All Veteran Transit Veteran Owned Small Business
Donation protected
My name is Donnie Dupray and I am a Service Connected Veteran small business owner. The name of my company is All Veteran Transit (AVT) and we are also Veteran operated (if not a Veteran themselves they are directly related to one). A little back story; I started AVT in 2017 after getting medically discharged from the Military due to a shoulder injury with three main goals, to provide employment to Veterans, to help reduce the number of homeless veterans and and to provide for my family. I didn’t have much of another option but to follow the path of entrepreneurship when I was told by my Dr’s I wouldn’t be able to get gainful employment with such a destroyed shoulder. Being such a hard head I tried it anyways and didn’t get very far. That’s when I decided enough is enough and I am going to start a company of my own. Right away we took off and started booking jobs faster than I could keep up with. Before I knew it we were two years in with 7 full time employees (including myself and my wife) and a small fleet of trucks and equipment. We were super successful putting in 40-70 hour weeks like it was nothing! We would collect furniture and house hold items from jobs and do weekly donation drop offs to local Veteran community places such as Veterans Village which helps house homeless Veterans and in need Veterans, the Salvation Army and Veterans the reached out in need of particular furnishings. We had quickly established a very positive name in Las Vegas. So positive we were contacted almost instantly by the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and invited to become apart of them!
Once COVID hit we were forced to temporarily shut down and like everyone else that has to rely on a small business our hands were tied due to no fault of our own. During that temporary shut down we decided to continue paying the employees that had become family as that was the no brainer right thing to do and stop paying ourselves to play it safe as it was an unpredictable time. Awhile later (about 2 months) we resumed business as an “essential” small business but to nowhere near the same amount of work we were used to providing for the community. Since the pandemic we have been reduced to about a 10 hour work week average some weeks are zero hours. Luckily we had been very successful pre pandemic and had been able to sustain the business expenses and Veteran employees but that had soon run out. The next step was to use personal funds to help pay the business bills to stay alive as we weren’t going to give up it’s not in our nature to do so. So, we had a company meeting and reassured the employees we would take care of them to the best of our abilities which we have stuck to 100%. Even to the point where we took loans to be able to pay our employees knowing our successful business would once again take control and build back up with our hard work and dedication to our values as a business. However after months of caution and doing all we can we are now forced to take extreme measures and reach out and ask for help. The government programs and grants we have thankfully received have luckily prolonged the inevitable. This is not an easy thing to do for us but we had to swallow our pride knowing that we’ve got employees and families that rely on us to provide them with enough work for a full paycheck each week. At one point that was an extremely easy thing to do with the abundance of work coming in. Now we’ve exhausted all we can manage and have started this fundraiser!
Thank you for your time and consideration!
AVT and family (Dalvin, Brett, Jeremy, Matthew, Ryan and Donnie)
Once COVID hit we were forced to temporarily shut down and like everyone else that has to rely on a small business our hands were tied due to no fault of our own. During that temporary shut down we decided to continue paying the employees that had become family as that was the no brainer right thing to do and stop paying ourselves to play it safe as it was an unpredictable time. Awhile later (about 2 months) we resumed business as an “essential” small business but to nowhere near the same amount of work we were used to providing for the community. Since the pandemic we have been reduced to about a 10 hour work week average some weeks are zero hours. Luckily we had been very successful pre pandemic and had been able to sustain the business expenses and Veteran employees but that had soon run out. The next step was to use personal funds to help pay the business bills to stay alive as we weren’t going to give up it’s not in our nature to do so. So, we had a company meeting and reassured the employees we would take care of them to the best of our abilities which we have stuck to 100%. Even to the point where we took loans to be able to pay our employees knowing our successful business would once again take control and build back up with our hard work and dedication to our values as a business. However after months of caution and doing all we can we are now forced to take extreme measures and reach out and ask for help. The government programs and grants we have thankfully received have luckily prolonged the inevitable. This is not an easy thing to do for us but we had to swallow our pride knowing that we’ve got employees and families that rely on us to provide them with enough work for a full paycheck each week. At one point that was an extremely easy thing to do with the abundance of work coming in. Now we’ve exhausted all we can manage and have started this fundraiser!
Thank you for your time and consideration!
AVT and family (Dalvin, Brett, Jeremy, Matthew, Ryan and Donnie)
Organizer
Donnie Dupray
Organizer
Las Vegas, NV
