“From the Journal Gazette - FortWayne.com” plus 2 more |
- From the Journal Gazette - FortWayne.com
- Area’s job market shows healing signs - Fort Wayne Journal Gazette
- For Long, survival was tenuous before record fine - NASCAR
From the Journal Gazette - FortWayne.com Posted: 11 Oct 2009 02:55 AM PDT The health of the regional job market is on the mend after months of suffering more acutely than the rest of the country. In the three months ended Sept. 30, employers in northeast Indiana and northwest Ohio announced plans to add 1,080 more workers than they planned to cut, according to a quarterly analysis by The Journal Gazette. Its the third such analysis this year and the first to suggest a net gain of jobs in the 15-county region. As in the previous two quarters, manufacturing was the dominant sector in the most recent economic scorecard. Big announcements at two of the regions manufacturing powerhouses accounted for 1,000 of the 1,670 jobs that employers promised to create. General Motors Co. announced last month that with the closure of a truck plant in Pontiac, Mich., it would add a third shift at its Allen County assembly plant, bringing 700 jobs to the region by April. And after a private-equity firm bought Decatur-based Fleetwood RV, it announced in August that it would add 300 jobs to its workforce of 630 by mid-November. The analysis is based on announcements of which The Journal Gazette was already aware, but it does provide a snapshot of the area economy. And John Stafford, director of the Community Research Center at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, said the numbers jibe with statistics his agency is compiling. Were just measuring audible sound, he said, explaining that many smaller job decisions probably arent publicly announced. Even so, the numbers reflect a tentative recovery in a regional manufacturing economy that fell further and faster than other sectors did. In the first three months of 2009, companies announced 2,500 layoffs or cuts and 850 hires. In the second quarter, 4,560 layoffs and cuts were announced, compared with just 512 hires. The region and the entire Midwest lost manufacturing jobs this year as companies cut production more quickly than sales plummeted, cutting deeply into inventories, said William A. Strauss, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago who compiles the Midwest Manufacturing Index. I think the financial crisis hit manufacturing more heavily than it did other parts of the economy, Strauss said. Car and truck sales, for example, fell 27 percent in the first eight months of 2009 compared with the same period of 2008. But production was slashed by 46 percent, Strauss said. The recession and tighter credit markets made it difficult for consumers and small manufacturers to get loans and do business. And it helped tip some huge companies such as General Motors and Fleetwood Enterprises into bankruptcy. This content has passed through fivefilters.org. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Area’s job market shows healing signs - Fort Wayne Journal Gazette Posted: 10 Oct 2009 11:56 PM PDT The health of the regional job market is on the mend after months of suffering more acutely than the rest of the country. In the three months ended Sept. 30, employers in northeast Indiana and northwest Ohio announced plans to add 1,080 more workers than they planned to cut, according to a quarterly analysis by The Journal Gazette. It's the third such analysis this year and the first to suggest a net gain of jobs in the 15-county region. As in the previous two quarters, manufacturing was the dominant sector in the most recent economic scorecard. Big announcements at two of the region's manufacturing powerhouses accounted for 1,000 of the 1,670 jobs that employers promised to create. General Motors Co. announced last month that with the closure of a truck plant in Pontiac, Mich., it would add a third shift at its Allen County assembly plant, bringing 700 jobs to the region by April. And after a private-equity firm bought Decatur-based Fleetwood RV, it announced in August that it would add 300 jobs to its workforce of 630 by mid-November. The analysis is based on announcements of which The Journal Gazette was already aware, but it does provide a snapshot of the area economy. And John Stafford, director of the Community Research Center at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, said the numbers jibe with statistics his agency is compiling. "We're just measuring audible sound," he said, explaining that many smaller job decisions probably aren't publicly announced. Even so, the numbers reflect a tentative recovery in a regional manufacturing economy that fell further and faster than other sectors did. In the first three months of 2009, companies announced 2,500 layoffs or cuts and 850 hires. In the second quarter, 4,560 layoffs and cuts were announced, compared with just 512 hires. The region and the entire Midwest lost manufacturing jobs this year as companies cut production more quickly than sales plummeted, cutting deeply into inventories, said William A. Strauss, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago who compiles the Midwest Manufacturing Index. "I think the financial crisis hit manufacturing more heavily than it did other parts