The Other Side of Entrepreneurship: Driving 100 Miles in a Freezing Truck

I remember the Suburban being a little bigger than the standard size.

If asked, I like to give a balanced view of what it is like to start and run your own business. Part of the balanced view is that a lot of risk, tedious tasks, and unglamorous and inconvenient work falls on you.

This isn’t an original take. Lots of people and lots of jobs have these stories. This is one of mine from a young age in honor of my father.

My dad was an entrepreneur. At the end of the 1970s, he started a liquor store. That isn’t a great business. Later, to increase revenue, he added a Heavenly Ham franchise (now part of HoneyBaked Ham) as part of the liquor store.

Picture of a HoneyBaked Ham from the company website

The glazed ham business was very seasonal. We sold 80% of our hams at Christmas, and 80% of those hams sold on Christmas Eve.

One year, when he was still building up the business, there was a problem with the truck delivery for Christmas. On the eve of Christmas Eve, our boxes of hams were stuck in Indianapolis—100 miles away.

When all hope had run out for a delivery, my dad borrowed an industrial-sized Chevy Suburban from his friend and dragged me (~11 or 12 years old) along to help. We rushed to Indianapolis, crammed the boxes into the Suburban, and drove home.

I would have forgotten the whole experience, except the drive home was memorable.

We had to keep the hams cold. Luckily, that December 23 was freezing cold. We drove the 100 miles home with all the windows down and the A/C on. That was a cold ride!

We got to the store late at night, loaded all the boxes into the freezer, and went home for four hours of sleep. Early on December 24^th , we were back at the store, cutting, glazing, and preparing the hams for pickup.

That was a good early lesson about some the unglamorous and inconvenient sides of having your own business.

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