KEEP ON TRUCKIN’

Unable to retire, seventy-two-year-old Grandpa John stays behind the wheel

ALLEN JOHN SOKOL CLIMBS into his flatbed and prepares to haul another load of steel, pipe, and drywall from his home in Ben Wheeler, Texas, to Oklahoma, New Mexico, or somewhere else in the region.

His weathered face is highlighted by ageless blue eyes. But Sokol, who goes by John or Grandpa John, is far from ageless. He is seventy-two years old, and he is still working, unable to retire.

John has been a trucker for more than fifty years, since he graduated from high school back in 1959.

“I started on the big rigs in ’62, and with a few interruptions, have done that since.”

John tried to retire in 2002, and moved to a twenty-five-acre tract of land seventy miles east of Dallas. But it didn’t work out. He didn’t have enough money to cover his expenses.

His wife, Betty Veerkamp, had $100,000 in a 401(k) account and another $100,000 from an inheritance. John took early Social Security. But the bills for Betty’s many medications—for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes—proved too daunting. (Both Betty and John have insurance, but it doesn’t help much. “The times we have to pay [are] in the gap, when the big discounts aren’t there,” John says.)

Betty retired in 2005 from Haynes and Boone, a large Dallas law firm where she worked as a word processor, preparing documents for the attorneys.

“I made the big mistake of retiring at sixty-two. I advise anyone not to do this. My wife had a 401(k), but I did not at the last job. Hers has been exhausted. I went back to work mostly to pay for her meds that insurance didn’t cover.”

Then there were also unexpected bills.

“The mobile home that was on the property [in Ben Wheeler] when we bought it began to fall apart, and rather than let it nickel-and-dime us to death, we replaced it. That was another $500 a month.”

And because John started taking Social Security benefits at age sixty-two, he got less than he would have if he had waited.

So John went back to work two years after “retiring.”

“I have had several jobs, beginning in 2004. One in 2008 was good money, and local, but died when the economy tanked.”

The 2004 job was like what he does now, long-haul trucking in which he gets paid by the mile. The 2008 job was a temporary job for Averitt Express. John did pickups and deliveries in his local area and was paid by the hour. But then the recession hit.

John went back to work for a third time in 2011, at age seventy. And he had some trouble getting hired.

“I had put out résumés online to the headhunters and got replies from several companies, until they found out I had been working local for four years,” John said. “For some reason nobody can explain, most don’t count local work, even though it’s driving.”

John grew up in upstate New York. His parents divorced when he was four, and he moved in with his grandparents.

“This was during World War II,” John said. “Everything was rationed, and Pop was supervisor of a town road crew, so he had access to things we needed. We even got our driveway plowed, which saved me from having to shovel it as I got older.”

The family had a large garden and raised chickens, and John says he was nearly ten years old before he knew there was anything but a brown egg.

“We were very active in the church, and that laid a good foundation for the rest of my life. While I don’t attend any now, I still get devotionals online.”

When his mother remarried, John’s stepdad worked for General Electric, and the family got transferred to Louisville, Kentucky.

“I finished high school there, and began driving delivery trucks and cabs. An ad I put in the paper got an answer from a gypsy trucker, and he taught me a great deal, even though he was only a year older. He passed away in ’76 from emphysema.”

John moved to Florida in 1967 and lived in the Fort Lauderdale area until 1977, then in Fort Myers until 1982, when he went to Texas.

Now he lives in Ben Wheeler, in northeast Texas, which sounds like a crazy, colorful place. The town bills itself as the “Wild Hog Capital of Texas,” and holds events such as the Fall Feral Hog Fest and the World Championship Wild Hog Cook Off. The tiny town, named for the first man to carry mail into Van Zandt County, thrived during the late 1800s and early 1900s and is currently enjoying an economic and artistic renaissance.

When John is home in Ben Wheeler, you might find him tending his horses. He and Betty have four, all but one born in his care.

