Two Men and a Truck

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Bachelor in Paradise premieres Thursday 9, 8 central on ABC and stream on Hulu. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Up next, a story from Briggs Sorber, part of the founding family of Michigan's own two men in a truck moving company. Let's get into the story.

Here's Briggs. My first job was raking leaves when I was eight. I knocked on the door and these two guys open the door and they're looking at me. They go, what do you want? I said, I just kind of rake your front yard for a dollar.

He goes, yeah, go ahead. I was just jacked. You know, I was going to make a dollar.

This is my first job. And these guys, I had a car backed in and they were moving stuff out of the house and then they took off and said they'd be back. And I said, okay. So I kept raking leaves. And this another car pulls up and he looks in his house, comes running out and he goes, who the hell are you? And I go, I'm raking your leaves. The guy said I could rake the leaves. What guy said you could rake the leaves? I went, the guy that was moving stuff out of your house.

He was being robbed and I didn't know it. And so the cops came and they were asking me questions. I'm going, what is going on? Well, then the cops left, took the report and then I finished and I knocked on the door.

The guy answers the door. He goes, what do you want? I went, I want my dollar for raking your leaves.

He goes, for God's sakes. I just got robbed. I mean, I'm eight, right? So the guy gives me a buck and I just remember going home, like not thinking anything of it. And I told my mom the story and she was like shocked. So that's how my working life started. Work was always part of what us kids did. Me and my buddies started mowing lawns. There weren't those landscapers back then.

It was just neighborhood boys cutting grass. And so we just opened up the white pages. And I remember my buddy, Tim Falmer and I, we went through and said, we need to mow 10 lawns.

And then if we can mow 10 lawns, two lawns a day, Monday through Friday, then we can spend the rest of the time at the beach. It's like, let's do it. And it was uncanny, but everybody would call. They went, well, sure. It was like, wow, this is easy. So we would haul our lawnmowers behind our bikes.

And we had a couple horrendous wipeouts doing that. But a lot of people looked at us and went like, man, you guys are like going after it. And so we love being our own boss.

I like being my own guy. We bought a 66 Ford pickup truck from Michigan State University. It was an old agricultural truck, just a beater.

Three on the tree, shifting us up on the column. We made a lot of money with that truck. My brother and I started getting into moving, just trash and brush around. And then my mom started, this was after she divorced, she started another business.

She would go to estate auctions and she would buy furniture and then haul it to this little store that she leased out, clean it all up and resell it. And so she bought this whole truck for about $300, like a 15 foot step van instead of just a pickup truck. And told us, you know, if you want to use that for your moving, go ahead.

And that's what really got us into moving, like apartments and small homes. And when John and I started the business, it was called Men at Work Movers. And underneath that, it said two men in the truck, 25 bucks an hour. And then my mom drew on a napkin, a cartoon truck with two stick men in it. And that's where our logo came from. Our logo to this day is a drawing that my mom made on a napkin. And she said, why don't you drop Men at Work Movers and just call yourselves what you are, two men in a truck.

So that's where our name came from. We were small guys. I was probably 5'7 and maybe a buck 40. We'd show up at someone's house and I can't tell you how many times I'd get this. People would look at me and their shoulders would slump. It's like, oh crap, here we go again. Is there a problem, ma'am? Well, we were expecting a couple scrapping lads and we were expecting two men, not two boys.

It's like, I totally understand. I'll tell you what, let us work for you for 15 minutes. And if it doesn't work out, we'll call the office and get a couple of bigger guys here. Is that fair? Yeah, that'd be fair. So John and I would go downstairs and we would move the upright freezer. That's the thing that nobody can move. And then they would just go like, we are so sorry.

Usually meant a good tip. The funny part was we had no extra guys. We had no office. So it was like, you know, we're walking a wire without a safety net there, but John and I were both pleasers and this industry was very easy to please him.

