Charley Mahon.

My long journey in business life up until now!

I’ve worked many Jobs over the years as I started working at around 8 years of age with a paper route in Los Angeles. I Liked making my own money, so I figured out how to get a second route delivering the evening Outlook paper 😁. I did things at 10 or so where my first job in construction was a demo job where I got to gut an old house and had to do so in a manner where I didn’t damage the bones of the house. Between the Paper route and that first Demo Job I learned about details and being detail oriented on the job.

I have worked many other jobs over the years, from Fishing to more Construction. Got married, join the Army was a trained paratrooper and was in military police. I loved what I was doing there but an unfortunate accident led to many broken bones and all sorts of issues with my body in July of 1993. I was finally officially retired due to medical reasons in September 1995 when I was told they would never allow me to jump out or Aircraft in flight ever again. This Crushed me!

I then worked in a retail sales for 5 years. I then opened a Private investigation Firm that lasted for about 2 years.

Through all the above, I learned a lot about business and all sorts of things business related. I also learned from my mistakes.

I took some time off and came to a decision that I really wanted to drive Trucks for a living as I simply Loved Driving.

Here is where it gets interesting to me.

I got my CDL in 2004 from a driving school and joined a company pulling Refrigerated loads. I had a great trainer who taught me so much about the industry as he had been doing this thing called "Trucking" for well over 30 years. He said you should investigate being a trainer at some point and maybe become a contractor. I laughed and swore to him that I didn’t want to teach this crazy life and I darn sure didn’t want to own one of these headache trucks ever. I Worked there for a time and then decided I didn’t enjoy that Company to the point that I was convinced that this Trucking life wasn’t for me. I had zero plans to get back out on a truck. I would just live on my retirement money from the Army and do odd jobs to pass the time.

In 2008 I was bored to death and driving the Wife nuts. I thought maybe I’ll give this trucking thing one more shot. I applied to my first Company and had a bad time with them on the phone. I then applied to Swift, as I knew some things were coming down the pipe, like Electronic Logs and the like. I didn’t ever want to feel like I needed to run multiple logs just to be able to make a decent wage. Swift called me in less than 2 hours, and I was scheduled for orientation the following week. I was assigned to a Mentor, what Swift calls their Trainers, and went out on the road with that guy for 6 weeks. I have to say I wasn’t a fan of him in any way shape or form. His outlook on training was that of “run these students as hard as I can and move on to the next”. While I was on his truck the reality was, I didn’t need a ton of training on the driving part of things, but I thought how terrible this would be for someone truly just starting out.

Prior to completing my training with this guy, I had told Swift that as soon as I was eligible, I would like to be a trainer so that new folks would have a real shot at the education offered in that short 6 weeks of on the road training and to do everything I could do to help them make the best run at this thing I loved. As soon as I met the requirements to train, I became a Trainer for Swift. I loved teaching folks. It was deep in my blood and soul. After about a year or more I had also decided that I also wanted to become a Truck Owner. My why for this was terrible at the time but it was MY why. I will gladly share this with anyone who asks.

So now here I am a Contractor at Swift and a Mentor to new drivers. I was having a great time but was starting to fall out with Swifts training department as I just didn’t feel it was about training but running as many miles with these new folks as possible. Following a Conversation, I had with our Then VP of Training I decided my Wife Rosy would be my Final Student.

This created a void in my trucking life. After some time, as I missed teaching folks this thing called Trucking. I’m honestly not sure, but a short time after stepping down as a Trainer I started talking to individuals in Facebook groups or in Terminals and sharing what I could with folks who would listen. I shared my victories and my not-so-great moments so that maybe they could learn from them and not make the same costly mistakes. I was running a small fleet of up to 3 trucks at one point and the folks I hired were trained by Me. Eventually I got a little tired of running that part of the business and decided to focus on one truck and to help as many folks as I could to do better in their businesses.

I was a member of many Facebook groups revolving around Trucking and Trucking as a Contractor, but they all left me feeling like we were doomed as an industry. Most comments were doom and gloom and just flat-out horrible advice if you could even call it that. This convinced me to start my own private group. While I built that, I stayed active in all the other groups and slowly started building what later would become Contractors Corner Consulting Group.

One of the things I knew I needed to do was find folks who didn’t just agree with me but rather find folks who had differing opinions and different ways of doing this "Trucking" thing that could show success and results. I needed someone who was willing to butt heads with me and be able to disagree on action and agree on getting to the same results. Not an adversary but an equal with varying skills that made up for my short comings and vice versa. I found that when Jeff Morton and I started butting heads on the various Facebook forums 😊. We quickly realized that, while we had differing ways to do it, we were both searching for the same result.

Contractors Corner was born from mine and Jeff’s collaboration and hours upon countless hours of comparing numbers and ways of doing things and coaching folks privately and learning from every situation we could learn from. Even at the beginning we were learning while we were teaching and coaching. To this day we learn and strive to learn daily while taking what we learn and trying to put it into a package or a process that we can share with others to help them do better in their businesses.

Here we are today!

Jeff and I have helped countless folks do better. At some point we realized that to do this thing we love even more than trucking, that we need to be able offset the cost of taking time off to work with folks one on one and to create content that will truly help folks, we needed to charge ahead and establish ourselves as Bonified Consultants.

In 2023 Jeff and I formally founded Contractors Corner Consulting Group LLC.

What we do is guide Contractors in the trucking industry to do better. If they are new to this Contracting thing or have been at it for quite some time, we can find ways to help them do even better or avoid pitfalls that we ourselves have fallen in to. We have and will continue to build relationships with other folks in the industry whom we think can help our clients and those who follow us.

We have built relationships with companies that get us far better fuel prices or better and lower cost Insurance or better Accounting. We are constantly looking for even more to offer to our members.

We are excited to work with folks Like ES Advantage and Sebrite Agency and Trucker CFO. We were Honored to be asked to participate in a 2-part Podcast with Jeff Reese from ES Advantage.

We have been invited (we are super excited about this one as well) to be on Sirius XM to talk about what it is that we do and to share with an even larger audience than we could ever imagine with the Radio Nemo folks hosted by Jimmy Mack and Colton Lawrence at the 2023 Expedite Expo in Fort Wayne Indiana.

As we continue to find new ways to help our folks learn and keep more money on their bottom lines, Jeff and I learn with them at times. We want Contractors Corner to be the place people come to, from start to finish, on their individual journeys.

Our goal is to help folks going from Company to Carrier and all stops in between as we progress in our own Journeys.