A WOMAN’S PLACE IS IN THE TRUCK — OR THE CORNER OFFICE
BY JENNIFER BARNETT REED Contributing Writer
It’s been more than 70 years since
a young woman named Lillian Bennett became the first female to own a trucking company in Arizona. She had to buck her family’s disapproval — they wanted her to run a dress shop — to enter a field that then employed women only as office workers. Today, there are some great success
stories for women in the trucking industry in Arizona. The state is home to a championship driver, a history-making mechanic, and company owners who’ve not only done well for themselves but have taken on leadership roles within the industry. Looking at the numbers, though, it’s
clear that trucking is still very much a male- dominated field. Only about 5 percent of the nation’s 3 million truck drivers and about 1 percent of large-vehicle mechanics are women. That’s partly because of barriers that make the industry less attractive to young women. But, says Ellen Voie, president of the national organization Women in Trucking, the industry also simply isn’t getting the word out that it’s a great career choice for women in spite of those barriers. “We don’t do a good enough job
of showing women in these careers, and the kind of money they can make in nontraditional career choices,” Voie said. “Girls come up to me and say ‘I want to drive a truck, but my dad won’t let me.’ When those of us in the trucking industry start encouraging our kids, we’ll solve the driver shortage.” Parental encouragement — especially
from fathers — played a decisive part in the lives of four stand-out women in Arizona’s trucking industry. Swift Transportation mechanic
Christina Haug, 23, recently became the first 30
woman to make it past the written exam to the hands-on portion of the national SuperTech competition. “Most of it I can blame on my dad,”
she said. “He had me outside working on cars and fixing them.” For veteran driver Ina Daly, her truck-
driving father’s prodding 30 years ago was key to her career choice. Her father — a truck driver himself, and the man who taught Daly how to drive — wondered why she was going to college to become a teacher when she loved driving trucks and could make a good living at it. “It was me doing the stereotyping,”
she said. “My dad encouraged me the whole time. He was very advanced in his thinking toward women.” A good thing, too. Daly, who drives for
Con-way Freight, is a perennial finalist at the Arizona Truck Driving Championship and a veteran of the national competition. She’s also been named Arizona Driver of the Year, and in 2001 was picked for the American Trucking Association’s America’s Road Team. Daly benefited not only from her
father’s encouragement and skill as a teacher, but also from his professional contacts. In those days, Daly said, most people got jobs through knowing someone at the hiring company — and as a woman, she would have been even less likely to be hired walking into a recruiting office off the street. Friends of her father’s gave her a start in the business, in one case reading the riot act to a recruiter who told Daly — untruthfully — that his company wasn’t hiring. “He got his butt in trouble,” she
laughed. But Daly’s accomplishments since then
are all her own — including passing the 2 million accident-free miles mark. Faye Stewart also followed her father
— and her mother — into the trucking industry. After working in a number of different positions for Swift Transportation and other companies for almost three decades, she struck out on her own in 2001. “I did not want another person to be in
charge of my destination in life,” she said. Faye Stewart Transportation
now employs 15 people in its office and warehouse, in addition to working with owner/ operators. And Stewart is a member of the board of directors of the Arizona Trucking Association and the Arizona Transportation
Stewart
Education Foundation (ATEF). “I’ve never had those thoughts or
feelings about making it in a man’s world,” she said. “If you know your industry, you can hold your own.” DLD Truck Straps President Becky
Thiessen agreed. When she started in the family business in 1985, she did outside sales — in those days, a very good job for a young, attractive woman in a field where 99 percent of the customers were men. More than 25 years later, though, she’s running the company and has been around long enough that she’s earned those male customers’ respect. “In this industry, you’ve got to be
smart, you’ve got to be tough, and at the same time you’ve just got to be able to smile from ear to ear and be the best you can be,” said Thiessen, who’s also active in ATA and was chairman of the 2012 Arizona Truck Driving/SuperTech Championship. Daly said she’s seen a lot of change
in attitudes toward women in the 30 years since she started driving a truck. Most men are much more respectful and accepting of women, she said — but there are still some
Arizona Trucking Association 2012 Post-Conference Report
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