For the Long Haul: Portraits of Southeast Missouri Truckers

This three-part series introduces us to some of the people keeping our country running as truck drivers, transporting the items we use each day. In this third and final installment, we hear from John George and his son, Wyatt.

John and Wyatt George

John D. George is in his 33rd year of driving trucks. With his ‘88 model cabover, 2018-model truck and others, he works in agriculture as a commodity hauler, transporting livestock and cattle feed west and bringing meat and bone meal back to make dog food. His father, who is 80 years old, drives for him, as does his son, Wyatt George, who is 24. John, who is from Ellington, Mo., says many of the drivers showing their trucks at the event in Perryville, Mo., have fathers who trucked together, so the August Laid Back on I-55 Truck Show event is a “local deal” for them all to reunite.

While he was growing up, John’s grandfather and father told him the story of their family’s long history in the trucking industry, which predates the invention of trucks: in the late 1800s, his great-grandfather took 20 railroad ties from Ellington, on a buckboard to St. Louis where they traded the ties for supplies for the towns, a roundtrip journey of 30 days. Now, they haul 200 ties on a flatbed to St. Louis from Ellington in three hours.

“Our history, we’ve been moving stuff for a long time as far as our family. But most of these boys have all got the same story,” John says. “Now probably most of the guys here [at the event] has never been to a so-called trucking school. These guys learned from their grandpa, their dad, they got a job at the local feed store driving a truck. We’re self-made men and women nowadays.”

John enjoys the freedom that being a truck driver allows, as well as the fact he is his own boss and it’s a family-oriented industry. It’s a “pretty demanding job,” he says, especially hauling livestock, which he “got away from” for a time when his children were young because he wanted more time off so he could be home with them more often. In all of his years of driving, he has seen many changes throughout the industry; adaptation is something at which he says truck drivers are particularly adept.

“The industry has changed a bunch as far as rules and regulations and hours of service, but everything has to change. So you welcome the change — some of it you like, some of it you don’t; in this industry right here, we usually find a way to overcome,” John says. “I’ve always told these boys: there’s no such thing as an obstacle. You either go over it, around it, through it; we find some way to prevail. And that’s what trucks have always done.”

John’s oldest son is the general manager of Kenworth in St. Louis, and John’s brothers are truck drivers, as well. His youngest son, Wyatt, welded for a few years before moving back home and earning his CDL. Now, he drives for John.

“The best part about it’s your freedom,” Wyatt says. “I like working for Dad and kind of by yourself; you don’t have to answer to a lot of people. Just sometimes it sucks being gone, but that’s part of it.”

When they were running coast to coast, sometimes they would be gone for a month at a time; now, they try to limit their trips to two weeks, running from Denver to Atlanta to Ohio to Texas.

Despite everything he’s seen, there’s one place in the world John always tries to get back to.

“We usually touch 48 states every year,” John says. “But our favorite place is home. You can ask anybody here where their favorite stop is; it’s home. ‘Cause we spend so much time on the road. … Missouri’s a beautiful state. … It’s always good to come home.”