Small world: from Birmingham Pilot on back to childhood

In this month’s issue of ema href=”http://truckersnews.com/”Truckers News/a/em, my colleague Max Kvidera a href=”http://digitalmagazinetechnology.com/a/?KEY=truckersnews-09-09september#page=35″discusses costs in his monthly round-up on beginning owner-operator issues/topics of interest/a. Along the way toward the succinct but spot-on piece, he ran across 10-year trucking vet Robert Jacobs, who has fairly recently transitioned to leasing a rig after a long stint as a company driver. As Kvidera, based on the West Coast, prepared the piece, I got the opportunity to meet up with Jacobs as he made his way through Birmingham en route with a load of Tyson Foods freight bound for the Carolinas, where Jacobs keeps his home in Newberry, S.C. The video I shot with him is below — he details his experience working with leasing outfit ATBS Leasco, associated with the owner-operator business services firm ATBS, and Greatwide, under whose authority he hauls — but what isn’t included is a noteworthy connection we shared.br /br /Turns out Jacobs has in-laws with roots in tiny Silverstreet, S.C., outside Newberry, and it’s there where were engendered my many memories of time spent with my maternal grandparents, the Longs, being led around on that old horse — Lady, she was called.br /br /”I remember the Long house,” Jacobs told me, then proceeded to describe the brick structure and its surrounding vegetable gardens and one-horse pasture. Nice to come across a fellow Carolinian out on the highway one hot Birmingham day in July. I hope you enjoy meeting Jacobs yourself.br /br /object width=”425″ height=”344″param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/weYl7nCWOdsamp;rel=0amp;color1=0xb1b1b1amp;color2=0xcfcfcfamp;feature=player_profilepageamp;fs=1″param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”param name=”allowScriptAccess” value=”always”embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/weYl7nCWOdsrel=0color1=0xb1b1b1color2=0xcfcfcffeature=player_profilepagefs=1″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowfullscreen=”true” allowscriptaccess=”always” width=”425″ height=”344″/embed/objectbr /br /emshare:/embr /a onclick=”window.open(‘http://digg.com/submit?phase=2amp;url=’+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+’amp;title=’+encodeURIComponent(document.title), ‘digg’); return false;” href=”http://digg.com/submit”Digg/abr /a onclick=”window.open(‘http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=’+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+’amp;title=’+encodeURIComponent(document.title),’facebook’); return false;” href=”http://www.facebook.com/share.php”facebook/adiv class=”blogger-post-footer”Channel 19 is the blog version of the column of the same name featured in Overdrive: The Voice of the American Trucker. Todd Dills ([email protected]) is its author./div