It's a Team's Life

Celebrating International Women's Day

 Every March, we humbly celebrate Women's History Month; and today we celebrate International Women’s Day, by not only being the proud group of powerful women that we are, but by acknowledging the resilient women who came before us, for having blazed the trails that we drive, and nodding to our fellow women driving alongside us still today.

 

 

Trucking for women started in a time when women still did not have the same rights as their male counterparts, but instead were thrust into male dominated positions due to the men of their communities and households being drafted for WWI. Today, women lead our nation in all three branches of our government, perform life-saving surgeries every day, are CEOs to a multitude of Fortune 500 companies, and not only drive freight all over this beautiful country, but own and operate their own trucks as well. Whereas in the early days of women truck drivers, majority of the women in the US were simply homemakers, tending the home and raising their children.

In 1918, Luella Bates was the first of six women to be hired as a female truck driver for Four Wheel Drive in Clintonville, WI, where she unknowingly took the lead for women in trucking. She could be spotted in her Model B not only as a driver, but also as a mechanic, performing her own maintenance and repairs herself. She really set off to make way for women drivers when she drove her Model B to New York City, where then in 1920, she became the nations first woman truck driver to be licensed. For context, this was same year when women were granted their right to vote in the United States. Then after garnering all of this attention and popularity, she went on to do multiple cross country tours, while being featured as "exhibit A for feminine efficiency" in a Popular Science magazine article.

 

While these are only estimates, the most recent totals for 2024 released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, women in the trucking industry overall today make up less than 8% of the workforce as drivers. WIT released the results of their own study in 2023, showing that out of all professional drivers who held a CDL and operated heavy-duty trucks, 12% were women. These estimates are concerning since they are both on the decline from previously recorded data, so that raises these questions to our fellow women out here;

When and why did you decide to get into trucking?

What changes are needed in the industry to give women confidence when pursuing trucking?

What advice can you give to the young women in today's generation that are considering trucking as a career?

Drop us answers and include your story on our forum here, as we’ll be compiling and sharing the feedback we receive in honor of Women’s History Month.

 

To continue to celebrate and bring light to women in the industry, tune into Channel 146 at 1100 EST for the Women in Trucking Show with Ellen Voie on Sirius XM Road Dog Radio, where we’ll be discussing our success in both the trucking and expedite industry, alongside two other fellow women owner operators.

 Download the app here, and listen to the episode on your own time for up to three weeks following the release. Not a Sirius XM subscriber? You can try it free for 30 days.

Run Hard, Dream Big,

- M.I.T.