10,000 Cards for the Troops

Let's go. You're waking up with Hawkeye in the morning. On New Country, 96.3. Every year, we ask you folks to contribute to our ten thousand for the troops. We're asking for cards and letters for US servicemen stationed overseas over Christmas. And, sergeant, you're telling us that these letters mean so much more than we can imagine. You know, you get these letters and cards and you think folks at home, they really know what you're doing and they care. And we used to take them in basically wallpaper... Last year, in the end of October, I happened to be sitting in my car listening to 96.3. I caught in the middle of a segment of a veteran talking about receiving a card while he was deployed overseas ... immediately the tears started. That's when I knew it was a heart tug that we had to do this. So I got online and looked and I was like, ten thousand cards for the troops... This is something we need to do for a Team Up challenge. This aligns with what Averitt is. This idea came to me through fellow associate, Charity Bailey, She came to me, wanted to know if I thought that we could do a Team Up in that regard. And I said, absolutely. Let's do it. We had a two week window to do it. And we committed to a thousand cards. So that was a thousand cards, get with our great marketing group, get them to design a card for us, get a thousand of them signed and then get them back to the radio station all within less than a two week period. So when we delivered them to the radio station, I made a comment to the station manager that we'd only done this for a couple of days. We had over a thousand. What really struck me from the beginning was the charity that we're involved with that helps us get them overseas had a last minute problem with their transportation, and here comes Averitt walking up ... a transportation company. And so I think that was meant to be. Averitt stepped up to the plate and helped us get the hundred and six thousand cards over to the charity. And that's a vital vital part of of the whole promotion. Once we delivered the cards last year, they found out who we were and how our story unfolded, and they asked Larry Vannatta to get on the radio. So Larry told our story, who we were, and what we had done, and he had committed to this year's Team Up Challenge being for the region, and he had committed five thousand cards. I looked at them and said, if we can do a thousand in two weeks with one service center, we can do ten thousand through our region. And this year, we took it we took it across the system in January, and we we've talked about it every driver meeting. The whole idea is to get these in the hands of troops who can't come home for the holidays. So we give them a deadline and sometimes you get families and sometimes you get just people on their way to work. And sometimes school buses pull up and kids come with their handmade cars that they've been working on. We're actually a title sponsor of this program, and so we're gonna have a tent set up. We're gonna have refreshments for those that are bringing cards to the radio station. And we're gonna provide the transportation from moving the cards from the collection point, which is the radio station, to Fort Worth, which is about thirty, forty miles away. We're gonna deliver them to the person that's gonna distribute them overseas. It aligns with Averitt. It's who we are. It's who what we do. I mean, I tell people we're a transportation logistics company, but the Team Up Challenges are really what we are. We work for a company that we're encouraged and supported to give back. When you see the kind of employees and the kind of company that Averitt is and everything you guys do for different charities and nonprofits. It makes you wanna work for Averitt. And, you can't say that about a lot of places. You know, a lot of places would be, you know, you everyone looks forward to the weekend and your time not working, but I feel like for Averitt, it must be fun to come to work. And just again, a great big thank you to all the employees who took the time to fill out cards for Hawkeye and Michelle's ten thousand for the troops.