The Question That Changed My Career

Before I was building connected products, before drones, before software development, I was a truck driver.

I learned early that trucking is built on responsibility. When you are operating a commercial vehicle, the decisions you make do not only affect you. They affect everyone sharing the road with you.

In November 2012, I faced a decision that seemed simple at the time.

I had completed my route and was preparing for my next assignment. Looking at the schedule, I believed I would not receive the required ten consecutive hours off before returning to duty. I did what I thought a responsible professional driver should do: I raised the concern with my supervisor.

I was not refusing to work.

I was not trying to avoid a load.

I was trying to understand whether I could complete the assignment while following the federal hours-of-service rules.

That conversation became the turning point of my career.

The disagreement that followed was not about whether safety mattered. Everyone involved agreed safety mattered. The disagreement was about how the hours-of-service rules applied to the specific circumstances.

That distinction matters.

It is the difference between a story that can be dismissed as conflict and a record that can be examined.

Reality is not always what it seems.

That is not a slogan to me. It is a lesson I had to learn slowly, through work records, financial records, family and business questions, and the difference between what a situation looks like from the outside and what the documents may eventually show.

What I Am Saying, And What I Am Not Saying

I am not using this article to ask the public to decide a legal case.

I am not asking readers to assume every system failed, every person acted badly, or every disputed fact has been finally resolved.

I am saying that I raised a safety-related concern, documented what happened, sought regulatory clarification, filed a whistleblower complaint through OSHA’s process, and kept records showing that there were competing interpretations of the same events.

I am also saying the fallout did not stay neatly contained inside one old employment dispute. Losing work, losing momentum, needing legal help, not having enough money to fight every issue as far as it needed to go, and later ending up in bankruptcy are not separate from how I understand the cost of unanswered rights questions.

Those records matter.

They include my own contemporaneous statements, correspondence with federal agencies, the former employer’s position, and later legal arguments made on my behalf. They do not all say the same thing. That is part of the point.

A trustworthy record is not a slogan. It is the place where the disagreement can actually be examined.

What Happened In 2012

The trucking issue began with hours, duty status, and whether I believed there was enough time to receive the required break before another assignment.

In my own account, I raised the concern because I did not believe the timing worked safely or legally. The company took a different position. Their position was that they believed there was enough time available and that the termination was based on other employment reasons.

That disagreement is exactly why documentation mattered.

I documented my concerns and later asked the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration for clarification about how time spent communicating with a supervisor should be treated under the regulations. The response I received became an important part of how I understood the dispute.

That experience became part of my understanding of whistleblower protections, accountability, and trust.

That did not make everything easy. It did not make the power imbalance disappear. It did not suddenly give me unlimited legal resources. It did not guarantee that every decision, deadline, finding, or interpretation would feel fair.

But it did create a record.

And the record taught me something I still carry:

When systems have power over people, the trail matters.

A Short Timeline

That timeline is not the whole story.

It is the frame.

The deeper story is what happens after a person learns that facts, rights, records, money, and accountability do not automatically line up just because they should.

What I Learned From The Process

The deeper I went into building a company around trust, authentication, identity, and accountability, the more I realized I also had to examine trust and security in my own life.

Trust cannot only be a feature we sell.

It has to be something we are willing to question, test, document, and rebuild.

It taught me that a document is not just paperwork.

A document can be a timestamp. A boundary. A question. A warning. A request for review. A way to separate what happened from what someone later says happened.

Looking back, I realize that was the first time I encountered a lesson that would follow me into every career after trucking:

Trust requires more than someone saying “this is what happened.”

Trust requires records.

Trust requires context.

Trust requires systems that preserve the story.

It taught me that systems can depend on people being too tired, too broke, too overwhelmed, or too afraid to keep asking.

It taught me that legal rights can be real and still hard to use.

It taught me that being harmed and being compensated are not the same thing.

It taught me that a person can lose income, stability, confidence, time, privacy, and opportunity while still being asked to prove, fund, and explain the very thing that injured them.

I am still an American.

I still have rights.

Financial hardship, bankruptcy, professional setbacks, unanswered complaints, and the inability to afford extensive legal representation do not erase those rights. They also should not be used to make the original harm look smaller, cleaner, or less deserving of review.

Difficult circumstances do not make a person less deserving of due process, equal protection, privacy, or the ability to ask hard questions of powerful institutions.

That belief is not separate from State of Stick.

It is one of the reasons the company exists.

The Cost Of Starting Over

The years after trucking were not a straight line.

I kept rebuilding.

