Randy and Charles Coley, from left, stand by the truck Randy purchased entirely with quarters he saved from his paper route.Charles Coley, 88, has been a delivery contractor for the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 70 years, a job held by his father James Coley before him, his brothers Paul and Jimmie Coley, and now his son, Randy Coley.
“It has always been a family thing. If [James Coley] didn’t go do it, one of us would,” said Coley, on how he and his two brothers would fill in for their father on his twice-daily paper route. “There was some money in it then. Now we still carry it on as a tradition in the family.”
Like his father, Coley delivers to Erlanger hospital, which he has seen go from a single small building to what it is today.
He has watched prices go up gradually since he started, when the Sunday paper cost 7 cents, and watched as the Times and Free Press merged into one paper.
Randy Coley, now 59, started helping out his dad with the route at age 16. Whenever he got a paycheck, he would save all the quarters he received. In 1983, he used 8,500 of the 30,000 quarters he had saved to purchase the black Chevrolet S-10 that he still drives, though only on occasion.