Difference between revisions of "Gene England"

Revision as of 16:59, 29 August 2021

Eugene K. England is the son of the founder of C. R. England trucking and continues to work at the age of 100 (in 2019). He is president emeritus of the company, which headquarters are in West Valley City, Utah.

He was born in Plain City, Utah, when the small town held 600 residents. He rode in trucks with his dad, Chester, since he was a small boy. “We loved our dad. He was the kind of a guy that just made you want to be with him. And our happiest days were on those trucks. He wouldn’t take us out of school, but in the summertime and maybe on weekends, we’d get a chance to go somewhere in the truck.”[1]

When Gene attended Brigham Young University, he met his first wife, June, and they had six sons. In the summer of 1941, England and his wife went to San Luis Obispo, California, to visit her family and they settled there after he took a job as a civilian manager of a postal exchange for the Army. He later was drafted into the Army and served in Okinawa, Japan. He earned a Bronze Star for going into gunfire on his belly to drag an injured comrade into his foxhole during an operation that cost the lives of101 soldiers (only 25 survived).

During the war, he sold his cigarette rations to other soldiers, which helped him bring $5000 home after the war. He and his father and brother used the money to buy a used Kenworth truck, which was the beginning of C. R. England. Their small beginning of picking up bananas from Texas grew into hauling produce and later fishery and poultry products. C. R. England became the largest refrigerated carrier in the country.

His wife June passed away in 2009.