Inspirational Thoughts On Third-Generation Small Business (Alan Ruprecht #1)
“Most successful men have not achieved their station by having some new talent or opportunity presented to them. They have developed the opportunity that was at hand.”
-Bruce Marlton
Drive Master
Identify a Difficulty
When you walk through the front door of Drive Master Corporation, there are eagles everywhere: beautiful photos of eagles soaring above majestic white-tipped mountains under the clear blue sky; eagles standing proudly wrapped in American flags; and my favorite, a three-foot wooden carving of an eagle with its wings spread widely. Awards are proudly displayed, testifying to Drive Master’s excellence in customer service and recognition for being the best family business. Drive Master’s pride in country is evident with copies of the Declaration of Independence on display in the main office.
A few more steps into the room you see a door gate designed to block a dog or perhaps a small child. It seems out of place in an office environment, but you soon understand its purpose. There it is! You hear the unmistakable voice of a small child. When you follow the voice and look over the gate, you spot an adorable three-year-old girl. She is not alone, of course. When you raise your eyes from the little girl on the floor and look to your left, you see Tina, her mother, behind a desk.
She has a telephone in one hand, and in the other, a pen one moment and a sippy cup a moment later. If you shift your gaze to the right side of the room, there is another woman. Adrienne is sitting behind a second desk, just as busy as Tina. Her facial features and stature are similar to the other two in the room, and that’s not surprising. Adrienne is Tina’s mother and a co-owner of Drive Master.
Once you leave the main office and stroll down the hall, there’s another office with a young man in his thirties, typing away at a computer. This is PJ, and he has worked at Drive Master on and off his entire adult life. Just across the hall, Cheryl is also busy behind a computer monitor. Cheryl, Tina, and PJ are siblings. Continue five feet down the hall through a door and you enter the heart of Drive Master Corporation.
Here is the multi-bay garage where millions of dollars of handicapped driving equipment is manufactured and installed into cars, trucks, and vans. You can smell the grease in the air and hear the sounds of men welding and power tools screaming from every direction. Even so, a booming voice rises above the din. Peter Ruprecht is the owner and operator of Drive Master. The names mentioned above are all members of the three generations of the Ruprecht family that have owned and operated this company since 1952.
In 1948 Alan Ruprecht was the proud owner and operator of two independent gasoline service stations. He had recently left the US military and was concentrating on building his business and supporting his young family. Then tragedy struck. Alan was diagnosed with adult polio. He was paralyzed and unable to continue working. He struggled to keep his businesses going from his bed at the polio rehab center, but the job was too much. Alan spent two years in rehab at Warm Springs Georgia, which had been founded by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1927. Roosevelt himself had contracted polio in 1921 at the age of thirty-nine, eight short years before being elected president of the United States.
After contracting adult polio, Alan Ruprecht understood that without the ability to drive he would no longer be able to work and provide for his family. Discovering that there weren’t many options that enabled people with paralysis to drive, he took the difficulties of living with polio and transformed them into new opportunities for himself and four generations of his family.
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