car and deliver orders until near dawn for $ 10 an hour . The family first told their story of falling on hard times on iReport.com . Share your economic survivor story with CNN . Until last summer , Rob LeBlanc had worked as a manager at a truck stop restaurant , making $ 55,000 a year . He lost that job to the falling economy . Rob LeBlanc says he noticed business at the truck stop getting sluggish a year ago . Then the spike in gas prices last summer exacerbated the restaurant 's dire circumstances . Many penny-pinching truck drivers avoided his restaurant altogether , he says . Rob LeBlanc filed for unemployment compensation immediately after he lost his job . More than 4.6 million Americans were collecting unemployment benefits as of early January , according to the Labor Department . In Lafayette , a quiet city of about 114,000 tucked away in southern Louisiana , many of the jobs center around servicing the oil and gas industry , but Rob LeBlanc was unwilling to work offshore and away from his family . When he applied for other jobs , he was told he was either under-qualified or
Editor 's note : This is the first story in an ongoing series of reports CNN is doing about economic survival in this time of financial crisis . Sean , Brooke and Courtney with their parents , Donna and Robert LeBlanc , in a 2008 Christmas photo . -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Donna LeBlanc gave her husband , a former restaurant manager , the stark ultimatum : become a pizza delivery man or their family `` would n't make it . '' The Lafayette , Louisiana , family of six was struggling with $ 45,000 of mounting medical debt from Donna LeBlanc 's unexpected case of pneumonia and tonsillitis a year earlier . The family savings account had dwindled to $ 100 . `` It 's embarrassing for my husband to take a job he is overqualified for , and I know he feels ashamed at times , '' says Donna LeBlanc , a 35-year-old mother with four children . `` But this is what we have to do and we 're going to make the best out of it . '' She watched her husband , Rob LeBlanc , 35 , load Domino 's pizza boxes into their family