Nineteen-year-old Derrick Taylor from Oxford, Alabama, isn’t your average teenager.
For the past year and a half, he’s worked the 4 a.m. shift loading trucks at UPS to help support his ailing mother.
As if being at work before the sun comes up every morning wasn’t hard enough, Derrick has no means of transportation. So he gets up in the middle of the night to walk the five miles to work every morning.
Impressed by his work ethic, love for his mom and dedication he brings to the team, Derrick’s co-workers surprised him with an incredible gift. They pooled together their own money to buy him a car.
“This is a hard-working young man,” co-worker J.D. Ward said in the video. “He makes me emotional. This young man wants to work so bad, he walks to work from way out of town.”
A co-worker who is getting ready to retire offered up his Jeep Cherokee for whatever amount the team could raise. They ended up with $1,100 and a teen who no longer had to make the 10-mile trek to work five days a week.
On behalf of the whole UPS team in Oxford, J.D. presented Derrick with the vehicle at a staff meeting on Feb. 22., saying, “The group here, we’ve got some good news for you. Everybody came together and you don’t have to walk no more. You’ve got your own ride.”
Derrick said he couldn’t believe his co-workers would go to such lengths for someone who had only been around for 18 months.
“It’s a great feeling to know that I got people around me like that. That really doesn’t happen to folks that only work a year and a half.”
Of course Derrick is now enjoying a couple more hours of sleep and a quick commute to work, but there’s one perk to having a car that he’s enjoying even more: