It’s time to Salute the Women Behind the Wheel!

Press Release February 18, 2012

Plover, WI: The sight of nearly 300 women in red t-shirts at the Mid-America Trucking Show always turns a few heads. The shrieks and hugs from the participants bring a smile to everyone nearby. All female professional drivers are welcome to participate in this year’s annual event.

The Women In Trucking (WIT) Association is hosting its Third Annual “Salute to the
Women Behind the Wheel” at the Kentucky Exposition Center (Louisville) on Saturday, March 24. Doors open at noon in rooms C201-C205 in the upper level of the south wing. Drivers can register at the show at the WIT booth (#40565) in the north wing lobby.

Any woman with a commercial driver’s license is encouraged to attend and is not required to be a member of the association; although they are encouraged to support the nonprofit association as a member. Female drivers can register at the Salute to Women website.Attendees and their families will be welcomed by the Women In Trucking board members and the sponsors of the event where each female driver will receive a goodie bag filled with gifts. They will also be able to visit with corporate sponsors and meet with the driver advisory committee and accomplished drivers who have reached four million mile safe driving records. Terry Wooley and Highway Fever will perform before the ceremony and guests will once again enjoy Women In Trucking’s signature chocolate fountains!

This year’s guest speaker will be Joyce Brenny, owner of Brenny Transportation, Inc. and Brenny Specialized, Inc. in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Brenny currently serves as the Chairwoman of the Minnesota Trucking Association and is the first woman to serve in that capacity.

Gold level sponsor representatives from Frito-Lay and Walmart will welcome the attendees and Women In Trucking President/CEO, Ellen Voie, will give an update on the association’s accomplishments.

The Women In Trucking Association hosts the celebration, but the event is funded through the generous support of the following sponsors:

• Gold Sponsors: Frito-Lay and Walmart Transportation

• Silver Sponsors: U.S. Xpress, Inc. and Volvo Trucks

• Bronze Sponsor: McGriff, Seibels, & Williams, Inc.

• Copper Sponsors: FedEx Freight, J. J. Keller & Associates, Inc., Owner-Operator DIRECT, Rand McNally, Trucker Charity Inc., and UPS Freight

• Nickel Sponsors: Airtab®, Anatabloc, Brenny Transportation, Inc. & Brenny Specialized, Inc.,  J.B. Hunt and Schneider National, Inc.

2011 Salute to Women Behind the Wheel; Photo by Paul Hartley, AddMedia.com

Women In Trucking was established to encourage the employment of women in the trucking industry, promote their accomplishments and minimize obstacles faced by women working in the trucking industry. Women In Trucking is supported by its members and the generous support of Gold Level Partners;

Bendix, Frito-Lay North America, Great Dane Trailers, Hyundai Translead and Walmart.

Ellen Voie, President/CEO, Women In Trucking Association, Inc.

Sexually Oriented Businesses? Oh Yeah! Truck Driver’s Clinics? Heck No!

By Sandy Long

“Dec 09, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- TravelCenters of America LLC (TravelCenters) has announced the opening of the first on-site Statcare medical clinic within the TA and Petro Stopping Centers branded travel center network.  The Statcare clinic, operated by Family Statcare of Northeast Ohio, LLC, is located at the TA travel center at 8834 Lake Rd., Seville, Ohio.” 

That sounds great does it not?  It was great; a trucker’s clinic right in the middle of a major hub for trucking, but it did not last long though.  Shortly after the above press release, the Westfield Township zoning inspector visited the clinic and shut it down for not meeting the zoning code.  Come to find out, the area is zoned for eating places, motels, truck stops and repair shops, and even sexually oriented businesses, but not medical clinics!

Ken Filbert, the owner of Family Statcare, said that he met with a chiropractor who was located at the TA just before his clinic opened.  When he asked the zoning inspector why the chiropractor was allowed to operate, but not the clinic, the zoning inspector informed him, “that he didn't know the chiropractor was there, but we caught you.”

Filbert is well-intentioned concerning truckers, he says, “truckers do so much for this country, I wanted to start this clinic providing low cost, affordable, reachable medical services for the truckers in return, I wanted to give them something back. This clinic is close to home for my company, so we are in hopes of fine tuning it here, then expanding across the country to help truckers.”

Filbert reported that Westfield Township has not offered any quick solutions to the zoning issue. “They did not offer a temporary zoning permit while we work the paperwork, or to have a special session of the township to expedite the permit process, it will take three months or more to get the zoning changed once we get the paperwork done.”

