Bucking Old Ideas, Some Women Make Inroads In Trucking

(Michael James - Transport Topics)

Thirty-some years after the women’s movement opened the doors
to many vocations traditionally considered “male,” young
women still look askance at driving big rigs for a living.

Lissa Carmichael, a 9-year old schoolgirl in Fairfax County, Va., says,
“Ladies can’t drive big trucks.” If you ask what she wants to be when
she grows up, she says, “A nurse or a cowgirl.”

Lissa has never heard of a “lady” truck driver. “Daddies do that.
Trucks are too big for ladies,” she says.

That is the way Lissa sees women in the world.
There are certain things “ladies” don’t do. She
has never seen a woman truck driver and has never considered
that women could drive the big
rigs she loves to gawk at out on the road.