“I got interested in them while going to high school in Kentucky. Several of my classmates were into showing. I saved my money and took lessons from an elderly couple, who ran a riding school, a short bike ride from home. I attended camps with horses, and bought my first while in Florida.”

His group includes Buddy, Bobbie, and two of their offspring, Sneaky and Finale.

Though he’d rather be home spending time with his grandson and his horses, John likes being a trucker.

“I like the travel. I guess it’s wanderlust. When I was single, I’d leave the truck and ride a motorcycle.”

But trekking to Minnesota or to the East Coast is rigorous, even for a younger man.

“You have to enjoy it or it’s a hard job. I’m away from home for a week at a time, sometimes two. It used to be longer, but most companies are regional now.”

John wishes Americans had more respect for truckers, who deliver food and other products across the country and are sometimes criticized for it.

“That’s one of our pet peeves,” said John. “The general population just can’t relate the trucks on the highways with the merchandise on the shelves. Those so-called safety advocates, which are nothing more than truck haters, form lobbies to pile more and more restrictions on us, and make it nearly impossible to do a good job anymore.

“In the early days of my career, we pretty much just did it and were left alone,” John added, “but of course the government just can’t leave well enough alone, and now it’s a mess.”

How long will seventy-two-year-old John continue to work?

“I always like to say, as long as I can pass the physical, but I figure, realistically, about another year.”

What can you learn from Grandpa John’s story?

Know how much to save when starting later in life.

• I’ve always said that you should save a dime out of every dollar you make as a general rule of thumb. But if you’re getting started saving for retirement later in life, the dime out of every dollar rule won’t cut it for you. So for you, the Baltimore Sun has crunched the following numbers:
• If you start saving at thirty-five, you need to save 20 cents out of every dollar to have a comfortable retirement at a reasonably young age.
• If you start saving at forty-five, you need to save 30 cents out of every dollar.
• If you start saving at fifty-five, you need to save 43 cents out of every dollar.

Seventy is the new sixty-five.

• Recent media reports scared people into thinking they will never be able to retire. Sure, a lot of people have trouble saving today for tomorrow. Don’t believe the scare tactics. The overwhelming majority of Americans will be able to retire. The question is, at what age?
• We went through two generational cycles where people were able to retire at a younger age, relative to their life span, than at any time in history. Some people were calling it quits in their fifties because they had a pension and then Social Security later in life. So they never had to work another day in their lives. That meant people were having twenty or more years of retirement.
• Today, though, pensions are mostly gone and people are not saving enough. For most people, the new magic number is age seventy. Know your retirement horizon and work to meet your goals.

Find a job the old-school way.

• If you’re entering the workforce again after being out for some time like John was, you’ve got to treat finding a job like a flashback to fifty years ago.
• Back in 1963, people found jobs through word of mouth and by relying on friends, relatives, and work colleagues to help them network. And that’s right where we are today.
• Most jobs are filled by hirers who are likely to bring in someone they know or know of for an interview. A friend of a friend, a colleague of a colleague. People think that networking is passé. No way. Nobody likes to be asked for a job, but everybody loves to give advice. So identify some key people in your industry whom you can have a face-to-face meeting with and interview them for their career advice to make a successful re-entry.

Costco sells individual health insurance.

• With more people losing health coverage at work, Costco wants to fill the gap for its members with individual health insurance policies.
• The warehouse club is partnering with Aetna for what’s called Costco Personal Health Insurance. Aetna has publicly stated that it will sell five varieties of plans to Costco members cheaper than what the individual plans are sold for elsewhere.
• The Costco Personal Health Insurance policies are so far only available to customers in Texas, California, Virginia, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Georgia.
• For Costco, the risk is selling something as a branded product that it won’t have control of in an industry that hasn’t exactly won a lot of love from customers over the years. Will it harm their otherwise solid reputation? It will be interesting to see how it plays out.