“We like to tease Stewart because he says his hobbies are, first: working on his semi, and second: working on his hot rod,” says Steve Parsons, operations manager for the Tacoma terminal of Interstate Distributor Co.
Enjoying truck maintenance has paid off well for Bob Stewart, who’s owned only three trucks in 28 years.
Years before buying the first, Stewart joined the U.S. Job Corps in 1973 and went to driving school. Upon completion, he couldn’t find a job, so he went to work for the state of Washington. For 10 years, he worked as an accident reports editor and a motor pool manager, to name a few of his jobs.
In 1984, fed up with state bureaucracy, he bought his first big rig, a 1978 International cabover. Leased to West Coast Trucklines, Stewart soon found that he was good at driving, but he lacked in other areas.
“I’m a great driver, but lousy at business, so I went to driving for companies for a while,” Stewart says. “I hauled explosives for Pacific Powder, which involved driving to blast sites and helping powder-monkeys blow up whatever they needed to.”
Although the job was a high-paying one, the hauls were seasonal, and Stewart soon switched to hauling for Nalley’s Fine Foods. Stewart ran routes all over the West until 1988, when the company went non-union.
The next day, Stewart began driving for Interstate Distributor.
