Monteagle & Marilyn by Bobbi McGee

 

Monteagle & Marilyn – The story of John & Marilyn McCormick

You just never know who you will meet at a truck show or the story you will uncover while looking at trucks. This time I was in Henderson, Kentucky at the “Truckers Helping Hands,” Chrome & Light Benefit Truck Show. It was here in the scorching August sun that I met Owner Operator John McCormick and his wife Marilyn. It is not very often you run into a working pneumatic vacuum tanker at a truck show but there it was, his 2021 Kenworth W900L black metallic paint sparkling in the sweltering heat with a mean drop visor and stainless-steel deck plates. Peeking under the hood sat a Cummins X15 with an Eaton 18 speed topped off by 3:36 rears. Beneath all the chrome the custom black and gold looked remarkably familiar to me, asking him he smiled and said, “her name is Bandit,” which clicked with me immediately.

 John started officially trucking on his own at 21 years old after growing up watching his dad, Charlie Andrew “Andy” McCormick, who is now 70 years old and still leased to Oakley drive professionally. John wanted to be a trucker all his life, during the summer months he would wake before dawn, get dressed, and would sit in the living room asking to ride with dad. Coming from a trucking family where both his mom and his dad drove as team owner operators, and his older brother Bill is also a driver, John has had plenty of exposure growing up in the industry. “Mom got a chauffeurs license back in 1989 and worked team with dad until she retired in 2024,” said John. At 16 years old John started working in the Evansville shop yard. “My Dad did not want me in a truck,” he said, “but I was already hooked. I took my CDL test in Henderson, Kentucky and I did not tell a soul about it,” he explained. “The boss then put me in the truck with him to get some experience and see what I already knew,” he explained. “I had learned in an old 1993 9400 International 9 speed, and by the time I bought my first truck I had plenty of road experience under my belt,” he said. John would load ice cream in Owensboro, Kentucky and haul it out to Mira Loma, California in a reefer, then head back with fresh produce to Webster, Massachusetts just outside of Boston. “Of course, it depends on the type of person but if you are willing to sacrifice and be in the truck, you can make a successful living as an owner operator, but it won’t take you long to learn the money is made on the road, not parked in your driveway,” John said.

Marilyn Woodard worked in the school cafeteria for years and met John through a mutual friend back in 1994. After building on their friendship, they started to date exclusively. “I would cry every time he left, and I knew that only made it so much harder for him,” she said. Marilyn soon realized that seeing John more often meant she needed to be free to ride with him, so she quit her job to accompany him over the road.

It was on such a trip together through the hills of Tennessee that John stopped the truck on top of Mont Eagle off I-24 at the old truck stop and asked Marilyn to be his wife. “Of course, I said yes right on the spot,” she said.

“We were at the old truck stop that is now a Pilot,” John continued, “I had the ring, but it was at the house, so she had to wait until we could get back home, it was spontaneous, but that’s just me,” said John. It was about a week later that Marilyn asked John to set the date so friends and family could plan, it was then he replied, “Friday sounds good to me,” Marilyn laughed looking over at me, “My jaw just dropped, I was stunned, but we had our date,” she said. Early that Friday morning John found himself ninth in line to load feed in Nashville, Tennessee, “I called Marilyn and asked her to meet me at the old 76 truck strop down on the 41 strip and at 3pm that afternoon, I was rolling into town for the wedding,” he said. John & Marilyn McCormick married on January 15^th, 1999, to “The Broken Road,” by Rascal Flats in the community courthouse to the delight of family and friends. Not long after the wedding Marilyn was riding along with John when she told him she thought she needed to get a job and help out financially in the marriage. “I looked over at her and said, okay, go get your CDL,” said John. “I immediately responded back to him with, “I can’t I’m scared of 70 foot long and 80,000 pounds,” Marilyn said. John grinned over at her saying, “You can do it babe.”

Marilyn started truck driving school in Paducah, Kentucky and quickly earned her CDL. For several weeks afterward she was in the passenger seat observing John as he drove, “He fueled the truck and got back in and the next thing I knew he was climbing into the sleeper,” she said. “I asked him “what are you doing?” and then I told him I was scared to drive all alone to which he laughed and told me I would do great, he was taking a nap,” Marilyn said. The next thing John knew, Marilyn was pulling them in on time to deliver the load and ready to head back out on a turn. He joked with her that, “she better slow it down or she was going to get a ticket with both her feet flat on the floor.”

“John is not just my husband, he is my best friend, the love of my life, it is just like our song says, “God blessed the broken road that led me straight to you,”” she said looking over at him. It was my observation that these two are close enough to finish one another’s sentences. “Now days “Bandit” drives around 90K per year,” John explained. “We have been married 27 years now and Marilyn is home taking care of her aging family while I run local and am home nights, we have left the big road behind us,” he said. “I have a plan, we are almost completely debt free, and I want to work less toward my eventual retirement when this truck is paid off,” John said. “With this job I completed 1 million miles with Oakley as an owner operator as of 2017 so I will stick with them until the end,” he explained.

 I looked over at the WW2 veteran memorial proudly displayed on the side of his truck and the way the wind was blowing his two American Flags he had mounted on the top of the tanker and I felt a sense of pride in what he and Marilyn have accomplished, what the McCormick Family with their long lineage of commercial trucking has done for this industry in general. What they continue to do each time they climb up in the cab of a truck. You just never know who you may meet at a truck show, but I know I have met some of the very best.

#overdrive #milemarker