24 Oregon Trucking Association, Inc. Oregon Truck Dispatch “I love being able to support my team and help grow the business so they have career advancement opportunities to reach their professional goals,” said Heather. “I’ve always loved creating an environment where people want to work.” Heather Taksdal Helps Develop Unique Solutions to Driver Shortages in Tillamook County By Jennifer Sitton | OTA Communications Consultant GROWING UP IN Tillamook, Heather Taksdal and her family’s life and schedule were based around her dad’s milk hauling schedule. As one of a handful of milk haulers for Tillamook in the 80s, Ken Zwald would often leave for the night shift after an afternoon family dinner because as Heather says, “Milk is a unique commodity. It always has to go. It’s a 24/7 operation, 365 days a year.” Today, Heather and her brother Nick Zwald are co-owners of Zwald Transport and have expanded the trucking company that started with their dad hauling hay as an owner-operator in the late 1970s. In 1982, Ken bought his first milk route and later expanded into hauling cheese for Tillamook and custom manure hauling for farmers. Heather and Nick grew up not only learning to adapt to the milk hauling schedule, but also seeing all aspects of the business their parents built from the ground up. “When my brother and I were kids, we would play office,” said Heather. “I would sit at the toy box and run the office and he would take his toy milk truck and go around picking up at the dairy farms. Fast forward to today and that’s exactly what we do!” After a few years in Portland to attend school, Heather moved home to Tillamook in 2004 and started working for Zwald Transport in the office. “I didn’t really know the ins and outs of the Department of Transportation, regulations, or bookkeeping at the time,” said Heather. “I incorporated everything I knew from my accounting background from community college into the work for my dad.” Over time, as other milk haulers retired, Zwald Transport slowly picked up more and more milk routes until 2019 when
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