Chapter 2

As long as he could remember back in his lifetime, Greg Castillo was discontent. Despite his best efforts, age 35 had come and he still had not realized his dream of having enough cash on hand to do whatever the hell he wanted to do whenever he wanted to do it, and no strong prospect that these days were close to arriving. A full-time firefighter, Greg had become a true product of his upbringing which had brutally taught him not to be pretentious with others despite his capabilities. He had made excellent grades in school, was responsible, and had a vision that was not common to the otherwise average group of friends from high school that he was still running around with 20 years later. He had come from poverty, and it was important to him to keep that in his mind and appreciate everything he had done to this point. Being very self-conscious, he was aware that he spent a lot of his time "slumming" with his buddies, but felt uneasy in other groups. He transferred from one junior college to another for a couple of years and his academic success was slight and discouraging-he knew he could do better, but had poor study skills and other things on his mind: Twenty-five years later he still has the makeshift beer-can trophy for winning a beer chugging contest, and he played both basketball and baseball, earning a tryout from the Kansas City Royals as a pitcher. None of his friends of family earned college degrees, so to Greg this was an unncessary step, and one that could make him stick out as dangerously--besides, one of the consistently reinfoced themes from his neighborhood was the smart yet uneducated man who succeeds in business, outthinking and outworking all those "college boys".

Greg loved telling tales from the "hood" with themes of how people would do anything to earn, or preferably swindle, a buck from someone else. If you could work both of them in together, even better: Greg used to love to tell the story of how he and his dad would put on old clothes and "bust batteries" out at an illegal junkyard on Saturday mornings, cashing in the lead for a couple of bucks on the side. But most of all, Greg was subconsciously torn between protecting the legacy of his illiterate, poverty-stricken father, who struggled to provide for his family and improving himself and pretentiously exposing his father's shortcomings. His mother told him "Be careful about who you pass climbing up your career ladder, because you'll have to see them all again when you're falling back down."

Amador, whose name literally means "lover", did his best to live up to his name, much in the way that American Indians believe that a name determines destiny. He had 7 children with 4 different women, and would tell Greg "That's nothin'-you've probably got brothers and sisters running all over France and Germany from the war!" He had lied at age 16 to enlist in the army, and an old, somewhat blurry picture of him remains hanging in their hallway, the uniform hanging bulkily off his bones, his hair touseled like a young boy, and a huge grin on his face--I have no idea how he could have fooled anyone into thinking that he was old enough to go fight.

But making children was the only sense in which he was a lover, because, other than that, he was a hateful, abusive, womanizing, bigoted man. He was an alcoholic for much of his life and physically and verbally abusive to everyone in his household. He loved to exclaim "God Damn!" before starting a sentence to get the attention of those around him. He was cartoonish-short, squatty yet broad-shouldered, completely bald, dark-skinned, and wore thick-framed glasses. Years of hard living had made him very conservative in his movements, a combination of being mentally weary and physically worn out. Greg loved him wholeheartedly and found his faults endearing, as most sons do in the presence of outsiders. One time, when describing his father to a customer, Greg acted out how painfully his father had to labor to sign his own name, "...but he did it." In another story, one of Greg's friends, Gaspar, told us about a time when he was eating with Amador in a restaurant. As a beautiful woman walked by in a short skirt, Amador, who could no longer turn his head, reached down with both hands, grabbed the chair seat, and lifting and twisting, turned the entire heavy wooden chair against the floor, making a loud squeaking sound: "errr, errr, errr, errr," as he turned the chair to watch the woman walk by. Gaspar said they all laughed so hard--partly in embarrassment because of all the noise, and partly from Amador's exclamation: "God Damn!"

I remember vividly one of my only times to see Amador-I walked onto a freight dock and saw him casually driving a forklift with a huge cigar in the side of his mouth and a 11-year old boy riding on his lap. I only met him a couple of times, but on that sunny day in May of 1992, he was just taking his grandson for a ride. Although at the time he was the owner of Greggo Zip Express, he didn't acknowledge my presence on the dock at all. Later, Greg told me that his father had no respect for people who "worked inside all day", and thought that such people didn't earn an honest living. Obviously, at the time I had no idea of the impact that this man and the company he created would have on my personal destiny. It also didn't occur to me that Amador would be dead within 2 years, or that twelve years later that same 11-year old boy and his young wife would be imprisoned for life for his third armed robbery of a post office.

Amador had worked for a large national freight carrier for 25 years after he got out of the army. He joined the teamsters and loved to hang out in the union hall, drink coffee and smoke cigars. Seniority had enabled him to select from among the prime routes, so instead of hustling all over town all day making multiple stops, he had 2 large deliveries to make each day at locations where he was able to wait for several hours, drink coffee, and play dominoes. He always had side businesses going, buying and selling things that came his way, reclaiming battery lead--anything to get as much money as he could into their family's budget. Although they lived in poverty in the once prestigious but now aging Oak Cliff section of Dallas, Texas, they were always clean and tidy, and had an averaged-size house in good order. And at about 5:30 every day, Amador switched from coffee to beer.