of the economy," Strauss said. Car and truck sales, for example, fell 27 percent in the first eight months of 2009 compared with the same period of 2008. But production was slashed by 46 percent, Strauss said. The recession and tighter credit markets made it difficult for consumers and small manufacturers to get loans and do business. And it helped tip some huge companies – such as General Motors and Fleetwood Enterprises – into bankruptcy. The 2,600 workers at the Allen County truck plant were idled for 10 weeks starting in May as bankrupt GM struggled to reduce inventories. But after the new General Motors Co. emerged from bankruptcy court in July, inventories fell further than expected, thanks in part to the federal Cash for Clunkers program. In July, GM announced it would spend $46 million retooling the Allen County plant so it could make heavy-duty pickups. In August, GM said it was cranking up production in Allen County and at its Defiance, Ohio, foundry. Then in September, GM said it was adding a 700-employee third shift in Allen County. Many of the new workers at the plant will come from the roughly 1,000 who lost jobs this month when GM closed its truck plant in Pontiac, but it still will be a boon to the regional economy. Even though the biggest news in the regional job market for the quarter is the new auto industry jobs, the sector also accounted for the biggest losses. GM announced in August that 175 workers – 115 in Allen County and 60 in Defiance – took advantage of a second round of buyouts offered this year to employees. And in July, parts maker Meridian Automotive Systems Inc. closed its Grabill plant, putting 120 out of work. For Fleetwood, orders have steadily grown since summer, said John Draheim, president of the new Fleetwood RV. The problem has been in getting parts. "The supply chain has been fractured," he said. While most firms that directly supply Fleetwood made it through the downturn, some suppliers didn't, causing disruptions. "Occasionally we have to take some down days to let them catch up," Draheim said. Even so, Fleetwood's staffing was "a little bit north of 850" last week and growing, Draheim said. The third-quarter's third-largest job addition also was in the RV industry. Sweden-based Dometic LLC announced it would move 116 jobs from Mexico to LaGrange by 2012 to make retractable RV awnings. Overall, the net additions to the regional workforce in the third quarter were modest compared with the losses announced earlier in the year. Fleetwood, for example, likely will finish 2009 with about 400 fewer workers in Decatur than it had in 2007. And some huge losses might loom. Navistar Inc. is considering buying an office complex in Lisle, Ill. Navistar won't say whether it's thinking about moving more than 1,000 well-paying jobs there from Fort Wayne, but the company has told Lisle officials more than half the 3,500 office employees would come from out of state. Other than Fort Wayne, the only city where Navistar has a sizable white-collar operation is Knoxville, Tenn., where it employs 89, according to the company Web site. But as the Federal Reserve's Strauss meets with business leaders throughout the Midwest, he said things are slowly getting better. "There has been a very significant change in terms of business confidence," he said. Jeff Rohyans of New Haven also is more confident. In January, he was laid off from the Parker Hannifin plant in New Haven. He drew unemployment for six weeks before going back to Parker Hannifin on temporary status in April and then moving to a temporary job at steel fabricator Almet Inc. in June. He took more than a $3 hourly pay cut from the $14 an hour he made at Parker Hannifin. But after commercial construction starts to recover, Rohyans, 35, expects to be made permanent at Almet and to get the insurance and other benefits that come with it. Judging from the train traffic he's seen through New Haven, Rohyans said he feels the economy is on the mend. "I like to use the phrase 'cautiously optimistic,' " he said. This content has passed through fivefilters.org. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
For Long, survival was tenuous before record fine - NASCAR Posted: 07 Oct 2009 11:28 AM PDT By now you probably know the name, although you might not be able to place a face with it. But when it comes to drivers in NASCAR, Carl Long might be as close to the Average Joe as they come. Long's story, of course, is far from average, his record fine for having an oversized engine earlier this year during NASCAR's All-Star weekend having sent shock waves through the garage area and his car, perhaps for ever more, home, where it currently sits in a friend's shop, motor-less. And not because NASCAR confiscated the illegal one, and the secondary blew up, but for the simple fact that for single-car operations such as the one Long tries to run, having enough money to purchase engines -- he doesn't have the means or technology to build his own -- is in and of itself a major obstacle to getting to the track, yet alone trying to raise the capital to pay off a $200,000 fine to get back into NASCAR's good graces. Before we continue it must be noted that for Carl Long the race car driver, he is in good standing with NASCAR. His original 12-race suspension was reduced to