The Truck Driver Training Horror Story that launched the REAL Women in Trucking Organization
- REAL Women in Trucking
- 16 hours ago
- 6 min read
A Day in the Life of a Lady Truck Driver – The Truck Driver Training Horror Story that launched the REAL Women in Trucking Organization
It has been 18 years since I entered truck driver training. I entered CDL School expecting to get a job where I would work hard, have a paycheck on Friday and have medical insurance. I didn't expect any special treatment, and I knew people might not understand why someone like me would want to be a truck driver, but I hoped at least for a fair shot to show I could do it.
Instead, what I found was a grossly unsafe system that defied logic, was in conflict with highway safety and endangered the lives not only new drivers like me, but everyone sharing the highway with us.
At the time, social media was just beginning to shape public conversation. I was one of the 1st women truck drivers on twitter (now X) as @TruckerDesiree . My
strategy was to only use my personality to gain attention and to talk about the day-to-day realities of the job of as an over-the -road truck driver with the public, who know very little about how truck drivers serve them. My 1st year using social media I concealed my identity using the avatar of Jiminy Cricket. He was my shield and my moral compass: “Let your conscience be your guide.”
Speaking out as myself felt dangerous, but staying silent felt immoral. I could see my co-workers were terrified of the power our company had, yet they all had similar or worse experiences than I was having, and it wasn't just at our company, it was at others like ours that used the same "student-team" business model. My student truck driver horror story became an instant hit because no one had written a first-hand account of the modern-day truck driver training system at that time. It was published on the "Ask the Trucker" blog with the backstory on my personal blog.
Recently I participated in an interview to provide advice for new entrants who are considering entering truck driver training, this article from SLASHGEAR - What It Takes To Become A Trucker: Tests, Training, And More really gets to the heart of the matter and excludes all the fluff you see from the trucking "establishment". It is important to tell people the truth so they can make the best decisions for their situation but there are too often misleading claims about the pay and work conditions and that sets people up to fail. Articles like this did not exist when I entered truck driver training.
I had turned to social media in 2008 out of desperation. There was no support from the women in trucking association, where I and others were paid members. You were constantly defending yourself and trying to defend others who were accused of "bringing it on themselves". Blocking and censoring women truck drivers who were having difficulties at trucking companies that were their corporate sponsors was the norm. They were not interested in improving the culture, they were in it for the money, and this seemed sickening to me. They knew women were being sexually assaulted during training and they continued to take money from the companies where these assaults were taking place, their President and Founder was testifying against women truck drivers in court cases, and no one seemed to care.
The challenges many of us were facing weren’t personal failures. They were symptoms of a system deliberately designed to exploit student truck drivers as cheap labor while collecting government subsidies under the banner of “job training.” The "truck driver shortage" was not a crisis, it did not exist, and high turnover was part of the business model. Student truck drivers are expendable once the tax credit or subsidy employment qualification time was met and that wasn't enough time to produce a qualified driver. There are no retention metrics in place for the various job programs, accountability is nonexistent.
For women, especially women entering trucking alone, this system was far more dangerous than I ever could have imagined and the women in trucking association stood to gain from this mess. There needed to be another alternative for women seeking help and since we were REAL truck drivers and they were corporate backed women and men with an agenda to keep this broken business model intact, it only made sense to start our own organization.
Trucking industry labor abuse ranges from wage theft and blacklisting to sexual harassment, violent assaults, sexual assault, being held hostage on the truck and even murder. Those who dare to report these crimes in the workplace are usually retaliated against and shamed into silence. Mostly by other women in executive level positions and senior women drivers. This has not changed; it's only become worse and that is why I am revisiting my truck driver training horror story now.
I talked about my student truck driver horror story with Las Vegas PBS recently and shared some of my experiences when I was required to co-habitate unsupervised with persons that had been formerly incarcerated as a condition of employment.
Most new entrants to truck driver training are indoctrinated early into employer-driven debt through tuition and lease purchase trucks. Large training carriers are self-insured, their crash data and litigation for other workplace violence crimes remain hidden from public view because they can afford to do so. It's a cost of doing business for them and they know that most new drivers are not going to fight back, and fewer still know how to take them on.
I decided early that I didn't want to sue my company for what they put me through because I knew they would blacklist me and I would not get the training I needed to be considered a qualified truck driver. I stayed there instead; I wrote my story and began to build the REAL Women in Trucking community. I did everything by the book and became a safe qualified truck driver.
Before the completion of my student training horror story, I was contacted by Dan Rather producers about it, and they wanted to meet me. This led to four investigative reports on television into trucking, the first was called "Queen of the Road" now available on YouTube. The others, "Mind Your Loan Business" focused on employer driven debt from training repayment traps and "Haul or High Water" about the precarity of the trucking lifestyle that touched on broker fraud. All of these issues have become worse and have morphed in different ways that have deeply harmed the viability of this profession.
The fallout from the 1st episode was intense. The trucking industry establishment was caught completely off guard, the ATA representative who appeared in the 1st episode Dave Osiecki who later became President and CEO of the Scopelitis Transportation Consulting firm, a consulting and advisory business came off as disingenuous when asked about my allegations of unsafe training practices. The ATA and WIT both called the episode "unfair". A 2nd episode called "Truck Talk", was scheduled to allow the American Trucking Association to present their position. They did not show up when they learned I would be there in person. It was stunning that a new driver with just a little over 1 year in the industry could hit a nerve in this way. I knew I had to keep talking.
The video below is the introduction of this episode by Dan Rather regarding this this incident.
Following this series, it became clear to me that the American Trucking Association and the Women in Trucking Association did not have the slightest inclination to ever improve working conditions or eliminate workplace violence in trucking companies that are their corporate sponsors. This would have to happen from a grassroots effort of others.
My advocacy took off after this event, and I left my student truck driver story unfinished until now. It is currently being reformatted with an introduction for publication. There are a lot of other truck drivers now telling the trucking industry story that corroborate what I experienced as the norm and not a one off.
It is critically important to understand the difference in trucking industry establishment accounts of the industry and research backed by them and firsthand account writings and research on truck drivers,
I am looking forward to republishing my student truck driver horror story at a time when other truck drivers are also publishing their books about trucking industry practices as new audiences are now listening to us.
In the meantime, for anyone looking for trustworthy resource books and research about the trucking industry, here are my suggestions:
Sweatshops on Wheels – Michael Belzer
The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream ~ Steve Viscelli
Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance – Karen Levy
Life on the Big Slab: Identity and Mobility in the United States Trucking Industry – Valerie J. Keathley, Ph.D.
Semi-Queer: Inside the World of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers ~ Anne Balay
The Secret Life of Groceries – Benjamin Lorr
Killer on the Road: Violence and the American Interstate – Ginger Strand
Long-haul – Hunting the Highway Serial Killers – Frank Figliuzzi