Horace Albert
Bio
51 year old truck driver of 22 years now retired. Trying to find something to do to earn some income. I'm single and just ready to do something different. Being a black independent conservative has not made it much easier either.
Stories (4/0)
Black own family business
Here is a business I know a little bit about. I work there for about a year. I have work or several companies owned by people of color but this company was the best. Mostly because I never had to worry about my paycheck. For the time I put in I got paid for it. The company has different trucks to work with as well like, roll-offs, flatbeds, step decks, and end dumps. From the start, the owner knew he loves to drive trucks but I'm not sure he knew all the different styles of trucks he would be working with. The company is very stable. Lake City Trucking of Lake Charles, LA, has been in business since 1988. The owner is James G. Gobert. He keeps an open-door policy for all employees. Guess what I like is the company is how versatile the company is. The company also participates in the Marti Graus festival each year that they can be in it. Lake Charles is a great city to live in but it's the weather that did not agree with me. It was the rain that kept us from working most of the time. Mr. Gobert was a great broker, he knew how to get more work for us to do. The company is very employee-centered. How employee-centered you may ask? In 2019 the year of a lot of rain, was one of the most seen in that year for the area. Mr. Gobert held a vote during one of our monthly safety meetings. Because of all the rain we were having some trouble keeping drivers. The company felt that many of the drivers they were losing were due to loss in work time on the jobs due to all the rains. He allowed the drivers to decide on a $300.00 a week pay salary if they did not get the hours to make $300.00. And as I remember, I was the only person to vote against this. It was a generous thing to do but, I felt it was not good for the company because, in reality, the company would be losing money during all the slow downtime. Never been with any company that allows such a practice as that to take place. I knew then I was with a good company where the owner thought about the people who worked for him. That kept a lot of drivers with the company and help us through some tough times. I guess for me, I had simply had enough when I lost my car after the last big storm that hit Galveston, TX. I was staying on a job site about 50 miles away from the touchdown of the storm. We got about 23 inches in 24 hours and flooded out. It was a day I never will forget. The company and all the drivers were supportive of me and what had happened. Because I lived up in Leesville and did not have good transportation to work from where I lived I decided to go back on the road driving a truck until my health forced me to retire after 23 years of service. I think so well of this company I'm willing to give them a plug and tell anyone who is looking to drive a truck and live in Lake Charles, LA. area, give Lake City Trucking a look. They are listed with the BBB and certified to move hazardous waste. I want to thank everyone for taking the time to read my story and ask if you like my work and don't mind supporting me in my writing please, share out my stories keep up with my trends that are right here on Vocal Media.
By Horace Albert3 years ago in Journal
Black families need to talk at the dinner table.
So what has brought us here? The need for knowledge, we are just learning about the conversations as black families that we are very much in need of having. And to make a well-informed decision, knowledge is key. Fiduciary. What is the definition of this word? The Cambridge English Dictionary defines it as a person or an organization who is responsible for the managing of money or property that belongs to some other person or organization suitably or responsibly. This mostly means, they look out for the people they serve not the shareholders. Whether it's life insurance, health insurance or even real estate companies. Take time to find as much as you can about these companies. You will find that most of these companies want to first, educate customers on the difference between them and other companies. They want you to not only understand the cost of their products but, the real reason you need it. What an eye-opener, when a life insurance company tells you. Look! Sir or Madam. "Life insurance is not for the dead, it's for the living that's left alive to maintain a decent living". Your rent and other utilities along with food other bills are all still due and coming in the mail. The family's way of life will be at stake. These and other conversations must be had at some point. The dinner table is the best place where families that eat together should be talking about things like this. The Department of Family and Children Service offers some tips on this subject and other conversational starters on their family topic sites on getting the conversation started. Like being at the doctor's office. We need to start asking questions about things we do not understand. Black families are learning, saving money is like finding money. Being more informed about the purchases we make is very valuable. It has been said, "All the insurance in the world means nothing if you can not afford it". Dealing with the right company that will help you bundle up your accounts is a good thing. Home, life and auto all bundled together will help you save time and money. All of this while getting the best bang for your dollar. This is what black families are