eight, and he has served his time. Long was at Kansas Speedway this past weekend, not as a driver but as an employee of Front Row Motorsports, where he helps out in the garage and, quite frankly, anywhere else the team may need him, which includes acting as a chauffeur when a member of the pit crew is a late arrival to the airport. But while Long is allowed back at the track, the car that he owns, the No. 1(46) Dodge, is not, nor is the person officially listed as its owner, Long's wife, Danielle, affectionately known at DeeDee. Also prohibited is Charles Swinger, the man to whom the fine was levied. NASCAR doesn't allow the same person to be listed as both driver and crew chief, so Swinger signed on the dotted line. And now he's paying for it, mainly because it's a fine too steep for Long to pay. "If I don't ever race again, it's going to be a big detriment but to me the biggest thing is my buddy Charles is out in left field. He's stuck with a bad name on his license and may never be able to get a license," Long lamented. "I'm doing everything I can to find a way to generate enough money to pay his fine." Through donations and so forth, more than $22,000 has been raised, according to Long's Web site, www.carl-long.com, and a fund-raising effort is in the works. HOW IT USED TO BE BEFORE JEFF GORDON All Carl Long ever wanted to do was drive a race car. Not necessarily own it. Long caught the racing bug growing up in his hometown of Roxboro, N.C. His father, Horace, raced Volkswagen Beetles in the early '70s before moving on to the Baby Grand Series. He had a 4,000-square-foot shop and soon his son would race the very same cars he once had, at times Carl Long racing against his father and two uncles. "When I grew up, I played sports and I was always just mediocre," Long said. "But once I started racing, it clicked. And I won races and I won championships and that just fed me to want to do more." Long won track championships at Orange County Speedway in Rougemont, N.C., and at South Boston (Va.) Speedway. He worked his way through the ranks, biding his time until it was his time. "It was always known that you had to be 30-years-old and a track champion before you get a chance to run in a Cup car or a Nationwide car. Then Jeff Gordon comes along younger than me and then all of a sudden everybody wanted a young, hot Cup driver." For Long, the opportunities were few and far between and when they were there he admits he didn't capitalize on them. "Everything I've done when I got into Cup racing was to give myself a good enough resume that [some team] would hire me," Long said. "It's all about taking advantage of the opportunities that were presented to you. I think more so on mine I never got a good opportunity because I was taking every opportunity. When I took bad chances and opportunities I basically got a bad look." Long says there are many extenuating circumstances that can doom an opportunity: the track may not best suit the driver's style, there may have been a problem with the setup, etc. "You're only as good as your last race. Nobody knows what goes on inside the garage. If something was wrong nobody knows it. All they know is he qualified and this is the speed he ran, good or bad," Long says. "Just having that right opportunity, that right break. It's almost like hitting the lottery." Long has had his share of scratch-offs, but nothing that's paid off big time. A cup of coffee here and there, Kyle Petty offered assistance and later a deal with Raynard McGlynn that netted him his most consistent time behind the wheel, culminating with nine races in 2005. And though he and McGlynn had forged a partnership of sorts -- combining McGlynn's financial backing with Long's car -- the sponsor at the time wanted another driver, and McGlynn had no other option. Long was out. He's made just one race since, in 2006, driving for his current boss, Bob Jenkins of Front Row Motorsports. Of course, Long's most notorious Cup moment came in the final race at North Carolina Speedway in 2004, when driving for Rick Glenn he flipped his No. 46 Dodge several times but was uninjured. "I was just hoping when I ran good somebody would hire me. But it's only when I was running bad that somebody was looking for a driver," Long said. "All I ever tried to do was to go run good enough and respectful enough that people would look and say, 'Wow, Carl Long took that raggedly, pile of crap car and made the race with it. Maybe we should give him a job.' "I think if I got in a good car, I would not run bad. I can honestly say I don't think I've ever had top of the line, current equipment. Most of the teams that I've driven for were either looking for a cheap driver or a driver who can help them get their car set up and help them over the knowledge curve, and I always volunteered to do that." HOW THE BOTTOM HALF LIVES To truly understand what a $200,000 fine is to a driver of Carl Long's means, perhaps a little clarification is in order. "I reckon the common thought is, I'm a NASCAR driver, and NASCAR drivers have a boatload of money. Most of them that are successful, they do," Long says. "I always wanted to make a lot of money in it, but it just never happened. I'm just like you and the rest of the guys in the world. I just go month to month trying to pay my bills." In