Over the past few years, we’ve been fortunate to have a number of women involved in the trucking industry who strongly support our weigh station bypass service – women like Amanda Jones, part of a common-law husband and wife team driving for JBM Logistics; Cheryl Pollard, owner-operator and podcast host on the Truckin’ Roundup Show; Karol Smith, director of safety and compliance at Bar Ole Trucking; and Treasure Phillippi, safety supervisor at Moore Transport.  

With so many women actively supporting us, it has us wondering how many women are active in the trucking industry, especially those who drive trucks? While it’s certainly not as many as there probably should be, we’re thinking perhaps it’s more than we realize. That’s why we were pleased to hear about Women in Trucking’s recent announcement to create a WIT index in an effort to more accurately track the number of women working in the trucking industry for companies like USA Truck, J.B. Hunt, Cypress Truck Lines, and more.

In its release dated Jan. 3, Women in Trucking said it found that Department of Labor numbers included people who were not traditional, over-the-road truck drivers in its counts. This diluted their numbers by including drivers who don’t work in the trucking industry and this made the data less reliable, WIT said in its news release. We agree with WIT that accurately benchmarking gender distribution in the trucking industry is necessary to quantify progress in achieving greater diversity in the industry.

We join WIT in urging all carriers to participate in sharing company statistics as the index is developed. To participate, contact the National Transportation Institute by visiting driverwages.com and entering company information and relevant numbers.