00:05 So, it turned into this whole community day and needless to say, my wife had about 4,000 people show up at her birthday party. We had TV crews there. We had the newspaper there and it just it got way out of hand real quick.

00:19 She’ll never forget that. Welcome to Six-Figure Trucker, the podcast where we share advice on how to be successful in trucking and have fun while doing so. We’ll share stories, news, and advice on how to earn six figures in trucking, and we’ll speak to guys and gals that are already doing so. Let’s get to the show.

00:46 Hello everyone and welcome to the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport where we join you each and every Thursday morning. And if you join us there, we are very grateful that you join us. And you know that this is a space where we elevate and celebrate the drivers, particularly those for Norton Transport. And last week you heard from Kevin Stallcop. Now Kevin is a seasoned driver’s been doing it all of his life. He’s been in the trucking industry. Actually owned a truck before he was old enough to drive it reasonably well and he was 19 years old when he got his first semi. He’s been in it ever since. Kevin joins us now. And Kevin, we wanted to talk a little bit about life off the road and you’ve got a very adventurous life. Needless to say—

01:29 A lot of things have happened through the years and it’s been very interesting. We actually here not too long ago, we started a nonprofit business and it’s been a lot of fun. It was totally by accident. You just never know where life’s going to take you.

01:45 Now, you were sharing with me now, if I’ve got this straight, did the nonprofit— Well, let me just ask, how did the nonprofit come to be?

01:52 The nonprofit come from my wife’s 50th birthday party? And I don’t know if she wants me to tell how old she was, but that’s we might as well because we’ve told a whole lot of people. So, I drive part-time for some entertainers. Drive tour buses for entertainers in the music industry. And that’s happened by accident, too, by some of the friends that we’ve had. We’re very good friends with an Eagles tribute band called Seven Bridges. And if you ever have an opportunity to see them, go see them. The guys are great. It’s like going to an Eagles concert with just a little bit more energy involved. But they’ve had me out. They’ve had me out on the road driving tour bus for them amongst other entertainers.

02:35 Do they tour all over the country?

02:37 They do. They do. They do 100 plus shows a year. They run everywhere. They’ve been California. They’ve been run a lot out on the east coast. They play a lot in Ohio and Pennsylvania and places like that. Georgia, Florida.

02:51 Gotcha.

02:52 Indiana. I mean, they run all over.

02:55 Now—

02:55 I was actually with them last weekend out in St. Louis. Now, you were telling me earlier you’re you can’t go into specifics, but you said you’ve driven tour buses for some big-time stars.

03:09 Yes. For major entertainers.

03:11 And you know, with the confidentiality agreements and everything, I’m, you know, I’m not really at liberty to talk about some of that, but yeah, it can be an interesting lifestyle, that’s for sure.

03:23 What’s that like driving for top shelf talent? The driving part never bothered me because I’ve drove big stuff all my life. You know, I’ve been worked on a farm. I’ve, you know, owned trucks, drove trucks. I’ve done about everything you can do. But the responsibility knowing who you have on that bus, the responsibility of it. Sometimes that can kind of mess with you a little bit and make you think sometimes, you know, and like whenever I’m hauling the Eagles tribute band, Seven Bridges you got a dozen people on that bus and, you know, they’re back there trying to sleep and it’s a whole lot different mindset. You know, you don’t want to accelerate, you don’t want to break. You just you really pay attention to your driving because you don’t want to throw somebody out of the bunk. I got you.

04:16 Yeah, it’s a little different.

04:18 Speaking of Seven Bridges, you’d mentioned it and wanted to circle back to your wife’s 50th birthday party. The two kind of came together.

04:26 Yes. We was rolling down the road and we was talking about my wife going to be turning 50 in a year or so and they said, “Hey, you know, we got to do something for a birthday. Maybe we’ll just come to your house and we’ll put on a show there for friends and family, have some barbecue or something.” And I thought, well, you know, I think we can do better than that because we actually met that band probably 18, 20 years ago in our hometown at a at our park. We got a little amphitheater there. We had a popcorn festival and the band played there and we went out and saw them. Really enjoyed them. Then we kind of followed them around a couple other places and we one of the band members was asking us said, “Hey, you know where you staying at?” Because they remembered us from other shows and stuff. And we told them where we were staying. Said, “Oh, that’s where the party will be later.” We thought, “Well, if you’ll come, we’ll buy the pizza.”

05:23 So, we did. We bought some pizzas, not knowing whether anybody would show up. They did. They stayed till like 2:30 in the morning, and we’ve been friends with them ever since.