fact, Carl Long Racing is more of a side gig than anything else, something that in the past would bring in an additional $20,000 to $30,000 a year. "My No. 1 priority is Front Row Motorsports. That's my paying job. That's how I live," he says. Long would work in the Front Row shop all day, then on his own car at night, wherever it happened to be. Long owns three cars: the No. 1(46) Cup car, which currently is being housed at Travis Carter's shop; a Nationwide Series car, which is in Long's garage -- a detached, 25x30-foot building that serves as his race shop -- behind his house; and an old Cup car (that can be used in ARCA) that sits "beside my kids' toys" in a garage in front of the house "and now my wife has to park outside." The house, by the way, is a modest 2,500-square-foot home located in Troutman, N.C., about six miles north of Mooresville, N.C. "I moved to Mooresville to make a living in racing, and this is all that I have," Long says. "I bounce around from a few places here and there, and there's always guys that will help me. I'll load my car up on my trailer, and we'll go work on it at their shop. They got more equipment. "I made it happen, but them long nights and stuff like that, they get to you when you hit 42, they weren't so bad at 22." Long makes due on what other teams discard. He buys used equipment: his current Cup car, for instance, he bought from Robert Yates. He's purchased engines that other organizations have used for testing, or because that team was switching manufacturers. "Over the years, I've spent my life savings buying cars and buying motors and stuff like that," Long said. "I've been able to go to the race track and all my goals have always been to at least break even. When I leave the race track I don't want to owe anybody." As a result, Long did a majority of the work himself. "I had knowledge enough that I was able to go to the race track and pretty much make races and set my car up. I just did all of the jobs myself. That's typically how I had to race," he says. "It's hard for me to imagine a race car driver that don't know how to hold a wrench. But we have them. There are some guys out there that are driving race cars that have no mechanical ability." NASCAR, of course, requires a pit crew to race. For Long, they are volunteers, people he has selected who take vacations or time off from their regular jobs. He covers their expenses, but they don't make any money unless the team shows a profit. Carl Long Racing lost money in 2009 even before the penalty. "We just kind of went race to race. We started off with a plan at the first of the year. And when that plan was stopped, the ball stopped rolling pretty quick," he said. ONE RAINY DAY AND ONE 'FINE' DAY As the 2009 season approached, Carl Long had a plan in place. He had picked a select number of races from which to try and qualify his car. He had paid $14,600 in license fees for pit crew members. First up was Daytona. He spent $48,000 to get his car to the track, and was armed with $25,000 in sponsorship money from Romeo Guest Construction and $21,463 for finishing 17th in the Gatorade Duel. But he failed to make the race. The next race Long had targeted was Martinsville. Dennis Setzer was going to qualify the car. But rain canceled quals, and Long was left money out of pocket. Charlotte was a chance to recoup some of those losses, starting at the All-Star Showdown. "I was going to make 10,000 at that race. And that would kind of cover for some of the losses that we had occurred," Long said. But things didn't work out that way. First, the addition of two extra cars to the Showdown lineup changed the winnings scale, and instead of last place receiving $26,000, the last two placing cars each were to receive $5,000. Long's backup engine blew, as a result of improper installation, three laps into the race. He finished last. "I spent $16,000 to get there, I lost two complete engines and I got a 5,000 check," Long said. But the bigger hit was still to come. Long's first engine overheated in practice. Once an engine is replaced, it is submitted to NASCAR for inspection. That's when the engine was found to be .17 cubic inch over specification. At first, Long was assured by the engine builder that the heat caused the motor to expand beyond limit. (Note: Long does not mention the engine supplier for legal purposes). NASCAR kept the engine throughout the weekend, and inspected it that Monday after it had cooled. "They went back through it and said there was distortion from heat, but what they were giving me and the size they were giving me included allowing for the distortion and it was still too big," Long explained. "Both the bore and the stroke was legal, but not legal together in that combination." NASCAR's response was the loss of 200 drivers' points for Long and 200 owners' points for his wife, DeeDee, and both were suspended for 12 races. Crew chief Charles Swinger also was suspended for 12 races, and hit with the record $200,000 fine. To say Long was flabbergasted would be an understatement. "The way to describe it, it would be as being as shocked waking up one morning and finding out you're not a boy no more, you're a girl," he said. "The thing that bothered me, and that's why I reckon I got most distraught about it, is because I've seen so many