Operator first. Builder second. Teacher always.

One truck. I drove it.

I started my first real business at 21. It was a car hauler and a phone. I learned auto transport from the driver’s seat, which is also where I learned how the industry treats customers: quote low, raise the price after they book, collect cash at the curb.

I built Mr. Car Shipper to do it the other way. Price in writing. Nothing paid to the driver. More than twenty years later, PODS and U-Pack send their customers to us.

Locked out of billboards

I wanted to own billboards in Omaha. There was no room for a newcomer. The boards were owned, the permits were frozen, and nobody holding the inventory had a reason to make space.

That dead end is how I found LED trucks. I bought one and ran it part time. The concept worked. The truck didn’t, at least not reliably. That frustration is a big part of why I build trucks today.

The fleet years

I kept going until we had one of the largest corporate-owned LED truck fleets in the country. Campaigns in 48 states. National brand names. For about eight years we lived on one-off jobs: one client takes the whole truck, we deliver, we invoice, we go find the next one.

Then I tried to sell the company. The offers came back at roughly the price of the trucks. A buyer looked at our books and saw what I hadn’t let myself see. Nothing renewed. Every month started at zero.

“There was no business to buy. There was used equipment and a founder who could never leave.”

Build the truck. Teach the business.

That lesson became the Total360 Local Model: a truck treated as a local media property, with a daily route and advertisers who renew. In December 2024 I stopped operating and put everything into building LED trucks from the chassis up and teaching owners the business that goes with them.

I wrote the book for the same reason. Then I built the software, because the tools on the market were made for something else.