05:32 That’s awesome. But anyway, they was talking about my wife’s birthday coming up and I said, “Man,” I said, “We can do something better than that.” So, I get a hold of our mayor in our local town and he said, “Well,” he said, “That’s all well and good to do something like that, but you have to have a nonprofit organization to be able to get the amphitheater.” I said, “I don’t know anybody. Give me somebody.” So, they did. We worked through it. And my daughter, she has an earring business where she makes her own hand beaded earrings. And that’s been very successful. I think last couple years she’s done like 12,000 pairs of those. She was in business for like 8 months and had already shipped to all 50 states and—

06:13 You know eight foreign countries. So I mean it had really went well and we went around to vendor markets. Her business is called Reese and Kate. So she recently earrings. But anyway, she wanted to do a vendor market with the concert. So we done that and had about a hundred vendors show up. We wound up with a car show. We wound up with bounce houses. So it turned into this whole community day. And needless to say, my wife had about 4,000 people show up at her birthday party. We had TV crews there. We had the newspaper there. And it just it got way out of hand real quick. She’ll never forget that.

06:53 No, no, it was an amazing day. And after all that was over with, then the mayor, he was talking to me about possibly doing it again the following year. And I said, well, I said, some things have got to change. I got to have some kind of ownership. So, we filed for our own 501c3. And we started our own business. And now we’re trying to help bands fill with some of their time slots. And we’re going out here. We’re going all over the United States booking concerts and doing different events and raising funds and the money comes back to our local community. So, it’s most nonprofits work in their communities for their community. We’re going nationwide for our communities. So, it’s a lot different than what most things do.

07:39 That’s fantastic. Fantastic. What is the name of your nonprofit?

07:43 BBG Event Group. So we’re just getting ready to put our website live. That’ll be bbgventgroup.com. So it’s things are happening. The first year we had the one event which was kind of like my wife’s birthday party and then the next year we done two events and this year we’ve got I’ve already got seven or eight that’s in the works. So things are happening. We look we’re all our corporate board of directors and everything. We’re all kind of wanting to be able to do two to three shows every weekend somewhere when we get this thing going. So we got a lot of big plans.

08:28 Sounds like it. Very ambitious.

08:30 Yep. It’s a lot of fun. So I mean we bring people in that has ideas and we try to run with them. We’ve got we got fatherdaughter dances planned. We got, you know, adult proms planned. We’ve got fishing tournaments, baseball tournaments. This year we’ve actually partnered up with our local little league and we’re raising funds trying to help them build a new ballpark. So, it’s anything that we can do to help out, do a little things in the community to help out. That’s what we want to do. We do blood drives and we do pet adoptions and all types of stuff.

09:08 That’s got to be very rewarding. I would think—

09:11 It is. It’s a lot of fun. We actually even are starting to work with the Victory Junction gang trying to raise funds for them and that’s Richard Petty’s camp he has in Randleman, North Carolina. So that’s an amazing place if you ever have an opportunity to learn about that and donate to it. It’s a great cause.

09:32 You’re listening to Kevin Stallcop here on the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport. Last week, we heard all about Kevin’s experience, his season time as a driver, and he’s, if you’re joining us now, you know he’s got a lot of other irons in the fire, and you were telling us a lot about your nonprofit there, and it has led to meeting some interesting people, and you were sharing with me before we got on the air about someone who had been through a tragedy, but has tried to make it better.

10:01 Yes. We’ve got a really good friend that he’s actually started his own nonprofit. He wants to work with teen teens against drunk driving. He actually had been involved in a very serious accident and made a mistake as a younger person and it had a lot of consequences with it and now he’s wanting to go out here and tell his story and help to try to prevent that. So, we’re looking at doing some things to be able to help that and work together with him and put some different events together. One of the things we might end up doing is some kind of a mock accident where we bring in the helicopter and a wrecked vehicle and do this at high schools and stuff. And then we’ll incorporate maybe an evening with a fundraising meal and maybe some music and stuff so that we can raise some money for some things and help benefit this and help teach these young kids and even adults.

11:04 There’s a lot of adults that need to learn that lesson.

11:08 How do you balance the two? Being on the road all the time and the jam-packed schedule you got with your nonprofit and booking bands? I spend a lot of time with my headset on. I’m on the phone a lot going down the road, which is, you know, long as I got that headset on, I’m good.

11:27 True, true, true. Was going to ask you also I mean, obvious question here. You must be a big fan of music.

11:36 I am. I am.

11:38 What’s on your—

11:38 I like about all kinds.

11:40 What’s on your playlist right now? Oh, a lot of 70s classic rock. That that’s probably the main thing that we do. 80s, 90s country music, some of the newer stuff we like. We’re always looking for new bands that that can help us out in certain ways. I’m not a big fan of the hip-hop or the rap, you know, that’s just not something that we want to really be involved with. One of our main things that we want to do is we want to help communities. We want to keep things family oriented. So, I mean, we’re not going to go out here and promote bands that has things that kind of goes against what we believe in.

12:29 So, I mean, we’re we like the classic stuff.

