had the three million in the back of
my mind, Well, I can buy new equipment.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
I can do this. I can do this cause I
have three million dollars.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
A couple days later, the banker took me out to
lunch and said, hey, Brig, well just wanted all the
things going. I said, pretty good, we're gonna need to
get at that three million. He was like fantastic. A
week later, he calls me up and he goes, I
got some bad news. I said, what's that and he goes, well,
that bond security account actually takes there's an auction. You
have to auction those things to get to those things.
(20:41):
The auction collapsed this week, and so you may never
see that three million dollars again. And I had a
few words with 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.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
He's like, I just don't wanna tell you, Brigg. So
I actually want to shut the door.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
And I just started cracking up. I'm going, okay, God,
now you have my attention, because it was like, what
are you gonna do? 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.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
I've got I had a half a million dollars in cash,
and that was it. 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.
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 weren't doing anything, but the majority of them
were working really hard. It's a recession and you're letting
(21:34):
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 that because I knew it was the right thing
to do, and it was on my heart and I
knew enough. I know God's voice when I hear it,
(21:55):
I know it, and I know that this was right.
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. Too many truck's hand. They were
appalled at a lot of these agreements. They go, we are
getting hosed here big time. And 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,
(22:32):
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
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 4 (22:52):
She got a hold of some of the vendors. They
all know who she is. She said, Bill, this is
so and so, Hey were you at two minut a truck.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
They get really quiet and she goes, you.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Know, we're not going to do this anymore, 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 when I severance. We
(23:28):
got a hold of the attorney general at Mike Cox
at the time, and we talked to him about what
happened with this.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Bond 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. We
got balloons, we got the cake, and we had a
check to give you back.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
For your money.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
And said, you can stick your balloons in your cake.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Just bring a check over.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
It's not your money.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
That's God working in the business. God made us more
than a whole in that thing. When all that stuff
was going down, and I let a lot of those
employees go, I brought the departments in. Man, some of
these younger employees were in tears. I 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
(24:16):
don't need, and we're gonna save this company. 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,
(24:37):
You work for a moving company. You didn't sign up
for this adventure, but guess what, you're in it. Some
of you will survive it, and some of you won't.
Some of you will excel in it and become great.
But we will see what happens 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.
(24:58):
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 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 4 (25:44):
I can't believe this.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
And I just prayed over those checks and thank God
for him to this day. Our CEO now he hands
out the checks. He's also a strong Catholic, and I
told him 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
(26:06):
employees coming in that first year in.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Tears because they got these checks.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
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 he wasn't prepared for, and in the end,
his own personal shortcomings, and how his reliance on God
(27:07):
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, Can I rake your front
yard for a dollar? He goes, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
They took 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. The guy said, I can break
the leaves. What guy said, he you can break the leaves?
And I went the guy was moving stuff out of
your house. He was being robbed and I didn't know it,
(01:26):
and so the cops came and they were asking me questions.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
I'm going, what is going on?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
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 breaking your leaves. He goes,
for God's sake, M I just got robbed. 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
(01:54):
and she was like shocked.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
So that's how my working life started.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Work was always part of what us kids did. 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,
said we need to mow ten lawns. And then if
we can mow ten lawns, two lawns a day, Monday
(02:25):
through Friday, and then we can spend the rest of
the time at the beach.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
It's like, let's do it. And it was uncanny, but
everyone gonna call. They went, well sure, I was 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.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
And so we loved being our own boss. I like
me and my own 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.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
She leased out, clean it out up and resell it.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
And so she bought this whole truck for for about
three hundred dollars, like a fifteen foot step van instead
of just a pickup truck.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
It would hold us.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
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. And then my mom drew
on a napkin a cartoon truck with two stick men
in it, and that's where our logo came from. Her
(03:55):
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 movers 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 4 (04:09):
I was probably five seven and of maybe a buck forty.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
We'd show up.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
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 crap, here
we go again.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
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, not two boys. It's like, I
totally understand, I sh 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. That's the thing that nobody
can move. And then they would just go like, we
are so sorry. Usually been a good tip. 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
(05:03):
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.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
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.
