129 Years of Family Serving Family: Scott Moore, Motor Vehicle Operator, DDDC

129 Years of Family Serving Family: Scott Moore, Motor Vehicle Operator, DDDC

One in a series honoring the Exchange’s 129 years of family serving family

Who he is: Scott Moore, Motor Vehicle Operator, Dan Daniel Distribution Center

Years with the Exchange: 27

Miles with the Exchange: Moore hit the 2 million-mile mark in August 2023. He doesn’t remember exactly where.

“It was probably somewhere on [Interstate] 95,” he says. “95 and I are so close, I feel like we’re related. I tell my wife, ‘I feel like we’re cousins.’ I know every pothole in every state and the good roads and the bad roads.”

But he does know what helped him hit 2 million miles.

“I team-drove for about 15 years. I teamed with our former foreman Scott Munley [who retired in 2023] for three years, and then with [motor vehicle operator] Brian Hartley for about 12 years. I’ve been to the Waco DC several times. I’ve been to the West Coast Distribution Center several times. The accumulation of 2 million miles came into play because when I teamed with Brian, he said, ‘What shift do you want?’ and I said, ‘Well, I kind of like the evening shift.’ So he took the day shift and we worked 12 on, 12 off. When we were making deliveries, he didn’t get as much mileage. I was the guy who got the ball to the goal line, and he was the one who ran it in for a touchdown.”

Military connections: Moore served in the Army from 1990 to ’96. “I was in ROTC in high school,” says Moore, who went to Bethel High School in Hampton, Virginia. “I did four years and I really, really liked it. I thought, ‘OK, I guess this is what I’m supposed to do.’ Enlisting just seemed like the next step. I knew I wasn’t cut out for college. I thought, ‘I already know a lot about the military through ROTC, so I’m going to talk to a recruiter and join.’”

Moore’s father, a Vietnam Veteran, was an artillery gunner and a cook in the Navy. “. His maternal grandfather, also a cook, served in the Marine Corps in the Korean War. His father’s father served in the Navy and was a World War II Veteran—and was also a cook. His father-in-law and brother-in-law are both retired Air Force lieutenant colonels.

Memories of Exchange support: “I deployed to Desert Storm not even a year after I joined. We deployed Dec. 17, 1990. That’s the first Christmas I ever spent away from home. I called my mother and told her I was being deployed. She was a big supporter of mine before, during and after my deployment

“When we got out there and got dug in, first in Saudi Arabia and then in Kuwait, they picked a bunch of us and said, ‘Why don’t y’all load up—we’re going to do a PX run.’

“They drove us out in the middle of the desert on a 2½-ton truck, flipped the back end open, and there was the PX. We went and got stuff that we usually didn’t have in the field. Anything is better than MREs at that point. We looked forward to that. Even when I was stationed in Germany, which was my first station, the PX was always there. There was a Shoppette, and it really meant a lot to me as a Soldier.”

How he became a truck driver: “I was originally a cannoneer. I was in artillery—that’s what I went to basic training for. But about ’93 or ’94, somebody picked me up and said, ‘Hey, I want you to be my driver,’ and I started driving a 2½-ton truck. It wasn’t a combination like I’m driving now, but it just took. Next thing you know, a captain here, a sergeant major there, asked, ‘Can you be my driver? I’ve heard you do good work.’ And I just drove for people until I got out in ’96. And I really enjoyed it.”

What brought him to the Exchange: “My uncle, ‘Wally’ Wallenberg, worked for years and years in the engineering department. He told me, ‘They’re hiring at Dan Daniel if you need a job’ after I got out of the Army. I said I’d check it out. I went in, applied and was hired. I started as a temporary in May 1997. I got my first full-time position as forklift driver, working in the warehouse, on June 14, 1997”

How he became an Exchange motor vehicle operator: Moore earned his commercial driver’s license (CDL) right after leaving the military, but because he’d just returned home, he didn’t want to go straight into trucking. But then something happened that, well, set him on the road to his career.

“I’d just come back from the Shoppette, and I overheard someone saying, ‘Hey, I’m looking for new shuttle drivers.’ At the time, you could do three-year shuttle or two years on the road with my qualifications. I told him I had a CDL, and he wrote my name down. Right place, right time. He said, ‘All right, I’ll get you a road test.’

“I was in the warehouse from June to early August. And then I became a shuttle driver [a driver who moves trailers for shipping and receiving on the DC yard.] I did that for three years, and on Sept. 16, 2000, I was hired as a motor vehicle operator.”

Less than a year later, Moore would experience one of the most dramatic times of his Exchange career.

