During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Courtney George, Director of Transportation and Industry Relations at Wreaths Across America, live from the Mid-America Truck Show in Louisville, Kentucky. In this powerful conversation, Courtney shares the inspiring mission of honoring veterans by placing wreaths on military graves nationwide. The program has grown from 5,000 wreaths in 1992 to over 3.1 million wreaths at nearly 5,000 locations, highlighting the trucking industry’s crucial role in supporting this meaningful tribute to fallen heroes. Listeners will learn about the program’s growth, emotional impact, and how individuals can contribute to remembering and respecting those who have served. You won’t want to miss this great conversation.
Key topics in today’s conversation include:
- Wreaths Across America Overview (1:13)
- Growth of the Program (2:46)
- Impact on Trucking Industry (4:05)
- Wreath Placement Ceremony Date (5:56)
- Wreath Production Process (8:07)
- Driver Experience at Wreaths (9:57)
- The Remembrance Tree Program (14:26)
- Continued Growth of the Program (16:37)
- Courtney’s Background and Journey to WAA (20:13)
- Engagement with Veterans (23:21)
- Opportunities for Participation with Wreaths Across America (25:18)
- Final Thoughts and Takeaways (26:30)
Oakley Trucking is a family-owned and operated trucking company headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. For more information, check out our show website: podcast.bruceoakley.com.
Transcription
Jeremy Kellett 00:12
Thanks for tuning in to the Oakley podcast, trucking, business and family. My name is Jeremy Kellett, and I’m your host for this podcast, which is brought to you by Oakley trucking, located in North Little Rock, Arkansas. Our goal is to inspire, educate and provide resources for our owner operators as well as outside truck drivers that may be interested in becoming a part of the Oakley family. So sit back, relax and keep your eyes on the road as we start this week’s brand new episode. We are sitting down here at the Mid America truck show in Louisville, Kentucky. And as always, a great place to, like I said in the last episode, is a great place to meet people, to get some good episodes. And I tell you, we have this one here. Annabelle set up for me, and it’s a little bit different. I didn’t know all about this, but it’s called Wreaths Across America, and Miss Courtney. George is sitting down with me to talk about what that is, and it sounds what little I know, Courtney, it sounds like a great, great program. Tell us a little bit. Race
Courtney George 01:13
Across America is an awesome program, and it’s awesome for many reasons. You don’t have to dig very deep into a person’s history to find a veteran, to find someone who has impacted their life, whether it is a family member, whether it was a neighbor, maybe it was a school teacher, you don’t have to dig very far into their past to find someone that has impacted their life, because our service, men and women have so many amazing skills and are out there doing phenomenal things and Wreaths Across America just started in 1992 Oh, our founder, moral Worcester, is a wreath maker out of the state of Maine. He had 5000 extra wreaths, and as a child, he had won a he and a bunch of the other newspaper boys. I hope people listening to this podcast don’t know what your newspaper or news man is, because I still appreciate mine. I like the physical paper to read, but they worked together and won a trip to DC when they were very young, like between eight and 12, and he remembered going to Arlington National Cemetery and said, How cool would it be to be able to place wreaths on these headstones? So flash forward to 1992 when he’s got these 5000 extra reads, working with the senators to be able to be allowed to take those to our international cemetery and the family very quietly. Place 5000 reads every year, from 92 till about the time the viral picture was taken in 2007 so there was a viral picture taken by a member of the media press, and it is of the wreath laid against their star marble white headstones. And it was covered with snow. And you can see the snow cap on the red bow. And so for us, kind of at that point, it became very viral. Lots of people wanted to get involved in it. So to think, from 2007 us having one location to I know last week, we have over 5000 participating locations in all 50 states, plus Guam Puerto Rico giant. What
Jeremy Kellett 03:40
do you mean by locations of cemetery or where they take Reese,
Courtney George 03:45
Yes, sir. Okay, okay, so 5000 cemeteries that are participating in the program at this point. I mean, it would not surprise me if I went up to 5500 locations that I had to deliver to by the end of this year. And it’s the most amazing problem for me to have in the transportation end, but it does so much, a lot for this industry, if you look at it. And I spent 17 years working for trucking companies, and some of the companies I worked for were involved in Race Across America, but when I was a director of recruiting, I looked at it, and the number one demographic that I had when I was slicing the data, which most companies love, when you can come on with data, was the largest demographic I had were veterans. So what was I going to do to make them and keep them happy? Anybody can say they’re a veteran friendly hiring company. But how do you show it? Veterans want you to show it. And you know, there’s so many great things we see trucking companies do from donating their services or. Are helping with storage of wreaths for the local cemetery near them and getting them there that day. I mean volunteering to go places, volunteering and setting up a fundraising page to help fund raise for wreaths for maybe it’s just Arlington National Cemetery, if you’re a large location, or maybe it’s one down the street. There’s so many different examples. I use rail transportation. So real life example, Marshfield, where they’re based out of, wasn’t participating. And once they learned about the program and laid the groundwork for DC, they took it back to their community, and in their first year, they raised enough for every veteran in that cemetery in their town to be able to have a wreath. Is this
Jeremy Kellett 05:53
happens on a certain day of the year? It
Courtney George 05:56
does. It happens either the second or third Saturday in December this year is going to be Saturday December 13. That is a date that has to be approved by Congress, really, yes. So it is a huge deal for everyone to be able to get out there. And we actually, there is a ceremony each location has, and we are placing these concurrently across the country. So the ceremony happens at the same time, and then the wreath placement, so all the way across the country. So if it’s 12 noon, Eastern Time, it’s 11 Central
Speaker 1 06:37
and so on. I try to time it to where everybody participates, participating,
Courtney George 06:41
and placing them all at the same time.
Jeremy Kellett 06:44
Central Arkansas truck and trailer strives to take care of our owner operators as quickly and accurately as possible. As a family owned and operated company, they understand and value the importance of relationships just like we do. That is why Oakley owner operator Joe Williams continues to return to their shop for service on his truck.
Joe Williams 07:02
I’ve been with Oakley trucking for two years this April, 1 time owner operator. It was a shock to the maintenance and the repairs on it, because I’ve never done anything like this before. I told my wife, we’ll try that Central Arkansas truck and trailer, you know, because they’re so convenient right there off the interstate, right down the road from Oakley trucking. And I talked to Nathan, and being an owner operator, he tries to get the owner operators in and out as quickly as possible, because he knows if we’re not rolling, we’re not making money. If it’s, they tell me they can get my truck in at a certain time. They get it in at a certain time. If they tell me, well, it’ll be ready at this time. It’s ready at that time. So I can really count on they’re competitive with anybody around, probably better than most.
Jeremy Kellett 07:51
Next time your truck needs service, give Central Arkansas truck and trailer a call at 501-568-2185, and let them know you heard it here on the Oakley podcast. And these wreaths where they come from, they
Courtney George 08:07
They’re all handmade out of the state of Maine. So we have our vendor out there that has over 67,000 acres of awesome trees. One of my favorite factoids to tell people I’ll be like, how many, how many trees do you think it takes us? Like, how many trees do you think we cut down?
08:30
I have no idea, none. Oh, no. It’s
Courtney George 08:33
a renewable resource. So we will tip a tree, which means that you and I were thinking about a Christmas tree and the triangular shape. And so they get tall and skinny, so they’ll come in three tippings. You can see the growth. It’s that little segment. And so they come in three tippings cut, and then that section won’t be cut for at least three years, so we aren’t losing any trees in the making of this. And what I love is that our vendor allows us to have a dog tag program. So when these drivers come up and pick up their loads, we have a whole experience for them. So I call it the first mile. And Trucking, we talk a lot about the final mile, yeah, at final delivery. But for me, that first impression, that first experience, is so important. So they get welcomed in. We serve three hot meals a day for any driver that comes up, they get a welcome bag, which has a hat and a sweatshirt. It’s cold up there. I’m from the south, and every year it still surprises me how cold it can get up there. And we take them on a tour where they can see the wreaths being made, and they can see, you know, the trees where they’re tipped. And we have a dog tag program. And they can place a dog tag. Maybe it’s for someone they served with. Maybe it was for a loved one. And today, out there on our tip land, we’ve got over 18,000 dog tags.
