Arizona Contractor & Community Fall 2015 V4 I3 | Page 86

and seven. Lester was actually suspected
of child abuse for working his kids so hard.
The work ethic, however, remained with
the Mundall family.
John’s father, Danny Mundall who is
78, was a competitive rodeo roper until the
age of 72 when he suffered a bad horse
accident followed by a stroke. “Whatever
he touched, he did really well at and my
grandpa was that way too,” John said.
In fact, Danny was also a great football
player, wrestled, raced sprint cars, bred an
elite bloodline of hunting hounds, and bred
and trained rope horses. And although
John learned a lot from his father, he
credits his mother, Virginia Crook Mundall
– Miss Arizona USA in 1960 and a Miss
Universe Pageant competitor – with
teaching him to work. She always expected
him to mow the grass and tend her flower
beds and vegetable gardens.
Although John grew up in the trucking
business, he actually worked for his
grandfather on the farm until high school

and then got a job with Saguaro Petroleum
busting bags of rubber and making
rubberized emulsion. The work was tough,
but so was John. “Farm boys could do this
type of work, but regular guys couldn’t,”
John said.
John had an opportunity to help build
an emulsion plant in Phoenix and when the
plant was finished, he was asked by the
Ted R. Jenkins Company to be the plant
manager. John remained in this role for
three years, but was forced to stop after
suffering severe burns to his body from
320-degree asphalt.
“I was in a burn center for a week and
couldn’t go out in the daylight for almost
six months,” John said. “After that is when
I came to work for my dad.” He added, “I
had job offers from emulsion companies in
other states, but I couldn’t leave home –
my roots are here.”
John and his father went down to
Allen Harris Trucking Company and,
together bought a 10-wheeler. John drove

that for 12 years until 1995 when Mundall
Trucking ordered 10 super dumps and
made a pivotal jump from a local family
trucking company to a major Arizona
competitor.
Today, the company has worked for
just about everyone in town, including MR
Tanner Development, Southwest Asphalt,
Sunland Asphalt, Nesbitt Contracting, WSP
Inc., Vulcan Materials, VSS International,
and more. Mundall Trucking’s services
include asphalt, chip sealing, milling,
aggregate, and “white asphalt” or concrete
work.
Some of Mundall’s memorable jobs
include the first widening of U.S. 60
Superstition Freeway, where concrete was
hauled out of the Century Materials plant
to the project and the construction of the
third runway at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport
for Kiewit. These were both “wet” jobs
where Mundall filled their dump truck beds
and hauled directly to the jobs. This is a
method used when so much concrete is
needed that truck drivers can dump the
material in mass amounts.
“People thought we were crazy to do
that one with brand new super 16s, but it
kept us going when things were slow,”
John said.
Their largest job was a four-month
chip sealing project for VSS International
on the roads of the Navajo Nation in 2010.
Greg Groneberg, a sales representative at
Southwest Asphalt has worked off and on
with John for about 20 years and calls
Top left: Mundall Truck Shop with
mechanics, drivers, and friends.
Top right: Nine-year-old Jessica Mundall on
a truck cab; today she's the company's
office manager.
Left: Truck yard after dairy closed.
Right: Mundall Trucking, 2015.

Eighty six

Fall 2015