At my work for a Fortune 100 company, they needed a diecast model for a trade show giveaway,” Silver said. “Nobody knew who to contact, but I did, having already collected them.”

He sourced a thousand trucks and sold out at the show. A week later, another division within the company heard about the promotion and called for their own truck models. A lightbulb went off in his head. With his wife as president, they founded Awesome Diecast in Boca Raton, Florida. They started making trucks for about 150 divisions around the country. Like Apple Computer, “that’s how it started, out of our garage,” he said.

A trip to another trade show allowed Silver to make other trucking contacts. One of them was the Old Dominion trucking company. “We always made a few extras,” he said. “Through a small website in 2002, collectors started buying and other companies started ordering from us.” They quickly outgrew the garage, moving to their first warehouse, which was around 500 square feet. Today, they occupy over 5,000 square feet.