All Around Georgia

With my bags barely unpacked from Ireland, I packed them again and headed to Georgia for a work trip last week, this time to ride around with regional manager Bryan Setzer, who oversees the territory managers in Texas and Louisiana and himself manages the territories in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and part of Louisiana.

Riding with a TM is on my official list of goals for the year at work, to better understand their role at Vermeer and the scope of everything their title entails, to learn about regional markets around the country, and to meet a few of the dealers in those areas. I definitely did all of those things.

Bryan lives in Montgomery, Alabama, so my tour started there after an early flight on Monday. Montgomery has a great deal of history involving the civil war and civil rights movement. We drove to Cumming, Georgia afterward. We called on two dealers in the area the next day, stopped at a customer's place to help him set up a TM850, (editor's note: this customer happened to be Bill Elliott, the winningest NASCAR driver ever. He's also a very agreeable fellow) and hiked to Amicalola Falls, which is on the approach trail to Springer Mountain, the starting point to the Appalachian Trail. We met four dealers on Wednesday all over eastern GA, and wound down to St Simon's Island that night. After breakfast on Jekyll Island on Thursday, we made a long haul west to Elko to the aptly named Perfect Equipment, a long-time farmer-dealership. Though I'd known nothing about it before seeing it, we stopped at the Andersonville Civil War Prison Camp and National Cemetery. Learning about the unimaginably miserable conditions in a place where 12,900 people had suffered and died and seeing the resting place of those soldiers and those of other wars was very powerful. We made it back to Montgomery afterward, with a wander through the Auburn University campus. We'd covered 1440 miles in four days

The food on this trip was outstanding. Bryan has been doing this for years, so he knows all the best places. Georgia and Alabama offer both good barbecue and seafood. Gator tail and whole steamed shrimp on the Alabama River, listening to live blues out on the patio wrapped up the trip very well.

Being a TM is tough to imagine; 60,000 miles on the road a year, managing and dealing with scores of people, and keeping a handle on so many constantly changing ins-and-outs are all daunting tasks. I much better understand that end of the business after this educational trip.