Truck driving is a steady-paying career that offers job security, and now trucking firms are trying to incentivize more hires with employee benefits amid driver shortages. It is an intense job with long hours, but the role of truckers has become more important than ever in the Pandemic and with supply chain shortages. 

Luckily, more women are applying and training to become truck drivers in what has traditionally been a male-dominated field. 

There are currently more than three million truck drivers in the US, but only 10 percent of those are women, according to the Women in Trucking Association, a nonprofit aiming to get more women into trucking. 

In Newport News, a city in Virginia, Serita Lockley is a trucker and an entrepreneur who has started her own trucking company called Lady Lockley’s Trucking. 

“Women are definitely getting into trucking,” Lockley said to 13 News Now. “I feel it is amazing because you really don’t expect women to drive big trucks.”

Trucking needs women

With shortages in the trucking industry growing each year, the need for women to step into the driver seats has never been needed more. Lockley doing her part to fill in the loss, engaging more women truck drivers and sending them to Dudley’s Driving School in the same town to get their Commercial Driver’s Licenses. 

Thomas Dudley, co-owner of Dudley’s Driving School said that they are definitely seeing more women coming in to get trained. Many are attracted to the job because trucking with a Commercial Driver’s License can open up more doors, more flexibility, and pay starting at $50,000 and going up to $100,000 a year depending on experience and what you do. More women are jumping at the opportunity to change up this profession. 

According to Emanuell Roberston, lead driving instructor at Dudley’s, “It’s a male-dominated industry, that is what they say. But the females are more driven, they have more passion, and their pass rate is almost 100 percent.”