infractions that's happened in the garage area that NASCAR has pulled people to the side and said, 'Look, you need to get this fixed before next week and you need to take care of this and you need to take care of that. I expected some kind of fine and some kind of penalty, but not nothing that was going to pretty much put me completely out of business. I had an engine that's wrong so this is what they come up with, and I've got to find some impossible way of paying for it." Long said it didn't always used to be that way. "NASCAR has always, as long as I've been a part of it, had a heart. They'd always come and say, 'Look, we know you didn't build this engine.' They would have drug me to the back of the trailer somewhere, I would've got my butt chewed for having this motor, they would've got the engine builder and chewed his butt for putting that thing out there, they probably would've kept the engine and that's all that would have ever happened." Long went before the National Stock Car Racing Commission to plead his case. Again, he was working as he drives, a man unto himself. The engine builder didn't send a representative to the hearing. While Long's suspension was shortened, the fine stuck. "They wouldn't back off of it, they wouldn't change it," Long says. He estimates that had he made every race he planned to enter in 2009, his combined winnings still wouldn't have covered the fine. Long's return to the track at Kansas was somewhat tempered by the news that NASCAR warned the teams of Jimmie Johnson and Mark Martin that their cars were perilously close to violations. "Every week that I've ever been to the race track, there's somebody, somewhere, that pushed the envelope on something new, that tried something different that wasn't in the rules, they were in the gray area, or pushed it as far as they could, and NASCAR said, 'Hey, don't do that, fix this before you come back to the next race,'" Long said. "That's always been a part of it, that's why it was a shock to me that they threw me under the bus and tried to make a poster child out of me. Every one of those guys in that trailer knows I didn't have anything to do with building an engine." But as Long found out from others at Kansas, NASCAR isn't about to back down from its position. "Guys said that NASCAR, for the next three, four, five races after my deal, they have been a stickler," Long said. "NASCAR's taking a whole lot harder stance on being close than they have in the past. "But what you've seen this week and this time is what I'm accustomed to in NASCAR." HELP IS ON THE WAY Friends have lined up to help Carl Long pay the fine. To date, 501 persons and businesses, from all across the United States and into Canada, Belgium and the United Kingdom, from David Reutimann's pledge of $5,000 to 50 cents from Bryan Rockwell, have contributed in the form of donations or merchandise sales. Dan Harvey, a semi-retired insurance adjuster from Knoxville, Tenn., and all points beyond, really, has donated $500, and the motorcycle club to which he is a member, County Roads Group Riding, has chipped in, as well. Country Roads Group Riding has organized a fund-raiser for Carl Long. The event will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 18, at Memory Lane Auto Museum. Long will be at the museum to sign a special autograph card, or you can bring your own souvenir to be autographed. The event will also include drawings for various door prizes, as well as a sealed bid auction for some items. Harvey is No. 2 on the donations list, but No. 1 in spearheading efforts to raise more money. Through his motorcycle club, a fund-raiser has been organized for Oct. 18, the day following the Cup race at Lowe's Motor Speedway, at the Memory Lane Auto Museum in Mooresville. "One night he called to thank me [for my donations] and from that we started talking," Harvey said. "I don't know where it's all going to lead. It's kind of going down this road to who knows where?" Harvey used to follow NASCAR, sometimes literally -- he lives in an RV and travels extensively -- but has lost interest in recent years. "At one time, for several years, I was a pretty die-hard fan," Harvey admits. "I went from watching every race, either I was at the race or watching it on TV. But just the way NASCAR was evolving, the way that they changed the cars, the thing of newer drivers and the older guys kind of getting shoved out, I just lost a lot of my interest with it." That's when Long's story piqued his interest. Harvey remembers watching Long practice one time at Bristol -- which just happens to be Long's favorite track -- but didn't know much else about the driver. "Everybody in the group that I was with said, 'Oh, that guy, he's a single [-car] team, look at his times, he's going to be lucky to qualify' and all this kind of stuff. I was like, 'Wait a minute, don't sit here badmouthing this guy. We paid to get in here and watch him. You know you'd like to be out there doing exactly what he's doing even if he comes in last place.' "I knew the name, I knew he wasn't full time, but I didn't know him until he got hit with this big fine." At first, Harvey was like many who were outraged with the severity of the fine. "I understand there is a big rule violation, but when I first got started thinking about it, it was