I studied software through Udacity. I moved deeper into web development, electronics, automation, multimedia, remote-control systems, and drone work. I built skills in the places I could reach, with the tools I could afford, while trying to make sense of the record I was still carrying.

That path eventually included Detroit Labs, drone work, PrecisionHawk, and becoming an FAA Part 107 drone pilot.

In 2019, I relocated from Michigan to North Carolina for a position with PrecisionHawk after being told I would not be laid off within six months. Six months later, that is exactly what happened.

When my family returned to Michigan in 2021, we faced another difficult chapter. Amy lost two contracts and her full-time position in the same month. At the same time, the pandemic had created significant challenges for small businesses.

Although we had received approval for a PPP loan, the funds were never ultimately dispersed. The absence of that expected support became one more financial pressure during an already difficult period.

Eventually, those combined circumstances contributed to us filing bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy is often treated like a personal failure, as if the only story worth telling is poor judgment or bad budgeting. That is not how I see my own record.

I see a longer chain of unresolved questions: work lost, remedies not fully realized, legal and financial pressure, unanswered complaints, and a system where being right, being harmed, and being able to prove and recover for that harm are not the same thing.

Looking back, the details matter because the story is not simply about losing a job or facing financial hardship. It is about what happens when a person experiences a series of events where the records, the expectations, and the outcomes do not always line up.

I do not believe I received what I was due for what happened after I raised that safety concern.

I do not mean that as a public legal finding. I mean it as the lived reality of a person who lost work, carried unresolved questions about rights and remedies, and then had to keep surviving inside systems that are expensive to challenge and easy to disappear into.

I want qualified counsel to test what the records actually prove. I want the chronology separated into what is documented, what is disputed, what is legally connected, and what still requires review.

But I am not going to pretend the bankruptcy appeared out of nowhere.

It sits in the same founder story because it shaped what I now know about power, evidence, identity, and accountability.

It also shaped how I think about family, ownership, money, and business records.

When a person is trying to rebuild, family circumstances, business separation, bankruptcy, compensation, assets, intellectual property, and company interests can become tangled in ways that are not obvious from the outside. I do not want to make unsupported public accusations about anyone. I do want the right records preserved, the right questions asked, and the right counsel involved before anyone assumes the story is simple.

Why This Led To State of Stick

State of Stick, Co. is not a legal evidence platform.

It is not a substitute for attorneys, regulators, courts, investigators, or formal recordkeeping systems.

We are creating a platform designed to help establish stronger connections between physical objects and trusted information—supporting authentication, provenance, storytelling, ownership, engagement, and accountability.

That may sound technical, but the human idea is plain:

A physical thing should not lose its story just because it leaves the room where it was made.

A product should be able to carry context.

An artwork should be able to carry provenance.

A collectible should be able to carry a record of its edition, origin, and experience.

A place should be able to connect people to the right information at the right moment.

And a company building trust infrastructure should be willing to explain why documentation matters in the first place.

That is why our Trust & Privacy principles matter. It is why the Physical Identity Manifesto focuses on the broader category instead of hype. It is why we are careful when we explain that connected is not the same as verified.

Trust is not created by a badge, a scan, a logo, or a claim.

Trust is created when the system makes claims easier to examine.

That is the piece I am putting together now: I was a driver who raised a safety concern and learned what happens when two sides have different versions of reality. I spent the next decade trying to understand how people build systems that preserve truth, context, and trust. Now I am building a company whose entire premise is that claims should not float around detached from the physical things, records, and people they affect.

Building In Public

Building State of Stick has become part of how I move forward.

And we are building it in public.

That means documenting the wins, the failures, the technical decisions, the business questions, and the personal journey that helped shape the company’s purpose.

State of Stick is preparing bounded public demonstrations in Grand Rapids and beyond. They are an opportunity to show what we are building, invite people into the conversation, and explore what trust can look like when it is intentionally designed instead of merely assumed.

You can follow the journey here:

https://stateofstick.co/

We are also connecting with potential sponsors, advertisers, pilot customers, collaborators, and strategic partners who believe physical products and experiences can carry more trustworthy, meaningful digital lives.

I am not building this company because every system worked for me.

I am building it because I believe better systems are still possible.

Resources

If you are researching trucking whistleblower protections or workplace retaliation, start with primary sources and qualified legal help. Filing deadlines and available remedies can be short and fact-specific.

• OSHA Whistleblower Complaint Form
• OSHA Surface Transportation Assistance Act whistleblower statute
• FMCSA Hours of Service information
• National Whistleblower Center
• Government Accountability Project resources