12:32 Gotcha. Now, when you do these bookings on these events, are they original bands, cover bands, a mixture? Most of them are tribute bands. I do have some upand cominging artists and stuff that I can pull off of. I’ve got a few pretty good big name guys that I can pull off of as well. And we’re always getting more people are interested. We’re to the point now and we haven’t done just a whole lot of stuff. We’ve only been active for about a year, but we’re getting to the point now that people are actually starting to call us because they’re hearing about what we’re doing and what our plans are and they’re wanting to call and talk to us about things. So, I mean, opportunities come along and you just got to take them when they do come along because they don’t last.

13:19 That’s very, very wise word spoken there. Is Seven Bridges are they still your big bread winner?

13:26 Yes. Yes. We love them guys. They’re like family to us. We’ve done three I think three shows with them now. But I’ve probably seen them 150 times. I’ve drove the tour bus for them. The these guys, if anybody has an opportunity to go see them, they need to see them. They’re phenomenal.

13:45 That’s great, man. I’m going to keep my eyes open because we’re down here in Georgia and if they play in Georgia, I may have to go check them out.

13:53 They play in Calhoun and Georgia quite a bit.

13:55 Okay. Well, that’s good to know. That’s not far away from us. That’s 25 30 minutes away from the office there.

14:02 We can help plan a corporate party one of these days.

14:05 Yeah. Yeah. I’ll make a note of it right here. I’ll pass it up the chain here. Kevin Stallcop joining us here on the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport. Kevin, what’s next for you off the road? Have you got a big show coming up?

14:20 Yes. May the 17th in Brazil, Indiana, we do have what we call the Reefing Cake kickoff the summer. Like I said, that is my daughter’s earring business. She’s the t one of the title sponsors for the thing. So, her website, if anybody’s interested in taking a look at her earrings, that’s just Reese and Kate.gmail.com is her email and reeencate.com is the website. She’s on Facebook and Instagram and all that good stuff. And then we are BBGeventg Group. And that we’ve also got a Facebook page for that. And the website is bbgventgroup.com—

14:59 Or they can reach out to me atgmail.com. So bbgventgroup ggmail.com will get us too if they have any questions about what we’re doing or want to get involved in any way. And we’re always looking for people to help donate because, you know, money help money makes the world go around. And if we can put a few dollars together, we can put on a show someplace and turn a few dollars into quite a bit.

15:23 And that money you guys always like you had mentioned earlier, you pump it back into the community or in your case communities.

15:31 Yes. Yes, we do. We do. We’re very transparent. You know, we want to be sure that we’re a good steward of what the money that comes in, what we do with it. A lot of times we don’t want to take the money that we get and just automatically send it right back out to a project. We want to take the money that comes in and do an event with it to where we can actually invest that money into our business. We can create more funds with it and then we can do even more. So basically, we can take a $100 and turn it into a thousand. You know, we kind of like doing things that way.

16:08 That’s a good way to do it. Good way to do it. Kevin Stallcop, one question for you. Does the your profession as a truck driver, I would imagine that helps fuel financially your passion as a nonprofit.

16:24 Yes. Yes, it has. It has. But you know, we go out here and go follow bands. We interview bands. We’re always looking for new music groups to help out with and kind of get them going. We got some local talent in our areas that we’ve worked with and you know then the tr with the trucking and everything. I’m always out here talking to people and you never know who you’re going to meet and what they can do.

16:50 Absolutely. Have you seen a band yet that that you may have booked that you saw them before they made it big and you’re like, I knew those guys before they were superstars or before they were rising stars. Have you seen one that’s on your radar right now? Yeah, we year two years ago my daughter, she was in high school and her DECA project I got to be friends with a guy named Billy Brown and he’s actually he’s been out doing some touring and everything and he’s put some songs out and doing really well. Another guy I’m not real good friends with him, but I have been around him a couple times. The Tony Justice. He’s pretty well known in the trucking industry right now.

17:37 So, I mean, there’s some people out there that, you know, I remember when they was just getting a good start. So, it’s been fun. It’s you never know where this is going to take. You know, we’ve even talked about possibility of having a benefit rodeo, and I know nothing about rodeos. Just got to find somebody that does know.

17:57 There you go. There you go. Kevin Stallcop joining us on the Six-Figure Trucker brought to you by Norton Transport. Kevin, thank you so much for taking the time to last week sharing all the experience and knowledge and advice about trucking and sharing the good times and the fun that you’ve been able to have from that and spinning it into your nonprofit and the good times that have come out of it.

18:19 Yes, I appreciate you having me on.

18:22 Absolutely, Kevin. Be safe out there. I know you’re back on the road tonight or tomorrow, so be careful out there.

18:28 All right, thank you.

18:33 Six-Figure Trucker is brought to you by Norton Transport. Norton Transport is a driveaway trucking company that customers can rely on. It offers excellent independent contract driving opportunities to professional, courteous, and qualified drivers that can provide the kind of service we deliver. If you’re interested in learning more about Norton or just want to subscribe to the show, check out Six-FigureTrucker.com. That’s Six-FigureTrucker.com.