missing. Young adults need to be added to some these family talks. If they are old enough to understand like 17 and up. This makes them feel good and a part of the conversation. To adults, you should be to ones teaching them some critical thinking. Especially before getting them a credit card, teach them about debt. If you want them to know the truth then you should do the teaching of whatever that lesson is. A study done by CreditCard.com shows this to be true. Overall, this was true for almost all families. If you looking at some investments then look at a company called, Fisher Investments. This is a fiduciary investment company. They will structure all of their products and services around you and your needs. These are the types of companies I've learned, we all should have been dealing with. Why you may ask? Look at it like this, you don't go to a bank to buy life insurance. Learn about insurance in general. What is the difference between Whole Life, Universal Life and Term Insurance? Learn it then teach it! I think with proper research, you will find that Term Insurance is best. I hope this information has helped and you can use it to help you in your research so you can talk with your family. I would like to take this time to thank you for this read. If you like and agree with me helping you to have more information to make a more informed decision. Please continue, to read, like and share my work to support my ambitions.
By Horace Albert3 years ago in Families
Scammers
Whether you know someone who went through this process or maybe it was you? These are all really simple and easy scams. I think that's why they have worked so well for scammers. But we need some help! How can we stop them? That is a good one, right? You know of the ones where you go online looking for a job that you could do at the home cause, is it possible you got injured or had surgery? But while online, you spot this great opportunity to work from home! No experience is required and we will send you everything you need to get started along with how much the pay is for each job you do. Sounds great! You found something fairly easy to do and you get to do it, right from the comfort of your home. Makes you happy you have a computer or smartphone to work with. Well, that day comes when you get a FedEx or UPS letter from your new boss along with the instructions of what all is to be done by you. It's a bit strange cause, your new boss sent you a check or money order that you will need to cash and then fill out a brief survey. Then send a certain amount of money to different people or buy some debit cards and call a number and scratch the back of the card and give them the PINs to the person you call. But keep $350.00 for your payment plus $50.00 for gas and other expenses. The instructions tell you to be sure you started on this as soon as you get the info because there is a tracker on the delivery envelope. Hopefully, someone out there has heard of one of these types of foolish collaborations of the scammer's. There is some hope people can relate to what you need to do if you are caught up and in the middle of one of these schemes. Now, this next kind of scammer is just outright crazy! I'm trying to wrap my arms around how they are doing it the way they are online. They are openly advertising "We flip your money" and some even use CashApp and Instant Pay Pal. They even claim to do it in a fast and legit way. How? Then, they want you to do exactly what your bank tells you, to never do. Never give out your banking info like bank routing numbers and account numbers. Here is what I noticed about the scammers that make them really good advertisers. They're always in a nice car and at a nice location like a good motel or beach resort or some famous shop all out in the public. And I would be unfair to them if I didn't mention, the beautiful young woman that's in the video shorts of "Satisfied Customers"! While researching this story I've learned, they are going after people that will simply fall for scams. Most of all, those who are desperate and just down on their luck. After speaking with the administrations of both P&C Bank and CSE Federal Credit Union. I found they both agree, there is nothing legit about flipping money unless it's earning interest. That's it! What I don't get is how these platforms like Facebook or Instagram are not doing more to stop this. Maybe they can stop this at the posting of the post. Hopefully, there is a way to stop them at the posting level. They have people watching for things like this and other stuff. Why not pick this up and send it to the (Feds Fraud Department)? Let's give them some work! We can see that this has become a real problem and we need to stop the scammers in their tracks. Just when you think you have heard all the bad news. The worse part of this, are the stories of the victimizations of the people caught up in this. Many of them have lost most and in some cases all of the money that they had in the accounts that were affected by the scammers. Let's not forget those who went to prison and yet they were victims. This can be a life-changing event in most cases. Also, I found many sites that do have report buttons where you can report the possible scammer to the site itself. I would advise you do just that. We need some help and I hope I have done just that. Be careful out there everyone. Keep your hard-earned money, in your pockets. If you found this story informative and useful please, continue to look out for my work and tell your friends to read it as well. Like and share my work if you enjoyed it. Thank you in advance for your support.