People would just do backflips if we, if we even showed up. John and I, this was beer and book money in that order. And we were drinking green bottle beer as opposed to our other guys drinking like the cheap beer. But it really became, cause it didn't make any money. I mean, for kids, for beer and book money, it was fine. But my mom loved it. And my mom quit her job at the state of Michigan. She took all of her qualified retirement money and cashed it all in.

People were screaming at her, her own mother, my grandma was just going, what are you doing? The first two years when she quit her job, she didn't pay herself anything. And she just lived off that qualified money and ramen noodles for two years. And if she was sitting here in this room, she'd tell you it was the happiest days of her life.

I think she's crazy. But she loved building the business. She finally made a profit. Her third year, I think she made $1,000 and she wasn't sure how to do the taxes cause she was like, I've never had a profit.

So it was the sweetest thing. She wrote 10 checks for $100 and gave them to nonprofits in Lansing. And that got back to the chamber of commerce and some other business people. And they went, who is this lady? It was at that time that Lansing like wrapped its arms around two men in a truck and went, this is our moving company, which was the coolest thing.

And Michigan State University had a bunch of small businesses come in to talk to their business school. She went in there. My mom was very shy, but God bless her.

She got through it. And this lady came to her and said, did you ever consider franchising? My mom goes, who would buy a moving franchise? And she goes, well, I'm a pet nanny. I take care of people's pets. I franchise.

So I think if I could, you can. And my mom said, let's do it. But my mom, when she started franchising two men in a truck, 49 years old, no college education, pretty, pretty amazing. And you've been listening to Brigg Sorber tell the story of two men in a truck. When we come back, more of Brigg and his remarkable life story here on Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories, the show where America is the star in the American people.

And we do it all from the heart of the South, Oxford, Mississippi. But we truly can't do this show without you. Our shows will always be free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, consider making a tax deductible donation to Our American Stories. Go to our American stories.com.

Give a little, give a lot. That's our American stories.com. Luckyland casino asking people what's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky? Lucky? In line at the deli, I guess?

In my dentist's office. More than once, actually. Do I have to say?

Yes, you do. In the car before my kid's PTA meeting. Really?

Yes. Excuse me, what's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky? I never win and tell.

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See website for details. And we return to Our American Stories and with Briggs Sorber. He's part of the founding family behind Two Men in a Truck, the largest franchised moving company in the world, started in large measure by his mother.

She had no college education and no knowledge of the moving industry when she poured her retirement money into the young business. Briggs now shares with us the story of how he met his wife, Fran. I was on Northern Michigan's rugby team. We were having a party. We needed hot dogs. And the party that we were at was kind of like in the student ghetto.

So there was like this random shopping cart on the side of the road. And so Fran was walking by with a couple of her friends. We just went, do you want to go cook out?

And they're like, okay. So me and my buddy picked up Fran and we put her, I probably get arrested for this now, put her in the shopping cart and just started pushing her down the road all the way to the Blue Link party store to get hot dogs. And then I got to know Fran at this party and my roommates were like, Brig, we got to go. We got to go. We got to get back to the house. And so they picked me up and threw me in the car like college guys do. And I unrolled the window and I yelled, Fran. She looked and I went, I'm going to marry you someday. And she was like, that guy's drunk. And I didn't see her for a couple of months.

And I saw her at a party and we went out that night and we just started dating. And I loved her because she was very independent. She paid for her own apartment. She paid for her own school. She was the only one out of the 14 kids that went to college. She would study in the only bathroom that they had. She had flipped the toilet seat down, sit on that and put the clothes hamper there as a desk at night when all the lights were on. She'd study in high school because she wanted to go to college.

I was a kid that by the time I went to school, my parents would be perceived as upper middle class. So a lot of the things that she worked hard on, I took for granted. I went, that's really cool that she does that. I ended up getting Fran pregnant and I don't mind sharing this. I asked her if I could share this and she said, as long as it helps people.