Jeremy Kellett 10:12
You’ve given me chills. Courtney, the chills
Courtney George 10:15
coming. And I tell people, I stay in a house kind of right over there. It’s a town of 360 people, so there’s like, Yeah, I think we got a blinking light this year. I think we have one. But some mornings when I’m on my way into the office, and it’s I have a couple extra minutes, and instead of taking the main road, I’ll go through the to plan to get to the office. And I tell people, I kind of stop, there’s a private chapel out there, and you slow down, and the wind were right off the coast there in Maine, and the wind blows, and all those dog tags start like a wind and chime, and really, every hair on your body will stand up because, you know, you’re not there alone.
Jeremy Kellett 10:58
That’s awesome. That’s and I think it’s really good. You make it important for the truck driver that’s coming to pick up a load of wreaths and taking it to one of the 5000 places that’s going, I mean, and you make that special for that truck driver, you
Courtney George 11:13
have to make it special for them. I mean, drivers are giving up. This is near the holiday season for them, especially if they’re an owner op, they’re giving up a lot of things to be able to haul this load of respect. And most people will tell you, it’s the most important load that they’ve hauled. They’re not afraid of doing multiple stops. You know, a lot of them. I had one call me that’s at the Women in Trucking booth, and she was in tears because they had given her a police escort into the town. Oh, wow. And so our drivers are treated like kings and queens and celebrated for the heroes that they are, and that’s something that in trucking we don’t do a great job of. And so this is the one day. And I’ve said it like I told you, I worked 17 years in trucking, where I used to try to take time every week to call five to 10 drivers and just say, Hey, you’re doing a great job. Thank you for what you’re doing. This is how they hear and feel thank you and they are respected and represented. And I see the best of the best in the industry coming out, wanting to do it. I’ve had recruiters reach out to me and say, What is this program? I’ve been trying to hire this guy out of Altoona, Pennsylvania, and he told me he will not come to work for me if he can’t hold a load of vs that’s awesome. It’s a good feeling for me, because then I know that we did something right, and we work each year. They’re just two of us that work in the trucking division at Wreaths Across America, myself and Sarah Worcester, who’s part of the founding family. And if people knew how much Sarah does not get enough credit for what she does putting all these loads together, the amount of time that we spend understanding this driver has this relationship with this location and making sure that it stays on his or her load. We work so hard because we encourage our drivers to form that personal relationship. And I tell them, like, Hey, you’re the professional, even when it comes to unloading a trailer, each location coordinator is supposed to have people there to unload the trailer for them. You’re in management. You’re the one who is counting the boxes, because we get all types of groups, whether it’s school kids, Boy Scouts, people from the Patriot Guard that come out and help unload. And I’m like, what I don’t want to have happen is they needed 40 boxes, and they took off 45 so you’re short at the end. And so that’s when I’m like, Hey, this is the one time I need you to really understand your management and really take that to heart. And they take so much pride in what they do. They go the extra mile. They’ll call me if something’s wrong or let me know that they got their pay courting. I just want to let you know this is the best experience. Yeah, yeah, the remembrance tree program, yes, that’s where you get to hang the dog tags. So out on our tip land, we have sections. I even have a section specifically for truck drivers, and they get to go and place a tag. I had one very compelling I mean, hopefully I will not get choked up talking about this. Chris Shepherd, this year, drove into Arlington. His son passed away a little over a year ago, and he got to be the first one to place a wreath on his son’s head. Out. And so he came out, he placed a dog tag for his son, and his wife rode with him, and she’s the one that got the knock at the door. And so to this day, I mean, he took the time to call me and thank me and say, I’ve kept really bottled up. I’ve tried to put on a good face. And I was like, here’s where you don’t have to. You are surrounded and lifted up by so many people here who want to be here for you, and here’s the opportunity for you to start healing.
