How We Came To Be...

How we came to be…

While Half Fast Hauling & Grading may be a seemingly new business venture, the work itself has been in our family for years.

I am a farmer’s daughter- my daddy would affectionately refer to himself as a ‘dumb old dirt farmer’ when asked what he did for a living. Growing up, I would spend countless hours riding shotgun in grain trucks, dump trucks, tractors...anything Daddy was driving, I was his copilot. I was and continue to be so proud to be that dirt farmer’s daughter. 

When his health began to decline and dump trucking just wasn’t feasible anymore, he sold his truck. He hadn’t listed it anywhere and really never tried to sell it. I knew deep down he never wanted to, but he knew he needed too. There is nothing more useless and costly than a dump truck sitting still. The truck sold because it was God’s timing- that particular day something told Steve Farr to stop by my parents house and ask about the Peterbilt. And something told Daddy to sell it to him.

It was about a year before Daddy passed away that the Peterbilt pulled out of Mom & Dad’s driveway for the last time. After he passed, I would see the big red truck and catch myself waving even though I knew it wasn’t my daddy. There was just something about that truck that I felt like carried part of my daddy with it. Maybe it was the pride he had driving it- the love he had for hauling, shifting gears, and that jake brake that could be heard from miles away. 

When Kirk began doing land clearing and tractor work, I knew one day we would have a dump truck again and just wished that timing was a little different- so they could’ve worked together. They say daughters tend to marry a man like their father...and right down to the red beard, I can surely see it. I married a dumb old dirt farmer just like my daddy.

One evening, while looking through used dump truck ads online...we noticed a familiar name in a listing.

“Steve Farr is selling one of his trucks,” Kirk said.

“IS IT!?” I yelped.

“Not the Peterbilt...he will probably never sell that one,” he said.

“Why don’t you just call him? Nothing is for sale until someone offers to buy it...just see,” I encouraged.

A few days went by and he called. The truck wasn’t for sale but he shared a few stories about my daddy and said he would let us know if he ever decided to sell the Peterbilt. A few more days passed and I received an excited text from my husband.

“I’m going to drive your daddy’s truck after work today!” he said.

Something told the owner to let Kirk drive the truck. Something. The truck still wasn’t for sale but after Kirk’s first call, he could tell how much the truck meant to us. My eyes filled with tears. If this was it, if this was the only time Kirk would get to drive the Peterbilt, it was enough for me. It would mean that they had shared the same truck- my husband would have shifted the same gears my daddy did for years. To some, that might seem minuscule but to me...to us...it was everything. 

Weeks went by and Kirk kept running into Steve...even though prior to calling, he had never seen him before to speak of. Something kept putting them in each other’s paths. Something. I knew when he decided to sell the Peterbilt, he would call us and I took peace in knowing that God’s timing was everything. Then I got another lunchtime text- a screenshot that said...

“I’ve decided to sell the Peterbilt, if you’re still interested…”

The general consensus was...no matter what we had to sell, we were getting this truck, and that included body parts and organs- whatever we aren’t using goes because we are figuring out a way to bring this big girl back home.

In the next week, we prayed a lot. I talked to my daddy and God a whole heckuva lot, asking for guidance, knowledge, reassurance, all the things we needed to know that this was supposed to be happening. They showed me without any doubts that it was supposed to happen.

The morning we picked up the Peterbilt, we were both so incredibly full of emotion. The signs were all so prevalent during the entire process, that I wasn’t expecting more the morning of. Just as Kirk put our pickup truck into park, a huge monarch butterfly circled us, then flew over to the Peterbilt and circled it, before flying off into the sky.

“Did you see that?” I asked, as my husband nodded. 

I didn’t have to explain why the butterfly was flying on that chilly morning. Kirk had heard hundreds of times before about the significance of monarch butterflies to my parents. When they first started seeing one another, my mom would draw a butterfly on her calendar each time they saw each other. It was something that was meaningful only to them. It was their symbol of togetherness.

Later that afternoon, Kirk showed me the below photo he had taken after backing the Peterbilt into her new spot in our driveway.

“The sunbeam...doesn’t that mean something?” he asked.

I knew the significance of different orbs captured in photos, but such a prominent sunbeam- I wasn’t quite sure. I asked my trusty pal, google. A sunbeam often ​​symbolizes miracles, angels, and a stairway or ladder to heaven. 

Directly below my search, google had a suggestion of things I may be interested in: what is the meaning behind seeing butterflies out of season? Butterflies symbolize rebirth and resurrection, hope and life. 

God winks every time you turn around if you know what to look for. ;-)

And that is where we began...again. We are excited to shift through the gears of this new but familiar journey with an angel riding shotgun to tell us how it is done.