You're listening to an I-Heart podcast.

And we continue with our American stories, and it's time for our American Dreamers series.

Today, Aubrey Riggle brings us the

story of someone you likely don't know, but we'll be glad to have met.

I got married at 16 and I had my first child when I was 17 and my next child at 18 and my

next child at 19. So I ended up with three babies and finally my

aunt told me to call the last one caboose and let it be the end. You're listening to Marcia Taylor,

likely the first woman to own and operate a trucking company, Bennett International Group.

But before she was a leading businesswoman, she was a young mom of three babies,

growing a startup business into what is now one of the biggest trucking companies in America.

I grew up in southern Illinois on a small farm with my mother and father and a brother that was seven years younger than I was.

My mother always had a big garden and she had a lot of chickens and I would help her can.

And my dad always had a lot of wheat and soybeans and corn,

so it would help him in the fields and it was a great way to grow up.

When I was 14, my father, he had been sick and he just got up and just passed out.

And I mean, he just, right then, he just died.

I left my mother and I and my little brother Duane with a farm. It was just a devastating time

for me. I ended up being the kind of the responsible one in the family. I married really early.

I think I was being a little rebellious. My husband and I lived on the farm and he worked on the

railroad and I was a housewife.

Neither one of us was really ready to be married nor ready for the responsibility that having three small children.

And my husband started drinking and it just become a very, very abusive relationship, both physically and mentally.

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