Jeremy Kellett 15:40
So the dog tags are left at the place in main they are
Courtney George 15:45
and you can actually select for your tree not to be tipped.
15:50
This is not
Courtney George 15:53
I told you that Chris Shepherd gets me every time, and I say that, but he’s such a genuine guy. And so they could choose from the tree not to be tipped. But most people want their tree to be tipped. That dog tag will be placed back there. But they want to know, okay, they’re contributing. They’re contributing, and those branches from their tree, their loved one’s tree is out there, giving back. Yes, they’re still living, and that living, and by us being able to use the trees that are renewable resources, or that’s really, to me, pretty cool.
Jeremy Kellett 16:33
Is this continuing to grow Courtney, it is continuing
Courtney George 16:37
to grow. So we are growing about, I’m gonna say anywhere from 12 to 17% per year. So every year, all of my carriers are so kind, and I ask for one more load. Or I will call them and say, hey, look, I have this open that delivers close to your home. Or, Hey, I’m really in a bind. Can you help me out of somebody’s truck? Because inevitably, somebody’s truck’s gonna break down, something’s gonna happen, and I know and understand that. And our carriers step up. Every year, new carriers join us. And so to be able to see last year, we did 3.1 million reads at 4909 locations. Wow. The year before was only about 3 million, 295,
Jeremy Kellett 17:30
something like that. Are you getting any national recognition? I
Courtney George 17:34
I think most of our recognition comes in the smaller general. But do we receive national recognition? Yes, some I would think so too. The mission gets lots of recognition, and we work really hard to partner with lots of VSOs for veteran service organizations. We were just at the Medal of Honor Society earlier this week in DC, whether it’s with the American Legion, everyone has the ability. And I tell people, everyone plays a part. And that was our motto a couple years ago, is that everyone plays a part. It was interesting. Just while I was sitting here before you and I sat down, I had a carrier that said, hey, I need to wrap a NASCAR for a fallen soldier. And she was like, I have to have this information Monday. And when she goes, I can look internally at our employees. And I said, If you don’t, I got one for you. And she said, that was easy. And I was like, Well, I have the ability to work with so many amazing people, but this year’s mission for us is to keep moving forward. And so there was a soldier named Joshua Byers. His parents are very involved down in South Carolina, and his group came under attack, and his last words were, keep moving forward. Oh, yeah. And I was like, well, you need something for a NASCAR race. I can’t think of anything more fitting then keep moving forward and for your son to be showcased. Is the hero that he is that’s great
Jeremy Kellett 19:19
at
Speaker 3 19:20
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Jeremy Kellett 20:13
I want to go a little bit before I let you get out of here. I want to go a little different direction, and I want to know about Courtney George. I want to know a little bit about you, because you’re doing some amazing stuff. And you talked about working for 17 years for a trucking company. You had to change some things in your life. I
Courtney George 20:34
did. I did. If you had asked me when I came out of the University of Alabama with a degree in consumer industrial marketing. If I would have ever thought that I would have worked in trucking, I would have laughed at you. But I say all of that to go. I love this industry. I love the people in this industry. I got out of college and said the right thing in an interview. I was interviewing for a customer service position, and said the right thing. And they were like, Hey, do you want to be a recruiter? And I was like, I mean, I’m 23 I’m like, Yeah, sure, let’s go. And I owe a lot of my success in this industry tonight, transportation and the background that they gave to me because for the first three months, I had to run trucks and run customers first. And I get why they do that, because they want you to understand their business, and it makes you a better recruiter. Yes, it does. You really understand and so that set off a trajectory for me as I moved up the ladder within driver recruiting and with other companies, the first thing I used to do is send people out for a ride along. If you have a problem you want to know what’s going on, show up at a terminal and hop in a truck. Yep, you will find everything you could ever want out. So I worked in trucking forever. I