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Fortune Transportation called up to the Major League

I spent my early years growing up on a dairy farm, watching “city” friends swim at pool, play ball, etc. all day while I had chickens, hogs, and cattle chores to do. Then we moved to Rake, Iowa, I was now a “city” kid, and there was always a pickup baseball game to be had. With +/- 300 people in town, when you rode your bike to the vacant lot or ball field, you called out to every kid to come play, all the kids in town had an opportunity to play in the game; you needed all the kids in town for two teams. Like young sports participants, your dreams were of being the hero, hitting the home run in the bottom of the 9^th inning that won the World Series; that was the stuff the dreams of my childhood were made up of.

What started as just a business hauling opportunity has become in my mind to be synonymous with the best qualities of what we are made of. Other trucking people heard the same news stories of the new stadium and did not relate to the potential business. Other Fortune employees have been given direction on a project and did not react, research, and believe the way Dan Cory did. Many trucks go up and down the road each day, for this day, this project, we were chosen.

Opportunities have been around for years in trucking and general business. But to be able to be on the ground floor of a project, be a part of the development of the best and accepted method of getting the project completed, and then to have a lasting visual public result of your efforts, that is true job satisfaction.

Now years later from my sand lot baseball days, the job of hauling the sod for the new Twins stadium from Colorado to Minneapolis, 24-hours from “cut to lay-down” has come to Fortune Transportation. 18 semi trucks loads, coordination of relayed trucks and team drivers, dependable refrigerated equipment and product hauling requirements, loading and delivery logistics and timing, all to be done in four days, it may not be exactly the way I dreamed my major league sports career would go when I was carrying my baseball bat to my bike to head home for supper as a kid, but the honor it is a home run.

Donavan J. Olson