Women Are Entering a Trucking Industry That’s Not Built for Them
Tuition subsidies, self-defense courses, and husband-and-wife driving teams are being rolled out to entice more female drivers into the cabs of big rigs.
Clarise King-Green in Philadelphia.
Photographer: Susan Sidebottom for Bloomberg BusinessweekSince she got her learner’s permit at age 16, Clarise King-Green had driven just about every vehicle imaginable: cars, vans, minibuses, box trucks. But like most women in transportation, she’d never gotten behind the wheel of a freight truck.
That changed last summer when the Philadelphia resident, 50, enrolled in a state-sponsored program that helps aspiring drivers fund commercial-trucking school, where tuition costs as much as $7,000 for a multiweek course. It’s a line of work she’d briefly considered decades ago, but finding someone to care for her young daughters during nights spent on the road put her off. Now that they’re older, King-Green decided it was time.