For beer and book money, it was fine. 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?
Speaker 2 (05:45):
The first two years.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
When she quit her job, she didn't pay herself anything
and she just lived off that qualified money and Ramen
noodles for two years. And she was 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 4 (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 a 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 like wrapped its arms around two minute
track 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.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
She went in there.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
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? My mom goes, who would
buy it? Moving franchise, and she goes, well, I'm a
pet nanny. I take care of people's pets. 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
(07:07):
college education, pretty amazing.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
And you've been listening to Brig Sorber 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. This is Lee Habib, host of Our
American Stories, the show where America is the star and
(07:35):
the American people, and we do it all from the
heart of the South Oxford, Mississippi. But we truly can't
do this show without you. Our shows will always be
free to listen to, but they're not free to make.
If you love what you hear, consider making a tax
deductible donation to our American Stories. Go to our American
Stories dot com, give a little, give a lot. That's
(07:56):
our American Stories dot com. 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
(08:17):
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 now shares with us
the story of how he met his wife Fran.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
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 4 (08:56):
Do you want to cookout?
Speaker 2 (08:57):
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
to the house. And so they they picked me up
(09:21):
and threw me in the car like college guys do,
and I unrolled the window and I yelled, Fran.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
She looked and I went, I'm gonna marry you someday,
and she was like that guy's drunk, and uh.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
And I loved her because she was very independent.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
She paid for her own apartment, she paid for her
own school. 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
(10:04):
I went to school, my parents would be perceived as
upper middle class. So a lot of the things that
she worked hard on I took for granted. I went,
that's really cool that she does that. I ended up
getting Fran pregnant and I don't mind sharing this. I
asked her if I could share this, and she said,
as long as it helps people. Yeah, I don't like
(10:25):
you're running around, but yeah, I guess 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, I really truly feel we
(10:46):
would have. 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,
you know.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
I mean I was like a.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Kid, and and she really kept our family buoyant because
I wasn't. I'd go to church with her 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 a hundred and seventy pounds
so I graduated from college, to a hundred and thirty
five pounds. I remember that when we found out she
was pregnant, we had no insurance or anything, and uh,
it was like a welfare baby. We couldn't afford it.
And they sat me down and I said I'm not
taking any welfare. I was very proud, and they went.
The state worker was just, uh, probably sick of working
(11:33):
with people like me.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
M He's like, shut up, she needs attrition for that baby.
And uh. He gave me like a hundred.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Dollars to go buy some groceries.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
And then he f f goes, what 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.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Away from me, and I said, I will never take
welfare money again. And that was in itself a sin
right the way I was thinking it was cause of pride.
I did, 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 their 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 your useless
butt when you were in college. I mean god, I
really thought success was freedom and the only way to
freedom was money. I will never say that we were poor.
(13:06):
Poor is when you have no hope. We were broke.
Speaker 4 (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, man, I finally made it.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
That's why I went out and I leased at Audi.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
A four cause I was like, you know, it is
a sophisticated European vehicle. I went out and I got
a Frank Sinatra CD to play in it isn't that horrible?
Speaker 2 (13:41):
I mean the funny part.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
I ended up kind of liking them.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
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, rub elbows with other rich guys
tell war stories. I mean, seriously, I did all this.
It literally happened like that. So I had my first
scotch on the racks and the cigar, and man, it's
almost puked. When I drank that scotch.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
It was whoa.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
I mean, I was afraid to pour it on the grass.
That'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 finished 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.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
And it was it was horrible.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
You know, I wouldn't wish that on anybody. And I
went to go see a doctor. I went, well, geez,
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,
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
(14:54):
gonna put that.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
In my wallet.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
I'm not gonna take this pill. And again, I don't
wanna be little depression. But for me, he 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 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,
(15:18):
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. 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?
It was all about being validated was so important to me.
