Many veterans have taken jobs in the trucking industry after leaving the military. The transition to civilian life hasn’t always been easy for them, but some have found healing by selflessly helping to improve the lives of fellow veterans. Here are three stories of veterans and company leaders who have assisted ex-soldiers in finding employment and set up nonprofit organizations to support them.
Starting over with Melton
When Gus Corona left the Air Force after 24 years of serving his country, his life dramatically changed.
There were the planned changes like moving back home to Texas and readjusting to civilian life. But then there were the unexpected changes: his wife of 18 years divorcing him and his kids cutting contact.
The story is different for every service member who trades in boots for tennis shoes. Sometimes the transition to civilian life is simple, sometimes it’s hellish. Some bring home physical wounds, others psychological trauma.
Sometimes life after service just doesn’t go as planned. Corona can attest to that.
“It really messed me up …,” he told FreightWaves in a virtual interview. “I was in a dark time when I got out of the military, and when I got out I was used to structure and being told what to do. When I came out of the military, it was kind of like a baby coming out into the world and having to start all over again.”
Grappling with the darkest of thoughts, Corona would eventually find glimmers of light through several new job opportunities. He worked as a gym trainer, which offered parallels to the military because of the physical nature of the job and bootcamp structure. His job as a chef required cleanliness, wearing a uniform and adhering to etiquette.
Then he found a job with Melton Truck Lines while at school to get his CDL. After a year of driving for the Catoosa, Oklahoma-based trucking company, he was promoted to train new drivers.
“I was a trainer and instructor in the Air Force, so for me it’s just second nature,” Corona said. “I love teaching. … I’ve been training for three years now.”
Corona’s supervisor, David Harper, is a Marine Corps veteran and oversees Melton’s military hiring program. Harper said Corona is more than a trainer.
“He’s also a mentor to a lot of people,” Harper said. “He drives one of our military-wrapped trucks. He has a lot of influence over the fleet in general. Gus does a great job of staying visible. We have this large operations page on Facebook where all of our drivers are in and they communicate in a lot of different ways. Gus is really good about staying connected with drivers in general, answering questions, providing support, giving feedback and tips.”
Corona and Harper have made it their mission to work together on programs that raise awareness about the plague of suicides among veterans and support first responders on behalf of the company.
“I actually lost two kids I supervised that happened to decide to take their life,” Corona said. “Mental health is something that I try to help out with the best I can and do whatever I can for it.”
“A lot of veterans have challenges like that,” Harper added. “… No matter what branch you’re in, we do kind of live in our own bubble in the military. … We live with our friends, we work with our friends and we’re around our guys all the time. We work hard for each other and watch each other’s backs and there’s a certain structure and support. Whenever you leave that behind, a lot of veterans struggle with losing that identity and losing that purpose.”
Harper and Corona want to be the “battle buddy” for those who are starting the transition from military to civilian life.
“We connect and work with a lot of different veteran organizations across the country,” Harper said. “Because we have such a large veteran community, we always want to make sure we have relationships and resources available.”
More than 8.2% of employed veterans worked in the transportation and utility industries in 2023, according to U.S. Bureau of Statistics data.
In an industry where over 100% turnover for drivers is fairly common, Melton had a 48% turnover for veterans in the second quarter. Harper said he is thankful to work for a veteran-friendly company like Melton.
Gus earned the “Highway Angel” award from the American Truckload Carriers Association two summers ago for rescuing a fellow driver after a severe wreck.
The man who had once questioned his purpose in life had saved someone else’s life.
Helping hire vets and the Veteran Ready Summit
Fastport was founded to help military veterans and spouses find meaningful civilian employment. The technology company has since evolved into assisting with broader workforce development.
“A lot of that stemmed from our work with Hiring Our Heroes,” said Brad Bentley, Fastport president and former president of the Truckload Carriers Association, in an interview. “We developed something for them called the resume engine that converts military MOS [military occupational specialties] into civilian language.”
Hiring Our Heroes is a nonprofit organized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation that connects vets with civilian employers. In 2016, Fastport earned its first contract from the U.S. Department of Labor and became the DOL’s industry intermediary for transportation, distribution and logistics.
“One of the reasons we were successful in that Department of Labor bid was because of the background of several people in our organization,” Bentley said. “Our founder, a guy named Jim Ray, came from the trucking industry and had a couple of fleets and some logistics businesses that were sold about 15 years ago. He used some of that money to get Fastport going. Our CEO, Will McLennan – who was a Marine – had a successful civilian career in the supply chain industry.”
Bentley said these two Fastport leaders made for a great team to tackle the long-standing veteran hiring problem. During that time, high unemployment rates meant hundreds of millions of dollars being paid by the Department of Defense in unemployment benefits.
“[The DOD] challenged corporate America to get involved to launch these military hiring programs,” Bentley said. “Fastport’s been doing that now for about 10 years.”
The Transition Trucking Driving for Excellence Award was conceptualized shortly after Bentley started as president at Fastport in 2015. The award ceremony, now in its ninth year, celebrates veterans, employers and CDL institutions for enhancing the safety and comfort of the 3.5 million professional truck drivers on the road.