Some of the services the clinic will offer are drug testing, DOT physicals, illness care, and minor wound care.  Filbert even arranged with a local pharmacy to deliver medications directly to the truck stop within an hour of calling the prescription in for truckers who needed them. “I understand both the difficulty of getting a 70 foot rig to a drug store and the problem of drivers getting home for doctor appointments with their own doctors as so many run out of medications.” 

He said..
Tongue in cheek, Filbert quipped, “Here I am trying to help truckers and perhaps other travelers by providing fast access to healthcare, and rather than cooperation on the part of the city, I get closed down immediately. Yet, if I had opened an adult video store or a strip club, Westfield Township would not mind a bit. Go figure!”

Filbert has a petition at the TA truck stop in Seville OH if you stop by there, or you can sign an online petition at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/re-open-the-truck-drivers-clinic/. By gathering signatures, Filbert hopes that Westfield Township will see how much people do care about truckers' health and if it expedites the process or at least does something positive. “This is the cold and flu season and truckers need medical care now!”  Filbert says, “We have to get this clinic open so we can provide for those truckers that care.”

Street Smarts:  A Guide to a Truck Driver's Personal Safety

Driver Recruiter Viewpoint

From a recruiter's experience, I too, had always dreaded having to filter through the unqualified to get to the qualified potential hires. The best sources cannot filter out, completely, the unqualified. One of the reasons of course is due to those who think they can slip through the hiring process w/o their past disqualifier(s) being revealed. Upon a background check the truth comes out after you've wasted time with the interview and spent money to run your checks.


Early on I learned to write better ads and began to get better quality. Dealing with drivers is a unqiue learning process, unlike other industry workers. Generic ads that would work well for hiring nurses, attorneys, or even firemen for example, usually do not work well for attracting enough qualified drivers.

For an advertising expert, cost and efficiency is what they do best. An expert can at least help companies solve how to get more qualified leads to how to track your results so that you're not wasting ad dollars due to a bad resource. It's part of their job to write ads and word image ads to bring the qualified to your inbox or phone and help filter out the unqualified. For instance the 2 ads below demonstrate a poorly written ad that would attract any experience & background level versus a qualifying Adword ad or any type leader ad to your full information on your web site or other related sites...content that may or may not be fully read once on a page or pages with full details. The ad that gets them that far sticks in most minds so how an ad is worded (your first contact with the job seekers) is extremely important

Hiring OTR Drivers

Great Pay + Benefits

Apply Now!

Hiring Class A Drivers

Min. Exp. 1yr OTR Recent

Clean Bkgrd, Clean MVR

The first ad is far too generic while the 2nd ad is clear on basic requirements. The 1st ad will get you hundreds more leads while the 2nd ad should & usually does, get you a lot fewer leads BUT more qualified candidates, saving time, frustration and money.

I know this is not news to any advertiser reading this but I see how some employers continually post generic ads. Then I hear the complaints that yes, they get quanity, on which many seem to base their decision to use a particular source, but get very few candidates that qualify. Some companies base their decision on how many hires they get which, in my humble opinion, should not be laid off completely on the source as I've pointed out in other posts. Broken down below is how a successful hiring process leading to money spent well and better retention should, in a perfect world, work out:

• Engaging expert ad agents and/or ad managers who KNOW your industry
• Post qualifier ads & images
• Post on driver popular sites, magazines/books & radio with great tracking in place
• Treating all candidates with respect, being truthful & doing timely follow up
• Everyone involved with the drivers telling them the same information
• Judging a resource by how many qualified applicants are generated, not by how many are hired.
• Employers who accept that the end hiring results is in their control and their responsibility wastes less money and have better retention.

Dump the resources that do not generate enough qualified leads and dedicate that money toward the ones that do.

That's not an exhaustive list of important factors but are the basic ground rules to follow for overall, better, less costly success.


by Marge

Females Behind the Wheel

Females Behind the Wheel - How to Connect With Them

I launched http://LadyTruckDrivers.com as part of my network in the year 2000. Companies who post their job openings with this site are those who encourage women to apply and who diligently seek to hire women drivers. Women who search online (and almost everybody does) will find LadyTruckDrivers.com on page 1 usually at #1 on the page. LTD remains the only site dedicated to women behind the wheel to find a female friendly company to hire on as a respected professional OTR driver.   

Another good source is Women in Trucking Association.