Brady King is carrying on a family legacy in Early, while also serving as a first responder when time allows.

King, 27, is the operations manager at Bishop Distributing and also volunteers with the Early Volunteer Fire Department.

“My title is operations manager at Bishop Distributing, which is a company my grandfather started in 1950,” King said. “My father took it over and the plan is one day I’ll take it over from him. Right now my full time job is managing the warehouse and making sure things run appropriately and the way they’re supposed to.”

King has worked in his position at Bishop Distributing for nine years, while four years ago he got into firefighting.

“I like helping people and making people happy and there are a lot of ways to do that as a firefighter,” he said. “People who have been shaken up, you get to help them. Other people who need some assistance that may seem like a small thing, liking helping them off of the floor, just being able to help people in their time of need is really rewarding. I enjoyed doing that so I got a little more involved and got certified two years ago. I work basically one night week at the station, that’s what it averages out to.”

Bishop Distributing is still King’s top priority, however.

“I’m probably going to keep doing things this way as long as I can, but the family business is my pride and joy and keeping the legacy going,” he said. “I can still volunteer with firefighting. If something comes up in the middle of the day, which is a perk of working in the family business, I’m able to split my time accordingly if we’re not too slammed at the office, so that is a good thing.”

Regarding what he is enjoying most about the job currently, he said, “We have four or five drivers so I manage those guys and their routes. I also manage the orders, picking up and packing, so I have to make sure our guys are shipping the right product, pulling the right product, making sure the warehouse is stocked accordingly. I love the work. I enjoy logistics and that type of stuff. I look at it as a game every day, we have to get certain things done every day and how do we do that efficiently, and what’s the easiest way to get it done and done the right way.”

King and his wife, MaryClaire, were married in 2020 and have a 2-year-old son, Everett.

“We got married in 2020 the weekend before COVID hit actually,” he said. “We went on our honeymoon in Jamaica and weren’t paying attention to the news and some of our friends texted and told us not to pay attention to the news, but that they thought we could make it home OK. The next week the whole world started shutting down.”