With money in my pockets and time on my hands and youth in my bones.. I bought an old wooden Yacht, actually it was a 57 foot 1967 Chris Craft Constellation. It had twin diesel engines but had been out of the water for some time and needed a complete bottom job. A friend of mine and I worked on it for 3 months removing the old paint, rotten wood and bent propellers and learned how to pound wound up cotton between the planks of wood, correctly apply polysulfied caulking and copper based bottom paint. A beautiful job and a fantastic education on how much money you can throw into a boat and never notice!
In 1993 I started a used oil recycling business with a friend of mine. We picked up used oil, oil filters and antifreeze from oil change businesses and dealerships. We also disposed of contaminated soils, dirty water. This business was called Our Protected Environment Corp. (OPEC)
In 1996 we sold this business to a much larger company who did the same thing. I became the General Manager at the Port of Tampa location and my partner ran the storage facility at the port. I only stayed on for 6 months.
In December of '96 I began working for Coastal Environmental Services. I had approached the owner for several months about working for him but was turned away do to lack of business. "Roger, I would love to have you work for me but I don't have enough work". After hearing this story over and over I finally countered with, "Ok, you don't have to pay me until I start earning my salary." HIRED!
I quickly became his operations manager and took on more and more responsibility, However, in May of '97, I was on a job for Coastal in Jacksonville and suffered severe injuries while driving a R-Model Mack Dump Truck. I accidentally found the front end of a semi truck on a two lane road, coming from the opposite direction, I will tell more about my injury and rehabilitation later.
For a year and a half I processed through rehabilitation and learning to walk again. To stay busy, I started a website business called Chipper's...my childhood nickname. My first customer was a medical supply company where I walked in to buy a cane and walked out with a plan to build them a website. They didn't know I was going to do this because they “Already had someone”, but were not receiving any orders. As soon as the site I built for them started producing orders, I had a relationship with them that lasted 10 years! Other customers were easy to find, everyone wanted to get on the internet!
In 2011 The next adventure was started. It was called Not Your Mother's Taxi LLC. I sold it last year but it is a children's taxi service. The business plan included picking up and dropping off only children, throughout the day, giving them door to door service. We would text the parents on the way to the pickup, again when they got on the shuttle and again when they were at their destination. Most of our customers were working parents and loved getting the texts. To school, home from school, baseball practice, cheer leading camp... We used buses like airport shuttle buses to give rides anywhere in a 5 mile radius for $8.
At night and on weekends adults rented the buses for special events and evening trips into Tampa.
