Tammy Leopard: Trading Corporate Life for a Van Full of Dogs

There’s a moment Tammy Leopard still talks about: crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, heading south with a crate secured in the back of her Nissan NV3500, when she spotted a bald eagle perched at the water’s edge, pulling a fish apart with total indifference to the traffic above. She had left a corporate career behind just months earlier. The eagle felt about right.

Why Tammy Walked Away From the Corporate World

Tammy is direct about what brought her here. “Two of my loves across my life are animals and traveling,” she says. “Earlier this year, I gave up pursuing another soul-crushing corporate job and decided to pursue what brings me joy.”

That decision led her to pet transport, and from there to CitizenShipper. She found the platform through a Google search, put in a bid, and got on a coaching call before she’d even landed her first job.

The Difference a Coaching Call Makes

Before connecting with the CitizenShipper team on her coaching call, Tammy was struggling to get a bid accepted at all. After it, she won her first booking. The coaching covered practical things she hadn’t thought about yet, like how to price by mileage and how to look for stack loads that make a single route more efficient.

Her first transport was a dog moving from Rock Hill, South Carolina down to Stuart, Florida. It rained most of the way. “We had a pleasant drive down even in the rain,” she says, “which has been a constant on most of my transports.” She laughs about it now. Rain is basically part of the job description at this point.

She named her operation Doggo Cab and got to work on something she actually wanted to build.

What Life on the Road with Doggo Cab Looks Like

Tammy runs mostly East Coast routes. She drives a Nissan NV3500 passenger van, which gives her the space to properly secure crates and keep animals comfortable over long hauls.

Every crate is fastened down and lined with thick, soft towels. She keeps pee pads in the carriers for puppies. For cats and young dogs, she freezes the water bowls before departure so they melt slowly over the trip rather than sloshing around or spilling.

She stops every four hours or less for water and potty breaks. “Long stretches of driving can be exhausting,” she says. “Know your limits. Remember to breathe, be in the moment and enjoy.” That’s her advice to newer drivers, and she follows it herself.

An Emergency Kit is a Must Have

Her emergency kit is thorough: a pet first aid kit, a human first aid kit, extra water, extra fans, rain gear and a vehicle tool box. She’s thought through the things that can go wrong. Fans matter more than most people realize when you’re transporting animals in a van through a Southern summer.

The frozen water bowl trick came from a shipper, actually. A customer mentioned it, Tammy tried it, and it worked well enough that it’s now standard practice. She was asked about the most meaningful feedback she’s ever received from a shipper. That’s what she cited.

Want your pet transported with this level of preparation? Get free quotes from verified drivers like Tammy on CitizenShipper. You choose the driver you trust most before anything is confirmed.

The AutoZone Story and Other Kindnesses

Tammy describes her trips in terms of the people and animals she meets along the way, not just the mileage. The pet owners who have fed her a meal or offered a room for the night. The dogs who spend entire routes singing what she calls “the song of their people” from their crates. The scenery she wouldn’t have seen from a desk.

But one story stands out for how unexpectedly generous it was. She was driving through Dadeville, Alabama when she ran into a vehicle problem. The employees at a local AutoZone stayed past closing time to help. They called in someone from home. They didn’t let her leave until they knew she could get safely to her destination.

“To their kind parents, who have provided me with a meal, a room for the night, and other acts of kindness” is how she describes the pet owners she meets. The AutoZone staff got lumped into that same category of people who just showed up when it mattered.

How Tammy Communicates with Pet Owners During Transport

Tammy contacts customers at least eight times over the course of a typical transport. That’s not an estimate; that’s her actual count. She has a system, and she runs it every time.

• After a bid is accepted, she sends the customer a form to complete with trip details.
• On the day of pickup, she texts the relevant parties 30 minutes out and again at 15 minutes.
• When she arrives, she sends the receiving party a photo of herself with the pet, a photo of the pet in the crate, and a photo of the vehicle.
• For owners who want it, she starts location sharing from that point. For those who don’t, she sends photos at every rest stop.

Any change to the schedule gets a text. Delivery follows the same pattern: 30-minute warning, 15-minute warning, arrival.

Why Such Frequent Communication?

She says frequent communication has directly led to better reviews. It’s hard to argue with the logic. A pet owner who gets a photo of their dog settled into a clean crate at the start of a 12-hour drive is not going to spend the next 12 hours anxious.

That matters to her. CitizenShipper drivers are background-checked before they can bid on shipments, which helps establish baseline trust, but Tammy builds on that with the specifics of how she runs each trip.

Advice For Anyone Thinking About a Career in Pet Transportation

Tammy is honest that pet transport isn’t a simple or passive income stream. It requires patience in a specific way. “Pet transport is a life lesson in patience,” she says. “Patience with a screaming puppy, patience with the never-ending traffic and weather.”

Her advice on the coaching calls CitizenShipper offers is blunt: take them, especially if you’re struggling to get bids. She says she couldn’t close a booking before she took hers. After it, she understood how to price competitively and how to think about building efficient routes. If you want to understand what becoming a certified animal transporter actually involves, those calls are a real shortcut compared to figuring it all out alone.

She’d also recommend the driver profit calculator for anyone trying to figure out whether specific routes actually make financial sense after fuel and time. Pricing by mileage is a start, but understanding the real math before you commit to a bid matters.

Thinking about getting into pet transport yourself? Learn how drivers like Tammy get started on CitizenShipper and see what building a route-based business actually looks like.

Where Tammy Is Headed

Tammy isn’t chasing scale. She’s not planning to expand into other cargo types or hire a team. Her goal is specific: build enough of a reputation and a returning client base that she can keep doing this, on the routes she wants, for as long as she wants. “To build a business reputation and clientele that will allow me to travel and experience a life of joy” is how she put it. That’s a complete sentence and a complete plan.

The van modifications are next. She’s watching the GPS tracking trend with interest, noting that about 40 percent of her customers currently request location sharing and she expects that number to climb. The frozen water bowls are already standard. The AutoZone story is already a piece of the lore.

For now, she’s out there somewhere on the East Coast, probably in the rain, with a dog singing from the back seat, watching for eagles.

Need a dog transported on the East Coast? Get quotes from background-checked drivers and find someone whose approach to pet care matches what matters to you.