Change starts with one step, and all that jazz

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“Operation Positive Press” has begun.

Okay, so admittedly it’s not CNN, but the Van Horn Advocate is a real newspaper and it ran a positive trucking story on the front page, so right now, they’re the best newspaper ever in the history of newspapers, as far as I’m concerned.

Click through the image, taken of drivers laid over at Lindsey’s Cafe in the Plateau Truck Stop during the West Texas ice storm on New Year’s Eve, to read the Van Horn Advocate story, about the Cafe’s remaining open to serve stranded truckers and ring in the new year.Click through the image, taken of drivers laid over at Lindsey’s Cafe in the Plateau Truck Stop during the West Texas ice storm on New Year’s Eve, to read the Van Horn Advocate story, about the Cafe’s remaining open to serve stranded truckers and ring in the new year.

It’s a start. It’s a beginning to a wave of stories we as an industry can generate and bombard mainstream news with. There are ten good stories to every one bad one they run, and it’s up to us to promote them. It’s pretty obvious no one is going to do it for us. Even the Van Horn Advocate needed someone to highlight it for them – they didn’t send a reporter out for the story. Rather, it was presented to them and the editor liked it and ran it.

And that’s how positive press for the trucking industry goes. It has to basically be crammed down the throat of the general public, because reporters and journalists who are unaffiliated don’t go sniffing around unless there’s death and destruction involved.

I’m tired of hearing the naysayers who claim we’ll never get anyone to listen to positive stories about the industry. Of course we won’t, if we decide to lay down and die. No one hears anything if you don’t say it. If you can’t think of anything nice to say about the industry, then play Thumper and keep it shut until you can, or go somewhere else where you’ll be happier. Life is too short to be miserable. Picking on me and the other people who are at least attempting to offer a more positive light doesn’t make anything better. If you don’t like it, don’t participate, it’s pretty dang simple.

That being said, I know there are people working hard to make this industry better. There are people who really care enough to make a difference, and I believe positive changes can be achieved. Go make good stories for us, get the word out.

2015 is the Year of the Trucker, if you’d forgotten.

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