Yeah, I don't like you running around, but yeah, I guess. So when we were younger, we wouldn't share this, but now we share it because when she told me, she went, I'm having this baby. You don't have to marry me.

I'm going to have this baby. And I just went, that is so classic Fran. I just felt in love with her more. And I went, well, come on, Fran, we'd probably get married anyway, which we probably, I really truly feel we would have. And she's like, well, yeah. And I said, well, let's get married.

Little did I know, I'm thinking I'm doing her a favor. She took on like two babies, you know? I mean, I was like a kid and, and she really kept our family buoyant because I wasn't, I'd go to church with her on occasion at college, but I didn't think anything of it. You know, and we had this baby and I just worked my off. I mean, I went from 170 pounds.

I graduated from college to 135 pounds. I remember that when we found out she was pregnant, we had no insurance or anything. And it was like a welfare baby. We couldn't afford it. And they sat me down and I said, I'm not taking any welfare.

I was very proud. And they went, the state worker was just probably sick of working with people like me. He's like, shut up.

She needs attrition for that baby. And he gave me like a hundred dollars, go buy some groceries. And then he goes, what are you going to do with the rest of your life? And I was like, I'm graduating from college in like a month.

Just shook his head, walked away from me. And I said, I will never take welfare money again. And that was in itself a sin, right?

The way I was thinking it was because of pride. I didn't by the way, but man, I worked my off to make sure that that never happened, but I'm glad it did. It gave me an appreciation when I see people down on their luck and I am not judging them. So that was like a wake-up call for me. But watching Fran live her Catholic faith, it was like, she was never mad.

She took care of that baby. Fran kept us all buoyant until I kind of got my crap together. And it wasn't that I was out with my friends. I wasn't drinking all the time.

Thank God. I didn't have those things on me. It was more, I was just more greedy about my own life. Like, poor me.

Look how hard my life is with these kids. I was like, dude, you brought it on, you know. And Fran didn't have to take this by the way. She decided to have the baby and take your useless butt when you were in college.

I mean, God. I really thought success was freedom and the only way to freedom was money. I will never say that we were poor. Poor is when you have no hope. We were broke.

Maybe I dipped my toe into being poor because there was times I felt like I was losing hope, but I don't know. I just, there was something deep inside of me. I was like, I don't want to be like this. How do I get there? I just got to make a lot of money.

And so we worked really hard and two minute truck continued to grow and it took a bump in pay. And I thought, man, I finally made it. So I went out and I leased an Audi A4 because I thought, you know, it is a sophisticated European vehicle.

I went out and I got a Frank Sinatra CD to play in it. Isn't that horrible? I mean, the funny part, I ended up kind of liking them. And then I thought that successful guys drink scotch. So I went out and bought a bottle on Johnny Walker Black and I want to join a country club to, you know, rub elbows with other rich guys, tell war stories. I mean, seriously, I did all this.

It literally happened like that. So I had my first scotch on the rocks in a cigar and man, I almost puked when I drank that scotch. It was, whoa, I mean, I was afraid to pour it on the grass.

It burned my grass. But I finished my cigar and I thought, well, how are you supposed to feel? I don't know. Maybe this is something you have to grow into.

I don't know. I finished my cigar and I thought about that. It was at that point, it was like within a couple of days that I slipped into depression. And it was, it was horrible.

You know, I wouldn't wish that on anybody. I went to go see a doctor. I went, well, geez, I probably have cancer now. You know, something's wrong with me.

You know, my life is perfect. So something's wrong with me. And the doctor went, no, you're just depressed. And he just simply wrote me a prescription for depression. Like it was like nothing. And I looked at that thing, I got my car and I just went, no, I'm going to put that in my wallet.

I'm not going to take this pill. And again, I don't want to belittle depression. But for me, I was like, no, I was not depressed up until like now. And it was bad.

I mean, I wasn't going to kill myself, but if I got hit by a bus, it wouldn't have bothered me. I got to wrap my arms around this. And I remember my wife just going like, what is the deal?

