Because of the nationwide and California-wide general decline in the aircraft industry, the state and national governments made paid job retraining available. Ed wanted to go to school for copier and laser printer repair because he had some experience in this already and he knew the pay was quite good. However, it was an eighteen month full time school, so he would have to get a part time job, and keep up his studies, and pay on all of the lifestyle bills and debts they had acquired during his aircraft days. Instead he could go to truck driving school and be working within a month. Needless to say, 10-4 good buddy, Ed hit the road in the old eighteen wheeler.
Ed drove for MNX (now defunct) throughout the 48 states for around nine months before landing a job on a special fleet with the company. This allowed Ed and his family to move to Kingman, Arizona and get free of the Southern California area. After seven months in Kingman, Ed moved to Knight Transportation Co. out of Phoenix driving the seven western states. Instead of moving to Phoenix, the company was going to allow Ed to move to Portland, Oregon and be a driver based out of there. The day before Ed was to move his little family to Portland, he lost his job due to a driving mishap - ouch. The RYDER was already rented and packed, and the family was ready to go. To make things worse, that same evening, Ed fell while pushing his antique Chevy station wagon and almost pulled his arm out of it's socket. This was a severe stress to the ligaments, and the whole shoulder area making the pain of driving the RYDER to Portland bad enough for him to decide to try a different line of work for a while.
Working as a car salesman, and part time for his brother-in-law in construction/destruction cleanup, Ed's little family lived with his sis and brother-in-law. What a strain on family relations. Slowly Ed's shoulder healed and he finally found someone to hire him locally to drive the big trucks. Flat bed driving was a new experience for him, and he was a little squirrelly at first while his arm finished healing. He also learned about hauling "cans", the ocean going containers from the Port of Portland. The living relationship being strained, along with finding out that his wages at the first company averaged eighty cents/hour for all the time he put in was getting to him. Ed finally landed a job with a "can" hauling company making a big ten dollars/hour wtih regular hours on weekdays. The Ed-family moved to their own rental house, and set up house keeping. Then a year to the day of arriving in Portland, Ed suffered the loss of his family life when his wifey left him and moved with the boys back to SoCal where they were from originally.
Ed continued driving after the loss of his family, moved in with his sister, and through body-building, lost about 80 lbs. He continued to get higher paying jobs in trucking, then moved out on his own. He was offered a job at a Mail Boxes Etc. by one of the owners of the establishment, and was verbally promised that it would lead to part ownership. This turned out to be deceptive, and since Ed took a cut in wages to do that, it hurt Ed's heart to know that this person would do this to him.
Ed decided to quit and go to work for his bro-in-law again, and possibly back to driving. The day after he quit, he realized that he had a hernia. The surgery set him back in the job market, depression set in, and Ed was floundering. During this time, the man he shared an apartment with, helped lead Ed back to the loving arms of Christ. Through the years, Ed had been neglecting his Savior, and of course, now in bad times during deep reflection he realized his need of Jesus.
During this time, one of the members of the church group Ed was going to helped him get a job back in Chrisitian radio. The radio station manager originally hired him for weekends, but after the first weekend, offered him the job full time. Hallelujah! Not only was Ed back in the arms of Jesus, but now he was working at a Chrisitian radio station getting a good dose of preaching daily, making up for all the sermons he had missed throughout the years! :-)
While Ed worked at KKPZ in Portland he actually convinced a company he drove truck for once, to hire him for weekends. He also received training to become a mortgage loan officer and started making money part-time doing that. Ed got a little full of himself again because of the money in mortgages, and quit his truck driving job, then his radio job. God then allowed Ed to go without a deal for six months, and Ed ended his mortgage career delivering pizza to keep out of the hole!
Where Ed works now in Las Vegas!!!
