How did King’s Highway get started? by Tom Walters

 

I first started driving buses in the late 70’s during the “bus ministry” craze.  In 1987, Steve Eckmann (a good friend from Lubbock Christian University) was in an Albertson’s buying snacks.  I was working for Nabisco and stocking cookies and crackers when he walked up and told me how he was in a bind for a driver for one of their ski trips.  He asked if I knew anyone that had a license to drive a bus.  When I told him that I did, he offered to pay my expenses and my skiing if I would drive their trip.  That turned out to be an annual trip.  In the early 90’s, B. L. Hearn (in charge of the transportation department at LCU) asked me to drive a trip to Minnesota for a group of Bible students.  So, I took vacation time from Nabisco and drove them to Minneapolis for the mission trip.  On occasion, B. L. would call and ask me to take a trip.  I really enjoyed these trips and began to think I might like to do this kind of work when I retired from Nabisco.

 

After being with Nabisco for 19 years, they called us in for a meeting one morning and announced they would be doing a corporate downsizing (a nice term for saying 'goodbye, we don’t want to pay for your retirement)!  That was on October 2, 1996 – my birthday present!  I was so devastated!  When I went home that day, I really dreaded telling my wife, Annette, I was losing my job.  We had only been married about a year and I sure hated telling her I was being laid off.  I suppose I was like most men, expecting sympathy.  When I told her I was losing my job, she caught me off guard with her response.  She simply said, “So?”  I thought that seemed awfully cold.  I said, “What do you mean by that?”  She replied, “It just means God has another plan for us.”  That was a slap in the face because I know we are supposed to know that, but we forget when faced with adversity.  So, we prayed about the situation and felt God would lead us somewhere.  

 

All this happened on a Wednesday.  Two days later, on Friday, B.L. Hearn called me without even knowing about my job situation and told me that LCU decided to sell the bus that I liked so well and wanted to know if I would be interested.  I was so excited I could hardly wait to tell Annette that she was right – God would take care of us.

 

For the next few months, we worked on getting our government papers filed to go into the bus business.  Our intent was to do tours for senior citizens and to offer charter service to church groups.  We wanted our primary focus to be on church-related charters.  It has worked out that about 75% of our business is church related.  We are not in this business to get rich.  We want to offer a service at a fair price and to make a living at what we enjoy doing.

 

We officially went into business on February 24, 1997.  We named our business “King’s Highway” because we feel God led us into this business and we want a name that would remind us of how and why we got into this business.

 

We have now traveled into Canada, Mexico and 49 states.  We appreciate you for taking an interest in our business.  The people we travel with are why we enjoy doing this business.  Please keep us and our business in your prayers.

 

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