like, you know, if this would've been a big team, $200,000 would've been nothing. What would've killed that would have been missing the races and the points," Harvey said. "I started out believing that NASCAR, just like our court system here in America, ought to rule on everything by a case by case basis. I just felt like it was too much. But then on the other hand I also know that probably the best thing is to keep it level across the board and that it's going to be the same fine for everybody. The unfortunate thing is Carl just doesn't have the money that a lot of teams have." That's where the fund-raiser comes in. Country Roads Group Riding is planning a ride from Knoxville to Mooresville, and Harvey hopes other motorcycle clubs join the ride from points all over. Door prizes and auctions are planned, and Long will sign autographs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. "The idea developed that fans might be interested in meeting Carl face to face, hearing a little bit about his story and about himself. I know that when I met him I was much more impressed with him," Harvey said. "There's no doubt about it, the boy is a racer. When you talk to him he just really comes across as being honest, an ol' North Carolina country boy, and I would just like to see him get back on track." Harvey also hopes other drivers will donate items to be auctioned, one way or another. "I laughed, I told Carl, I said, 'Carl, get you a Crisco can and take it over to Dale Jr.'s pits and ask the pit crew when they sweep up his lug nuts to put them in that can. Then put them in your pockets and bring them home.' I said, 'We'd probably get a $100 a piece out of Dale Jr.'s lug nuts.'" Just how much of a racer is Long? When Harvey suggested that Long should bring his Cup car to the fund-raiser, Long went to work. Not only had Long lost two motors at the Showdown, but the nose of the car had been damaged, too. "He stayed over [at the shop] two nights, late, putting the front end back on, never told me how much work it was going to be to get it done, or how much money it was going to cost to get it to a point where he could set it out for fans to look at. But he did it. That's just kind of the way he does it," Harvey said. Harvey admits he doesn't know if the fund-raiser will be successful. "I told Carl, I said, 'You know, Carl, I've never done this before, it may flop. We may not earn $500 but I want you to know, that if it does, we're just going to learn from it and we're going to come back and do something else. This is not just a one-shot deal.' "I'd hate to think he's going to end up at your local Chevy dealership, working on air conditioning units, but that may be what happens, I don't know. Hopefully, we'll be able to help him to prevent that. SINCE THE SUSPENSION Carl Long hasn't raced any car, any series since the suspension. He refers to his time away from the track as a "vacation." Besides working at Front Row Motorsports, it was spent with friends and family including daughters Nicole, who turns 15 on the same day as his fund-raiser, and Carly, 10, from a previous marriage, and daughter, Kierstyn, 4, and son, Dane, 2, with current wife, DeeDee. "All I've ever did my whole life was try to get into Cup racing and be a part of the biggest part of NASCAR you could be. This summer, I've got to sit at home. I didn't have anything lined up. So I did something that I never did. I spent time at home with my kids and I enjoyed it." Long was approached to do a start-and-park for a Nationwide team, but was advised to turn it down because a deal was in the works with a sponsor that would pay his Cup fine and get him back on the track. It never materialized. What's next for Long? He estimates it will take at the minimum $260,000 to get back to the track in his car. He still needs engines to put in it once the fine is paid. "Everything I've ever did in my entire life was to be a full-time Cup driver, that's not going to happen," he says. "Basically, my motivation to race and want to race, I still have it, but it's not near as strong as it used to be. There is another life other than NASCAR, and going to the track each week or racing somewhere. "But at the same time I still worked in racing [during my suspension]. It wasn't like I had to go get a job at McDonald's or anything. I don't know what other jobs I would take if I get out of racing. I still love racing." And for that, he is appreciative of Front Row Motorsports. "I'm very thankful that Bob Jenkins has endured the luggage that having me as part of his team kinda brings along, and still finds value in keeping me there. Whenever you work for somebody, you hope they are getting twice as much out of you. Because when I wasn't able to go back with them on the race track, they found stuff for me to do in the shop and keep myself busy so that I stayed worthwhile. "I don't have one set position, but I'm able to do everything so I'm helping somebody do something and making sure I keep myself a job. I just can't afford to be unemployed these days." After all, he may not be able to pay $200,000 to NASCAR, but he has a $200,000 loan on his house. "I don't know if NASCAR would go with a 30-year-plan or not," he said with a laugh. Carl LongCareer Highlights
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