Doug had convinced me that taking this route would be a good thing for me and that I could grow it just like I had done in Ohio. This route was in the city and proved to be less driving and I sure like that. It was December and was cold we had just celebrated our third Christmas when on the morning of New Years Eve Darlene went into labor, we were excited but we needed all of the money we could earn, her contractions weren’t real close yet, so I went into work and had her call the plant to tell them that she needed me to take her to the hospital. By doing it this way I would still get my holiday pay for New years.
What a way to end a year and start the new year, Darlene was a real champ as this was her second natural child birth and God gave us a beautiful girl. This was perfect, we had poor mans gold for a son to watch after his little angle sister. This was to be all of the children for us. God had been very good to us blessing us with two perfect children. Just the way we wanted it. Having a New Years Eve baby gave us another tax deduction which was good for us.
Back at Coca Cola we had grown the business enough to knock 7-UP way out to a distant third and we closing in on Pepsi, we could see them in our sites. We had contest for all sorts of prizes and I loved winning all that I could. There were always a handful of us that tried to win. Usually the same ones. We were the ones that grew our own business where as the others routes were grown by management. The ones that grew their own business were the leaders in sales and in contest, then there what I learned were the maintainers. These were individuals that would not grow their routes but would maintain what was given them. They were content with their paychecks. Then there were the ones that just held a job, not dedicated, bad attitudes and all they seemed to want to do is pee down anyone who would listen leg. As time would go on they would be replaced.
In the first year on this route I grew to number five and through being aggressive and eager to do better the second year I was number two and right on the number one routes heals. I was really getting good at display contests and was getting strong in my markets. I was for the most part even with Pepsi we were splitting the weeks of the month on ads with the customers. Before I knew it Doug came to me and said that I had done such a good job of growing the route that I was using all of the time that was available so the company thought that it was time to do some route adjustments. They planned to add several new routes. To do this they had to cut some accounts from most of the routes. I suffered about a 50% cut. That was a lot, Doug promised that he would help me to grow the route and that the cut was not a bad thing because I had done my job. I was a young, hungry family man and wanted to provide for my family so sitting back and complaining about the route cuts wasn’t going to me any good at all.
I had been driving by several opportunities with the possibilities of selling my product. I had been making a list and keeping it in my truck so that when I had time to call on them I would do so. Well there was no better time than now. I stopped at a gas station, there were no convenience stores back then. Just full service gas stations. Most of these places had at least one beverage machine positioned outside along the building. This one had a Pepsi machine and the business was at a very busy intersection so I felt that there was enough business for both of us.
