Largo Shipping Business Helps Support Troops

Five years ago, Seminole resident Dave Dabney was looking for a way to show appreciation to the troops for their efforts, and he got a good suggestion from his then 3-year-old son.

“He said, 'Tell the good guys thank you, and send them some Hot Wheels,' ” Dabney recalls.

While he wasn’t about to send toy cars to the troops, when Dabney’s daughter also needed to complete a school holiday project, he put the two ideas together and came up with sending Christmas stockings and cards to soldiers overseas.

“The first shipment, we sent five boxes … and a while later I got an email from a sergeant or someone high ranking thanking us for the effort," Dabney says. "So that was cool that we made an impact on those guys’ lives.”

Five years later, Tampa Bay Troop Support is about to become a full-fledged nonprofit organization, and the shipments have grown in size and volume since the first effort, from five packages in 2006 to  at Seminole Lanes.

“We started having packing events about four times a year, around the holidays, and then a bunch of us would take the packages to area post offices and wait in line to mail them all out,” Dabney recalls. “It was a slow process.”

That’s where Galen McCarty stepped in.

McCarty owns , a U.S. Post Office contact postal unit on Seminole Boulevard in Largo that does its fair share of business during the busy holiday season.

A couple of years ago, McCarty noticed one of her regular customers bringing in a bunch of packages to mail overseas. After learning he was a member of the troop support group, McCarty knew she could help streamline the mailing process, simplifying things for everyone involved.

“When Brett told me what they were doing, and how long it took for them to mail the packages out, I was like, 'Oh my gosh, we can get them out in one day,' ” McCarty said in a phone interview.

“We can get done in four hours what it used to take them four weeks to do,” she said. 

McCarty offered to open her shop on Saturdays, when she was normally closed, and a team of volunteers now takes the boxes from the packing party to the store to get mailed out all at once.

The process works like an assembly line, with each volunteer having a specific job, like pre-taping boxes, filling out mailing labels and preparing the customs declarations forms in advance.

“It really is a huge effort by a lot of people,” McCarty said. “I’m just happy to be one part of a larger group that is doing something to support our troops. It's been fun.” 

Dabney is quick to point out that Get Mailed’s involvement with the effort has made the execution of the mailings much easier.

“It used to take a week to get the packages out, and five weeks to hear back from the units,” Dabney said. “This year it took one day to get the boxes out, and we heard back in a week.”

Still, McCarty wouldn’t mind if her involvement in the project is reduced in the future.

“Hopefully world peace will put us out of a job,” she said.

Address: 12487 Seminole Blvd.

Phone: 727-584-7752

Hours: 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday; regularly closed Saturday-Sunday (open Saturdays in December from 8:30 a.m.-1 p.m.)