Arizona Contractor & Community Fall 2015 V4 I3 | Page 85

company grew 51 percent and doubled its
fleet. “We bought new trucks and used
trucks, fixed them up and made money and
we saved every penny we could make,”
John said. “We’ve been in the trucking
company our whole lives…so we knew it
was up and down.”
While it is true that John and his father
have spent most of their lives in the
trucking business and have deep roots in
Arizona, the Mundall family history
actually begins on the fields of Norway.
John’s great-grandfather, also named
John Mundall, left Mundal, Norway and
then settled in Chicago where he met and
married his wife Anna Bordsen from
Vergen, Norway. The couple stopped in
Phoenix in 1896 while headed to California
to make their riches. They liked the area
and decided they could instead make their
fortune here, building a home near 32nd
Street and Air Lane, where they grew their
family.
Although the family house is no longer
there, one of the original palm trees
belonging to the property still remains
near Sky Harbor Airport today with its
roots firmly anchored to the very spot the
Mundall family first laid down its own
roots.
One of John Mundall’s sons, Lester
Mundall, went on to become a farmer
himself and also had a dairy herd of 150
cattle near Camelback Road between 12th
and 15th avenues. In 1952, he sold the
farm and purchased the 40 acres where
Mundall Trucking remains today.
“Grandpa had a knack for growing
melons,” John said.
McNeil, 66, remembers those years
and even spent a bit of time working for
Lester Mundall turning watermelon vines
in the fields when he was just a boy.
“Lester is the only guy in my whole lifetime
who ever fired me,” McNeil recalled while
laughing. “I remember this kid picked up a
watermelon and threw it and hit me, so I
did it to him and then Lester saw me and
fired me.”
John’s memories of his grandfather
are mostly of his work ethic. “If you didn’t
work as hard as my grandpa, he didn’t have
any use for you,” John said. “He was a
tough cookie.”
In fact, John said his father and his two
uncles were sent out to the fields to
operate a tractor together at ages five, six,
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