David ‘Red’ Gorman knows something about building things. He built an insurance agency from scratch, starting with a desk in a spare room and later selling auto insurance from a tiny space inside a check-cashing business. Years later, he and his son ventured into an entirely different market and built a successful trucking insurance operation. Along the way, Gorman became deeply involved in PIA, first in Texas and eventually at the national level.
Now he is taking on something new: serving as president of PIA. He approaches PIA in many of the same ways he’s built his business, with a willingness to listen, an instinct to get involved and a belief that good ideas matter only if you actually do something with them. He is also very aware of what it means to represent independent agents and PIA affiliates across the country.
“There’s a lot of responsibility,” Gorman says. When he visits an affiliate or attends a conference, he wants to contribute something meaningful. His goal is to understand what matters to the people there and make the time he spends with them worthwhile.
Gorman never expected that his own involvement would eventually lead to the PIA presidency. “Nowhere in my imagination did I think that I would be the president of the association,” he says. Today, he describes the opportunity as “truly a gift” not because of the title, but because it gives him the opportunity to work with people who care deeply about the independent agency system and to contribute to an organization that has given him so much.
He also brings to the presidency the perspective of an agent who has spent his career building businesses in demanding, relationship-based markets. His business is split largely between non-standard auto and long-haul trucking, two markets that demand frequent customer interaction and an ability to respond quickly as needs change. His perspective is grounded in the challenges agency owners face every day: building a business, finding opportunities, hiring and leading people, adapting to change and figuring out what comes next.
Finish What We Started
Gorman takes office at a consequential time for PIA, as the association works to strengthen member value, build closer connections with affiliates and position itself for the future. But he isn’t coming into the presidency with a new list of initiatives simply because of the presidential transition.
Significant initiatives rarely begin and end neatly within a one-year presidential term, Gorman notes. He wants to make sure the progress of the past several years continues and that programs already being developed reach the members they were created to serve. He plans to continue the work underway that started with his predecessors, Mark Suhr and Ariel Rivera.
“I really want to follow through on the agenda they established and help achieve the goals they set,” Gorman says. For him, that next step, execution, is critical. Creating a new program, resource or member benefit is only the beginning. PIA then has to make sure agents know about it, understand it and use it.
“The key wins that we’ve had…those things can’t just go flat,” he says. His prescription is straightforward. “Don’t stop telling people about it. Don’t stop sharing the word,” he explains. That requires national leaders, affiliates and volunteer leaders working together, each reinforcing the value PIA provides.
Gorman’s own experience within PIA shapes what he hopes other agents will discover. Membership matters, he says, but involvement is where the real value begins. His years serving PIA Texas, and then PIA National, exposed him to people, perspectives and ideas he would not otherwise have encountered. They also convinced him that active agent involvement is critical to making the association stronger.
He encourages members to participate, share what they know and learn from one another. That same philosophy extends to PIA’s affiliates. He believes strongly that affiliate leaders need to know they have a voice within the national organization and that their priorities are being heard. When affiliates see value in the national organization and know their perspectives matter, he believes the entire association becomes stronger. It’s an area where he sees important progress in recent years and one he wants to continue.
A Setback Becomes a Starting Point
His path to agency ownership began with one of those moments that can either derail a career or redirect it. Gorman had worked for several non-standard insurance agencies before joining a regional non-standard carrier as a marketing representative. The job increasingly required travel throughout Texas. He was raising his young son, David, and could travel within the state when he could return home at night. But extended trips hundreds of miles from home weren’t realistic.
Eventually, the company decided it needed something different. One day, Gorman was called back to the office, told he was being let go, handed a box for his belongings and driven home because the company car he had arrived in no longer belonged to him. Gorman allowed himself some time to worry about what he was going to do. Then he made a decision. “The next time I get fired, it’s me firing me,” he remembers thinking. “Nobody else is going to get a chance.”
That decision became the beginning of his agency. He quickly obtained the license he needed to open an agency and called a former boss with a proposition: send him business the agency couldn’t write. If Gorman could place it, they could split the commission.
His first office was a room in his house, where he and his first employee worked at two desks pushed together, quoting policies. About a year later, he found his first commercial space: roughly 30 square feet in the lobby of a check-cashing business. He put up a banner that read ‘Auto Insurance Here’ and waved to people as they came through the door.
