Elwood Donaldson

Elwood Lewis Donaldson, age 90, of Sand Creek, WI passed away Wednesday, August 6, 2014, at the Maplewood Nursing Home in Bloomer.

Elwood was born May 9, 1924, in Eau Claire, WI, the eldest child of Lewis and Mildred (Menard) Donaldson. Elwood attended Fox Settlement School and helped out on the farm until at just age 17, he got his first trucking job hauling milk for Frank Babbitt. In 1944, the same year he married Nina Christopherson, Elwood decided to follow in his father's footsteps, hauling cattle to the stockyards in South St. Paul. In the 1950s, Elwood started his own trucking company, Donaldson Trucking, Incorporated, building his fleet to about a dozen trucks, several driven by his brothers and sons. After selling this business, he leased his rig to Interstate Express, where he was an owner-operator for several years. In the early 1970s, having had his fill of pounding the I-94 between St. Paul and Chicago, Elwood started an excavating business, digging basements and installing septic systems and spreading lime. One can only guess how many million miles Elwood logged during his 50-year trucking career. A 1970 Bloomer Advance article about the trucking Donaldsons of Dunn County noted that, at that time, he had about 2.5 million miles to his credit. When he wasn't behind the wheel of a truck, Elwood enjoyed boating, fishing, camping, and snowmobiling. During retirement, he and Nina often wintered in warmer climates, first Texas and then Apache Junction, AZ, which for many years was his home away from home.