I mean, we're doing really good. She goes, why don't you work out again? So I got on my workout bench to work out. And I just, I literally just broke down. I'm not talking about man pouting here.

I'm talking about sobbing. I was just like, God, what is going on here? You have given me more than everything I've asked for.

Why am I feeling like this? It was all about being validated was so important to me. It was very important when people felt about me.

I did believe in God, but I didn't think he was a loving God. I thought it was more of an angry God, that you got to work hard. The harder you work, the more I'll love you kind of thing. Do right. Treat people good. They'll treat you good.

It's like, man, I can play that game. I'll work hard. I'll be nice to people. I'll throw money in the pot at Christmas time. Or they're ringing the bell.

I'll do all that stuff. So on the news, there was a story about the left behind series. And I was like, revelation. And I was always kind of into that. So I started reading into these books about how, what if Jesus came back in this lifetime and he took back all the Christians and left behind all the non-Christians. And I went, oh man, I'd go for sure.

He'd take me up because I'm like the man. I mean, I give money to all this stuff. And they would refer to the Bible. So I would open up the Bible and it's like, well, okay. It kind of says that.

It says that and there and this and that. I thought, you know what? You need to start reading this Bible. And then I realized, man, Brig, you have no relationship with Christ at all. And so I really started taking a look at how trying to validate myself with God was totally useless. We can't do anything. We can't do any good things to win God's favor.

Otherwise we wouldn't need Christ. And that's when I realized I need a relationship with him. And then while all this is going on, all this business chaos was going on, I thought, I'm going to start preying on the business too. as a statement of fact. And he was dragged along by her into manhood and adulthood, but not without an encounter with the Lord.

You found money, but something was missing. When we come back, more of Brig Sorber's story here on Our American Story. Okay.

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Join today and play for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. Chumbacacino.com. And we return to Our American Stories and the final portion of our story with Brig Sorber, part of the founding family of two men in a truck, the world's largest franchise moving company. When we last left off, Brig was telling us about how he met his wife Fran and the struggles he had as a young father and later a wealthy man. It was because of these struggles that he turned to God, a decision that would benefit him greatly during the 2008 recession, a dark time for his company. Let's return to the story.

Here again is Brig. We were so broken. Our website was so bad that we found out that we had an 80% drop-off rate. 80% of the customers using the website got so frustrated they left it.

The two years before that, we won the JD Power Associates for customer satisfaction. And we had those trophies proudly displayed in our corporate front foyer. And when all those things went down, I went, put those damn things in the closet. They went, why?

And they went, because we suck. But there was so much business, it hides the brokenness. And you got to understand the recession really started with the collapse of the mortgage industry. Well, when the mortgage industry collapses, people can't get money. They can't buy houses. Well, the next thing people would say, well, people are losing their houses, so they were calling you to move them.

Well, when people lose their houses, they can't afford a mover. So it cut us down dramatically. We were hemorrhaging cash, and I'm looking around and going like, oh my gosh, what are we going to do here? We had about 78 employees.

We went down to about 52. Most of the people there were really, really working hard. And there were some people that were doing nothing.

They were coming in here literally doing nothing. I prayed about these things. Lord, what are we going to do with your business today? What are we going to do with your business today? We did have $3 million in a money market. I was told it was a money market account. It was actually a bond securities account.

I went, all right, Lord, what are we going to do today? Although I had the $3 million in the back of my mind. Well, I can buy new equipment. I can do this.

I can do this. I have $3 million. A couple of days later, the banker took me out to lunch and said, hey, Brig, I just want to know how's the things going? I said, pretty good. We're going to need to get at that $3 million.

He was like, fantastic. A week later, he calls me up and he goes, I got some bad news. I said, what's that? And he goes, well, that bond security account actually takes, there's an auction. You have to auction those things to get to those things. The auction collapsed this week. And so you may never see that $3 million again. And I had a few words with the banker, because I found out later. I said, well, you were having a.