Each year, finalists are invited to a conference at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington. The grand prize is a new truck from Kenworth Truck Co.
“Instead of just a cash prize, we [asked] what would change the life of a veteran who is coming into the industry,” Bentley said. “We know that a lot of those people have desires to be business owners and follow the entrepreneurial path, so we approached Kenworth. To their credit, they saw the value in it, and for the ninth year in a row they have donated a T680 truck.”
The keys to the truck are presented each year in mid-December, the day before Wreaths Across America day at Arlington National Cemetery. While people were in town, Fastport also began holding a signing for the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve at the Pentagon.
As interest in hiring veterans grew, Bentley said he started to see smaller companies that wanted to participate but couldn’t compete with the larger companies involved.
“The trucking industry has always been patriotic,” Bentley said. “They want to hire veterans, but maybe they don’t know how to go about doing that. So we wanted to create something where people could truly become veteran-ready, and that’s where the idea for the Veteran Ready Summit came about.”
The Veteran Ready Summit will be hosted for the third year at American Trucking Associations headquarters in Washington, Dec. 11-13. Co-sponsors for the summit include TransForce, CDLLife, Veterans In Trucking and Conversion Interactive Agency.
“It’s one of the few times where all of these different people in the industry can get together. You’ve got a lot of feel-good stories: You’re giving away a truck to potentially change someone’s life, you’re highlighting your company as a military-friendly and veteran-ready employer, and you’re getting to pay respects by placing wreaths on the headstones of fallen soldiers,” Bentley said.
Waypoint Vets
Sarah Lee also struggled with the return to civilian life.
From a young age, Lee wanted to be part of a team. That’s why she joined the Army National Guard with her parents’ permission when she was just 17 years old.
“It was a wonderful way to enter adulthood,” Lee said. “Basic [training] really taught you a lot of self-respect, which then translates into respect for others – confidence, trusting your instincts and having those standards for the people around you.”
Over the course of her Army career, she would serve in Panama and in Iraq with the 216th Combat Engineers during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2004. After being honorably discharged in 2009, Lee started a photography business.
“We didn’t come back with everybody from deployment,” Lee said. “I lost a really good friend over there. Capturing those moments for families became a really deep passion of mine, because you never know from one day to the next who you’ll lose. Photos are all you will have one day of someone.”
A neck injury sustained from her military service worsened, inhibiting her ability to operate a camera, so she gave up the photography business.
“It cut my military service short for sure,” Lee said. “I was in eight years, and I definitely saw a career coming. I had made sergeant, and I was going to go the officer route after that. … Between operating the camera and hand numbness from the neck injury, it just became difficult to fulfill that same standard for my clients. Like the military again, I didn’t want to be a liability.”
The chronic physical pain combined with survivor’s guilt and a lack of purpose brought Lee to an awful place.
“In early 2017 I made an attempt on my life and survived it,” she said. “In the wake of that, I went and bought a bicycle. I hadn’t ridden a bike since high school and had no experience at all, but it didn’t hurt my neck. There was something about riding the bicycle and it didn’t hurt.”
So she continued to ride her bicycle and decided to ride it just over 4,000 miles across the country from Yorktown, Virginia, to San Francisco with the Golden Gate Bridge as her finish line.
During this journey, Lee began a preliminary sketch of what would become the logo for her new passion: Waypoint Vets.
“Service saves the heart, simplicity salvages the mind,” Lee wrote next to the sketch.
Cycling across the Golden Gate Bridge, Lee sank her tires into the sand of the Pacific. For that moment there was solitude, followed by purpose.
Lee said the friends she lost would be proud of her. “I really honored them with my journey and my personal growth to where I felt like I was in the position to give back and serve again. … Serving again saved my life.”
Three weeks after returning home, Lee obtained a nonprofit designation for Waypoint Vets, an organization that takes veterans on outdoor trips to find adventure, comradery and healing.
In 2020, Waypoint Vets took its first group of eight veterans on a canyoneering trip in Utah. The organization hosts nine trips per year around the country.
In November 2023, Waypoint Vets partnered with Wreaths Across America, Veterans In Trucking and Fastport to take 10 Vietnam War veterans in the transportation industry back to Vietnam.
During the all-expenses-paid trip, the vets took a three-day cruise, toured the country and met Vietnamese veterans who also served in the war.
“They were eating together and laughing together,” Lee said. “It was so unbelievable.”
The trip ended with the group visiting downtown Hanoi on Veterans Day.
“Just to witness their behavior and temperament over there was so inspiring,” Lee said. “They had a genuine desire to go. They were interested in reexperiencing the country and were so open to the culture.”
Wreaths Across America created a YouTube documentary video about the trip.
Lee said she didn’t know if she could go back to Iraq, but the visit to Vietnam “gave me hope for our generation to get some of that closure.”
You are not alone. Help is available for those with suicidal thoughts by dialing LifeLine at 988 or visiting 988lifeline.org. Veterans can dial 988 then press 1 to reach the Veterans Crisis Line.