In 1977, the freight carrier folded, and Amador saw an opportunity. He and a partner established a small local delivery company consisting of an old truck which he drove around town making deliveries. Over time he set up a small office with a secretary who would take orders and act as dispatch and bill the customers. Amador was a steady worker and was extremely dependable to meet delivery obligations, so he developed a good reputation for high quality, hands-on service and his business grew because of this reputation. Greg was in high school and remembers picking up small loads and delivering them in the car before classes, earning $100 per week. By putting together a small, loosely organized network of reliable people who could help with deliveres, truck maintenance, and any other job that needed to be done. Tolerating no failure, Amador successfully maintained his business for about 10 years, making more money that he ever had as a teamster and remaining humble in his success, keeping the old truck running and not even considering replacing it. Over time, he bought his partner out and allowed himself to momentarily be proud of sole ownership. For professional services such as tax preparation and the occasional legal issues that inevitably arose, he did as he had learned--he loyally stuck with the people that he and his partner had started out with. Indeed, when twenty years later I questioned why our legal counsel was 60 miles out of town when Dallas is overrun by a horde of lawyers, the explanation was that, since Amador's partner lived 60 miles out of town in 1977 when they went into business, and had handled the establishing of the corporation, he had hired someone from the town in which he lived. Amador stayed with him until he died, and then Greg had kept him even after that--perhaps since this lawyer knew about his illteracy and no explanation was needed, as long as Amador could carefully sign checks to pay him.

In 1987, Greg was made a partner in the business. Within five years, Amador's health started to deteriorate and Greg had the accountant calculate all the assets. He then wrote a check for the net worth of the company and had papers drawn up to transfer ownership to Greg, which Amador agreed to. Although the papers were never executed, an issue that would later result in a string of troubling yet funny confrontations, Greg assumed ownership of the company. By doing this, he gave himself permission to not pursue college any more, justifying it by pouring his focus into developing his "family busines". Also by this time, Greg had accrued 15 years seniority in the Dallas Fire Department, which provided a steady income which enabled him to take risks with his newly acquired company.

don't forget to add these funny things:
Solemn, almost reverent about his dad. The dignity of hard work.

Greg had to buy the company 2 times because he never filed the paperwork, and then he still didn’t file the paperwork so it is still 50:50 in his and his mom’s name—his wife doesn’t even know this

Greg also bought his parents' house 2 times also because he paid his mom for the house then she took out a home equity loan which he had to pay off and then officially buy the house from her. His logic was that she needed money and he could either just give her the money and lose it all or give her money for ownership of her house and let her enjoy the money that his dad had worked his whole life to earn. Then she went around, acting “big time” and spent it all and he ended up having to keep writing her checks anyway.

Greg's bros and sisters thinking they were part owners of the company because they were ignorant and thought their dad owned it…and thus their mom owned it—she used this to get favors from them. Greg never told any of them that he had bought out his dad. They are selfish and conniving anyway, so this drove a wedge between them all. And they all have different mother/father combinations anyway.

Greg's wife Marisol and how she absolutely hates the company. She wouldn’t call him through the company phone lines, never walked through the doors, didn’t participate in the (very few) company gatherings.

The name change—in order to make it sound more professional, Greg changed the name from Greggo Zip Express, Inc. to GZE Transport, Inc. In the meantime, he tried a couple of other things, like GZE Transportation, GZE Express, GZE Delivery, and had stationary/cards/billing/truck signs made up with various combinations of these things—because he didn’t want to be wasteful, he used all these varieties of the name until they were used up, so we confused the hell out of all of our customers—it reminds me of the Beverly Hillbillies doing things that they thought would impress the city-folk that would just show how ignorant they were—we made tons of mistakes like that trying to put on an appearance of being “big time” but actually looking like we didn’t know what we were doing.
Multiple co's—this can get confusing so just list them out:
GZE Transport, Inc.—Local Delivery
Triland—Long Haul and Hazmat transport
Skyline Leasing—owned equipment and leased to the other companies
GZE Logistics—bus company (which I created and ran)
Eventually, Logisticorp—an LLC was our holding company, controlled assets, billing, etc.

Amador still telling people he "owns this SOB" and walking around with a hammer threatening to whack somebody when he got mad, and, later, when he was out of it.

intrastate authority and the 5 families—In Texas before deregulation, there were only 5 “family-owned” companies that had intrastate authority, which is the ability to travel across defined “zones”. Greggo Zip could get away with violating this sometimes because it was so small—they ran drill bits down to the coast for a lot of money in the ‘80’s. But as they got bigger and tried to go legit, they ran into the authority issue. Greg naively tried to take on the 5 companies with authority and even testified in a state hearing to the railroad commission, but it wasn’t until about 10 years later that it was deregulated. In the meantime he made enemies which we had to turn around and partner with in later years.
Also, go back and add some more imagery and parenthetical notes.