Jim Ellis
Published: March 24 2004
The day before I applied to become a student at PJC, I was an out-of-work truck driver looking for a driving job. I had been laid off from my job in Atlanta and decided to move to Pensacola to be closer to my family.
I didn’t think it would be any problem finding a good truck-driving job since I had been driving for six years and had done everything from delivering Pepsi to driving across the country.
I know folks might wonder how I ever got involved in such a business.
Well, I became a truck driver when, after four years in the electrical department at Marvin?s Building Materials, I had only been promoted to team leader. I needed a change, so a friend helped me get hired at the local Pepsi bottling company. Six years and three companies later, I was still driving 18-wheelers.
To be honest, I was miserable. I had grown to hate truck driving. It was a good living, but it was a hard living.
Many times I would remember being the editor of my high school paper and the dreams I had of being a professional journalist. I wondered why I let my ambitions fade. What wrong turn did I take to lead me here?
But this was the hand of cards that I had been dealt, and I had to play them the best that I could, I reasoned.
I didn?t realize it then, but as I was driving around Pensacola, going from job interview to job interview, my life was about to make another drastic change.
I was on my way home from a long day of job hunting when I passed Marcus Pointe Baptist Church on W Street. It was Tuesday, not a normal night for church services, but I noticed on its sign that there was a Bible study that night.
I am not Baptist, but was interested enough to turn around. I had only been in town a few weeks and didn?t know anyone. ?This will be a great way to meet people,? I thought.
I walked in and grabbed a drink from a refreshment table that was set up and just looked around the room.
A thin man with short dark hair approached me and said hello.
After a while he asked what I did for a living.
?I?m a truck driver,? I said.
?Really, I drove a tanker for six years myself.?
This was a coincidence, I thought.
We both had six years of driving experience.
We ?talked shop? for a few more minutes while we waited on the Bible study to start, and finally I asked him what I really wanted to ask him all along.
?Is the company that you drive for looking for any drivers??
?I don?t drive trucks anymore,? he said.
?What do you do now??
I thought he would say he was a dispatcher or a shipping foreman or something else related to the transportation industry.
?I am a speech therapist,? he said.
Wait a minute. Did he just say he was a speech therapist? That?s not the normal career path for a truck driver.
He went on to explain that at 28 (which was the age I was then,) he quit truck driving to pursue his dream of working in the medical profession. He went from driving trucks to loading them at Federal Express and worked his way through college. He was now 33, had a graduate degree in speech therapy and was working at a local hospital.
I then admitted to him that I too was unhappy as a truck driver and wished I could go to college.
?Do it,? he said. ?You can focus on all the reasons why you shouldn?t go?you?re too old, you already have viable skills to earn a living, you won?t be able to afford the drastic cut in pay?or you can focus on all of the reasons why you should go.?
I couldn?t believe it. I had my very own personal life coach. Everything that he was saying made complete sense. How could I say I couldn?t do it when standing before me was someone who, only five short years earlier, felt what I felt and walked where I walked.
The next morning instead of searching for a job, I went to the admissions office on the Warrington campus.
A few weeks later I was sitting in English composition with Elisabeth Clark as my instructor. She gave us an in-class writing assignment on the first day, and I wrote about truck driving. Now, here I am two years later writing about it again.
I remember calling Thom Botsford, then the faculty adviser to The Corsair, and asking him if I could submit a story. I wrote a short piece about why PJC doesn?t have an international club for foreign students.
When my story was published, I acted as though I had interviewed the President of the United States. I grabbed a newspaper off the stand and ran to my car. I jumped in and hurriedly opened the paper to my story and just sat there reading it over and over and over again.
I don?t know the name of the person I spoke to that night, but if you?re out there, from one truck driver to another, thanks, and see you on down the road.