‘Top rookie’ Julie Matulle hits the road with H.O. Wolding, Wreaths Across America

I had the opportunity to meet Julie Matulle, an Oshkosh, Wis.-based driver for H.O. Wolding this past month here in Nashville, where she was taking a restart’s worth of R&R with a fellow Wolding hauler before the return trip back to Wisconsin. Matulle you may remember for the award she received around the time of the Great American Trucking Show back in August. She was named “Trucking’s Top Rookie” after being nominated by her Wolding dispatcher. The list of no doubt no less deserving finalists in the contest is here. 

Her story is an interesting one, but one that won’t be unfamiliar to those among you who put off a long dream of driving in response to the demands of family before going full bore into it in later years. Following her childhood in a trucking family and with a daughter now out on her own, and following several positions related to the business of moving freight — the longest a stint as a logistics manager for Quad/Graphics — Matulle’s hit the road as of just more than a year ago hauling paper products primarily in a 53-foot dry van.

And in her second year as a driver, this week she’ll get the rare opportunity to deliver wreaths to Arlington National Cemetery as part of preparations for the Wreaths Across America main event there this weekend. She talks about this and more in the video below.

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