Supporting rescue efforts after 9/11: After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center Towers on 9/11, Moore and Hartley were selected to transport donated goods from Dan Daniel to New York. But their support went beyond transporting goods.

“They loaded two 53-foot trailers with donated goods,” Moore says. “The towers fell on a Tuesday, and we left that Saturday. We were escorted to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, and that’s where they stationed our trucks. We were giving stuff away. We had batteries, we had duct tape, we had things the Exchange knew that people would need at times like that. People came to Fort Hamilton and we gave it out.”

The drivers were supposed to be in the New York area for just a couple of days, long enough to empty the trailers. But they went to dinner with Area Manager Ray Black, Fort Hamilton General Manager Steve Williams and West Point General Manager Alan Heasty, and Hartley made what turned out to be a pivotal suggestion.

“We discussed how to take the PX to troops who were working 12 hours on, 12 off, in Battery Park near Ground Zero,” Moore says. “Brian asked, ‘Why don’t y’all take one of the bread trucks over there and put an Exchange logo and We Go Where You Go on it, build some shelves in the back, put some butcher board on the back and add a cash register?’ Black said, ‘That’s a great idea. You two are going to run it.’

“At the time, we were green. I’d been truck driving just under a year and I said, ‘They’re not going to let us do that. We don’t have any seniority.’ Black said, ‘I don’t care about that. We like you, we like your spirit. Who do I need to call?’ We gave him a number, he called, and he was told, ‘Keep them as long as you need them.’ I didn’t come home until right before Thanksgiving.

“We were pretty much stationed up there. Every two or three weeks, we went home, saw our wives and families, replenished our clothes and went right back to New York. Sometimes we worked 19- to 20-hour days and then we’d go to where we were staying, sleep for about six hours, then get up and do it again. We also went to surrounding installations, where troops had wish lists. Everybody from sergeant major on down. So we went to West Point, Fort Dix, other surrounding posts to try to get these products—military clothing, different shoe sizes—to them.

“I was excited to serve and be a part of what was going on up there and helping people,” he adds. “And it means more to me because I was a Soldier, and I know how that feels. That’s what we do. We serve America’s finest and they protect us. Somewhere downrange, somebody’s in a foxhole, somebody’s pulling guard duty—and the Exchange is everything to them.”

His current run: “Mostly East Coast, as far north as Fort Drum and as far south as Homestead ARB, Florida. The farthest west I get is Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Dayton, Ohio, is a consolidation center, and we got there a lot through Fort Campbell and Fort Knox. But it changes from week to week. Sometimes you get local runs, such as Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling or Joint Base Andrews in the D.C. area.”

Favorite drive: From Dan Daniel to Fort Stewart—which Moore went on just after this interview. “It’s about an 1,100-mile round trip. It’s a drop-and-hook [dropping off a full trailer and then hitching up another one], not a full delivery, and it’s not that I don’t like deliveries—this is just easier. It’s a smooth ride down because 95 going south is smoother than going north. When I get to the post, I drop my trailer, I take my break, refuel and do whatever I need to do, and I shut down. And it’s just me. It’s quiet, you’re not at a truck stop, there’s not a lot of noise, so you can get some really good sleep down there.”

Toughest drive: “Probably going up and down the road to Fort Drum, which is when I was teamed it with Brian. During the winter, when you hit Pennsylvania and then all the way to Fort Drum. You have lake effect snow up above Syracuse, and it gets kind of dicey up there in Upstate New York along 81. You have to pull over, get out of the truck, beat the ice off your wipers and get back in and start again. You really have to pay attention to what you’re doing and be careful.”

Keeping it close to home: Although Moore is on the road often, home base for him is still Hampton, which is about 10 miles from Newport News, where Dan Daniel is located. “My whole family is from here. My dad just moved back from Florida. He had retired and worked at a boys’ ranch for underprivileged kids in Florida. My brother and I flew down there and moved him and his wife back up on my birthday, the first of August. All my family is here now: Uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, everybody.”

Family Serving Family: “I’m grateful that I’m part of the Exchange family. We were always told in every drivers meeting, and I really took it to heart, ‘when you go and you represent the Exchange family at the different bases, you’re the first face that they see. So you need to make sure to respect everyone and represent the Exchange as best you can.’ Being a Veteran, that really meant the world to me. When I walk in a back door somewhere to make a delivery, I always say, ‘Hey, how you doing—let me know if there are any concerns you have today.’

“You don’t know what kind of day somebody’s having. If you’re in a store on one of your breaks and a service member walks up and looks like they’re confused, you say, ‘Can I help you with something,’ even if you don’t work at the store. The best customers in the world, the military, understand that we’re there to serve them and to make sure they get what they need.”