From there, he kept building. Today, non-standard auto remains a major part of the agency. It is a high-touch business, with customers frequently needing assistance throughout the policy term. The agency is open six days a week, in part because some customers still prefer to come into the office and pay their premiums in cash.
Building a New Business Together
Years later, the next major chapter in the business began with his son. David had grown up around the agency, often accompanying his father to the office on weekends, but Gorman never expected him to join the business. He had one top goal for his son: earn a college degree. Gorman had attended college himself but hadn’t finished, and he was determined that David would.
David earned a mechanical engineering degree and went to work for a deep-sea exploration company, traveling to Africa and working around the offshore energy industry. After industry changes led to a layoff, he went back to school for an MBA in supply chain management. In the meantime, he began working part-time for his father. Eventually, part-time became something more. “He said, ‘Dad, I want to do this. I want to work with you, but I can’t do this non-standard stuff. It’s just not for me. Can we find something else?’”
An employee who had previously worked at a trucking insurance agency gave them the idea. They began investigating the market: What did trucking companies need? How did the insurance work? Where were the opportunities? About 10 months later, they wrote their first trucking policy. Today, the agency has hundreds of trucking accounts and continues to grow the business.
To Gorman, trucking and non-standard auto are different businesses but both represent high-touch, relationship-based markets. Trucking operations change constantly. Customers add drivers, trucks and trailers. They travel farther, take on different loads and move into new areas of business. The insurance has to keep pace, which means the agency is in regular contact with them throughout the year.
A Nickname That Stuck
PIA also gave Gorman something he hadn’t expected: a new name. Despite his red hair, he wasn’t known as ‘Red’ until an insurance event in San Antonio. Fellow agent, Bob Klinger, began introducing him to people as Red. Other agents picked it up, and soon everybody in Gorman’s expanding insurance circle was calling him Red. The name stuck.
“My whole family calls me David,” he says. Many of his longtime colleagues in PIA Texas do too. “But everyone in other states calls me Red.” He liked the new name enough to rebrand his agency: Red Gorman Insurance.
The nickname also turned out to have a family connection. Gorman’s father had red hair and had been known as Red, although the nickname had never been passed down to his son. When Gorman renamed the agency, his family saw it as an homage to his father.
Entrepreneurship Runs in the Family
Gorman isn’t the only business founder in his family. His wife, Evie, owns a commercial and industrial electrical company in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. They met on a blind date nearly 20 years ago, and when Evie later decided to start her own company, she initially operated it out of extra space in his insurance office.
Today, depending on its workload, her company employs hundreds of people and works on major projects throughout the region. “If you fly into DFW, there’s no way you’re not standing on something or somewhere that she’s touched,” he says
The two also share their home with many rescue dogs. Over the years, they have fostered and adopted numerous dogs. At their peak, the household briefly contained about 20 dogs. The couple already had six when a pregnant foster dog arrived and subsequently delivered 13 puppies. These days, the number is considerably more manageable, although he makes no promises about the future.
Keep Moving Forward
Gorman is also working toward another goal: earning his pilot’s license. Flying was put on hold after he was diagnosed with cancer in 2024 and underwent surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation. Today, he feels good and has returned to the cockpit and his flight training.
The experience has given him a different perspective on how quickly life can change. “I think everybody thinks they’re bulletproof to a degree,” he says. Gorman knows differently now. But his response has been much the same as it has been at other unexpected turns in his life: adjust and keep moving.
It’s a pattern that runs through his story. A job loss became an insurance agency. A son who didn’t want to sell non-standard auto led to an entirely new trucking operation. Getting involved in a professional association eventually led to its national presidency. Even a nickname bestowed by a friend became the name of his business and an unexpected tribute to his father.
That same instinct to build, adapt and keep moving is what he brings to PIA. He wants to build on the work that is underway, strengthen the connection between PIA National and its affiliates, make sure the association delivers meaningful value to members and encourage more agents to get involved in shaping what comes next.
“I can definitely share my passion,” Gorman says. He also brings something that has served him well throughout his career: the willingness to listen, find the opportunity in front of him and then get to work.
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