(15:39):
It was very important what people felt about me.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
I did believe in God, but I didn't think he
was a loving God.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
I thought it was more of an angry God that
you gotta work hard, you know, the harder you worked,
and more I love you, and kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Do right, treat people good, they'll treat you good.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
It's like, man, I can play that game.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
I'll work hard, I'll be.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Nice to be people will throw money in the you know,
in the pod at Christmas time, you know, while they're
ringing the bell.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I'll do all that stuff.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
So on the news there was a story about the
Left Behind series of books. 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,
(16:27):
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 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. And then I realized, man, but
you have no relationship with Christ at all. And so
(16:48):
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
to win God's favor. Otherwise we wouldn't be Christ. 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
(17:11):
praying out of 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 one, and that
as a threat, just as a statement of fact. And
(17:38):
he was dragged along by her into manhood and adulthood,
but not without an encounter with the Lord. He found money,
but something was missing. When we come back more of
Brig Sorber's story here on our American stories, 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 the 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 (18:51):
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 in our corporate front foyer. And
when all those things went down, I went put those
(19:12):
damn things in the closet. They went why, and I went,
because we suck. 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, Purple Wild say, well,
people are losing their houses, so they were calling you
(19:32):
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 I'm looking around and going like,
oh my gosh, what are we gonna do here?
Speaker 2 (19:43):
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 of was a money market account.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
It was actually a bond securities account. I went, all right, Lord,
what are we gonna do today?
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Although I had the three million in the back of
my mind, Well, I can buy new equipment.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
I can do this. I can do this cause I
have three million dollars.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
A couple days later, the banker took me out to
lunch and said, hey, Brig, well just wanted all the
things going. I said, pretty good, we're gonna need to
get at that three million. He was like fantastic. A
week later, he calls me up and he goes, I
got some bad news. I said, what's that and he goes, well,
that bond security account actually takes there's an auction. You
have to auction those things to get to those things.
(20:41):
The auction collapsed this week, and so you may never
see that three million dollars again. And I had a
few words with 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.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
He's like, I just don't wanna tell you, Brigg. So
I actually want to shut the door.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
And I just started cracking up. I'm going, okay, God,
now you have my attention, because it was like, what
are you gonna do? 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.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
I've got I had a half a million dollars in cash,
and that was it. 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.
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 weren't doing anything, but the majority of them
were working really hard. It's a recession and you're letting
(21:34):
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 that because I knew it was the right thing
to do, and it was on my heart and I
knew enough. I know God's voice when I hear it,
(21:55):
I know it, and I know that this was right.
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. Too many truck's hand. They were
appalled at a lot of these agreements. They go, we are
getting hosed here big time. And 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,
(22:32):
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
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 4 (22:52):
She got a hold of some of the vendors. They
all know who she is. She said, Bill, this is
so and so, Hey were you at two minut a truck.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
They get really quiet and she goes, you.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Know, we're not going to do this anymore, 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 when I severance. We
(23:28):
got a hold of the attorney general at Mike Cox
at the time, and we talked to him about what
happened with this.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Bond 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. We
got balloons, we got the cake, and we had a
check to give you back.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
For your money.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
And said, you can stick your balloons in your cake.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Just bring a check over.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
It's not your money.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
That's God working in the business. God made us more
than a whole in that thing. When all that stuff
was going down, and I let a lot of those
employees go, I brought the departments in. Man, some of
these younger employees were in tears. I 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
(24:16):
don't need, and we're gonna save this company. 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,
(24:37):
You work for a moving company. You didn't sign up
for this adventure, but guess what, you're in it. Some
of you will survive it, and some of you won't.
Some of you will excel in it and become great.
But we will see what happens 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.
(24:58):
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 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 4 (25:44):
I can't believe this.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
And I just prayed over those checks and thank God
for him to this day. Our CEO now he hands
out the checks. He's also a strong Catholic, and I
told him 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
(26:06):
employees coming in that first year in.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Tears because they got these checks.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
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 he wasn't prepared for, and in the end,
his own personal shortcomings, and how his reliance on God
(27:07):
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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