John Rose and Rockin R Trucking awarded legacy award

By John Rose

It all started back in the mid-1960s riding on the dog house of a Freight-liner cabover with my dad and grandpa. They hauled cows on weekends for Wengaber Truck Lines out of Beaver, Iowa. I loved big trucks and heavy equipment.

I signed up for the Army National Guard in. high school when I was 17 and went to Ft. Lenardwood, Mo. for basic training, specializing in heavy equipment operations.

In 1979, I was running a scraper on a highway project east of Boone, Iowa, in Highway 17. I got rained out of work so my best friend and I went out with the Marine Corps recruiters and Ken re-enlisted and I joined aviation operations. I was going to Aviation School at Naval Air Station Meridian in Miss., when I saw a Black Western Star and had to take a picture.

When I got out of the Marine Corps in 1987, I needed a job so I went back operating heavy equipment until I went to truck driving school at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

The day I graduated from driving school I had a job with Barr-Nunn Transportation out of Granger, Iowa. I went with their trainer for about three weeks driving a big bunk Kenworth cabover. I drove for them about three years, pulling a dry van, hauling Pella windows and doors. Then I went to Roland Transport in Roland, Iowa, hauling grain. in hopper bottoms, pulling a dry van, and tankers hauling anhydrous ammonia.

Then I went to Sho-Dust Bedding pulling a walking floor trailer hauling saw dust to turkey farms and landscape mulch to stores.

I moved to Wyoming in 1996 and went to work for the state doing highway maintenance and snowplowing, then to BTI at Riverton, Wyo., at their Moorcroft,, Wyo., yard, pulling doubles hauling Bentonite in belly dumps and ammonium nitrate in pneumatic tank trailers.

Then I worked at K&H Construction running heavy equipment and pulling double belly dumps hauling rock, ran for Savage Industry pulling doubles hauling coal to a power plant.

I went to work in Jacobs Ranch Coal Mine operating 240-ton haul trucks and 1850 Letourneau Leader, and D11 Cat Bulldozers.

I started Rockin R Trucking in April 2010 because trucking is in my blood.

I started off going on the road on my seven days off from the coal mine.

In 2016, I lost the coal mine job and went back to trucking full-time.

I have an estimated 1.5 million safe miles over my career and adding more.

I believe in the Golden Rule and help out when and where I can. I like to live and let live.