By Horace Albert3 years ago in Criminal
Black families need to start talking at the dinner table.
I guess for me this not just a learned experience, I needed to make some quick income. This not only forced my hand but, made me try things I normally would not do. I did not have a lot of money so, I had to be smart about how I spent it. Learning to invest in stocks are a bit difficult for most black people. I guess because we didn't talk about it at the dinner table. Hey, like life insurance. We just did not know about term insurance. I plan to write about that later on in another story. Learning about stocks have been real interesting though. Most blacks don't know much about stocks either. The most well known black man I knew that knows about stocks is Mr. William Payne of FOX Business. He is found at (www.foxbusiness.com) On air he states he made most of his net worth from learning how to invest in the markets. What a gamble it is at times. I started out using apps. The apps made it easier because, it would separate each stock by industries. That made easy to keep up with. Learning how the stocks move up or down was very important too. This is what you have to balance out so you know which stock to invest in and how much and how long you hold on to the stock. Sometimes you needed to take it easy and buy in small amounts and sometimes buy in larger, more aggressive amounts. Thank goodness, the apps today allows you to buy much smaller amounts. My favorite one today is Stash. This is found at (www.stash.com). It let's you buy small pieces of stock like for .25 cents or so. This let's you buy more stocks so you can eye out the ones that are important to you. Some of the other apps are Robin Hood, or Acorn. They are found at (www.RobinHood.com and www.Acorn.com). Nearly all the apps let you invite people and split either stocks or funds with you and the one you bring in but Stash, goes a bit further. They have Stash Parties, where they give out free stocks to people that just log in during the Stash party time. Nearly all the apps today will help you learn to invest, I just think this app is going the extra mile in serving the customer. I think black people and other minorities have really missed the bus with investing. Learning the power of 72 or compound interest. That was a life changer to me. I learned you could start late in life and still achieve your goals in life. I think black families need to start talking about these things at the dinner table as a family to strengthen our resolve to this particular problem. Learning how to invest and how to save money will go a long way with black families setting up their financial futures. Because we as a people have gotten away down home teachings were we are going through what our ignorance have allowed us to go through. The good thing is, we can fix this. All of this will start when we start black families start back talking at the dinner table. Most minorities didn't know about what type of companies we should have even been dealing with. When it comes to insurance, banks, and stock brokerage houses. We should been dealing with fiduciary companies. This is weather it was an auto insurance or heath insurance. I still remember when the life insurance man would come to the house to pick up the payments. Back then, it was in a packet behind the door on a nail. They came to the house in person. Very few of them would even tell you to change your coverage unless you brought it up. That to me is what is missing. we can fix this. This is one of the problems in black families today, that can be fixed by black families. Right down to young black man staying there in the lives of the children they help to create. These are the tings that must change if we want anything different to happen in our lives. Yes, we must do different to get different. Passing these things down in our families will improve our future families lives. I'm only one person but this conversation needs to be had real bad. In my future story, I will go into why this part of the story and others are needed to be had by our black families today. No more blaming anyone for us not doing this, we just need to start doing this like, yesterday. These are life long lessons that are needed to be, past down to our children. How can we leave them anything, if we ourselves can't make what is needed to leave them? Young black men know about material things but, they are not looking at owning things like land, homes and legitimate business. Something that keeps money coming in. These are the stories that should be told at the dinner table. Even for me it was all the things said around the dinner table that I remember most.
By Horace Albert3 years ago in Families