can’t leave it. I tell people, it’s Hotel California. You can check in anytime. You won’t, but you can’t ever leave Where’d you grow up? At Alabama. No, I am from North Carolina originally. I went to high school up in Virginia. They sent you. A lot of people went to small private schools up in the Northeast. I hate cold weather, which is funny because I work for a company based out of the country but I went to Alabama. They did an amazing job recruiting, and have been living in Atlanta, so I’m close enough to my parents that can get there if I need to, but I’m also far enough away that they do not just randomly show up at my door, even though they can if they’re listening to this or watching this, like always welcome. You’re always welcome. You have a key. Yeah, and they’re great, because they take care of my dog when I travel, but they I have had the opportunity to travel and meet and see so many people in this country because of trucking and so I absolutely loved it, and I was someone who was very passionate, and I was just a volunteer for Reeves. I didn’t get how you got involved. I got involved. I worked for, say, LTL for several years, and one thing it was really important to me on the HR side is, how are we now? How are we engaging with our employees? And again, I sat there and did some math, and my number one thing was, these guys are veterans, and I am. I come from a family who has lots of veterans. My brother is active. My brother in law is on active duty. And so for me, it kind of took two things that I really care about, which is trucking and people, the people of trucking and veterans. And I married this job, and it was the best thing that I could have ever I tell people I am lucky every day,
Jeremy Kellett 24:15
and then you just made that transition to Reese across America, full time, full
Courtney George 24:19
time. I’m out talking trucking. I’m up here at mats, recruiting drivers, recruiting trucking companies. As we grow that 12 to 17% that means I’ve got to come up with 12 to 17%
Jeremy Kellett 24:33
So let’s do that before we close out. Tell the listeners how they can get in touch and do this and volunteer. Absolutely.
Courtney George 24:40
You can get online. You can shoot me an email at trucking, at Wreaths Across america.org, you can also hop on our website, which is www dot Rees across america.org, forward slash trucking. It’ll take you straight to all my information. And you see my cell phone, my office phone, is tied to that good it’s always with me. So I’m very easy to get in touch with. You can even find me on LinkedIn by searching Courtney George. I’m happy to talk with anyone and know that there’s a way that everyone can participate. If you’re in this industry and you may not be a carrier, guess what? There’s a way you can support the drivers. You’re supporting your customers by supporting the drivers. Yeah,
Jeremy Kellett 25:30
Well, it’s something that I didn’t do. I’d heard about it, but I had no idea that it went into this detail, and what all you do. And I mean, you’re very impressive. Courtney,
Courtney George 25:44
Joel, you’re very kind. We’re looking for over 800 loads this year. Wow, and that’s over 800 opportunities to impress people. That’s also 800 ways for us to be able to share with communities, tell people about loved ones, let them learn, yeah, and learn about our heroes.
Jeremy Kellett 26:07
Yes, well, you do a great job of recognizing them and doing your part to keep it going. And I really, really appreciate that, and it’s really good to meet you and good to learn about this. This is very interesting and I’m glad we’re able to promote it on the Oakley podcast and get it out there for people to learn about it and know more about it. So thank you for sitting down
Courtney George 26:29
with me. Thank you for having me. It’s been a blast. Yes, appreciate everybody
Jeremy Kellett 26:33
listening to the Oakley podcast. Of course, just like every week, we try to bring you some good information for our owner operator so you can be a successful truck driver. So thanks for listening. We’ll talk to you next week. Thanks for listening to this episode with Oakley podcast, trucking business and family. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate or review the show in the podcast platform of your choice and share it with a friend. We love hearing from our audience. So if you’ve got a question, comment or just want to say hello. Head over to our website, the Oakley podcast.com, and click the leave a comment button. We’ll get you a response soon, and may even share some of the best ones here on the show. We’ll be back with a fresh episode very soon. Thanks for listening.