| The Other Women in Trucking, Copyright Sandy Long - Friday, November 09, 2007 Standing in the door waving as the person they love most in the world drive away to an uncertain future is probably only second to sending off your child to war. |
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Women abound in the trucking industry beyond capably filling the seats of trucks. You will find women working in warehouses as forklift and crane operators loading trucks, in the offices of both factories and warehouses scheduling loads and dealing with us drivers, as security guards checking trucks in and out, in trucking companies doing everything from mechanic to owning the company, in brokerages matching loads and trucks, and last, but not least, the women who are waiting at home for their spouses and partners to come back home. These last women are the unsung heroines of the trucking industry. Standing in the door waving as the person they love most in the world drive away to an uncertain future is probably only second to sending off your child to war. Their heart shrivels a little because they know the inherent dangers of the road and most come to dread the after midnight ringing of the phone. These women are strong. They shoulder the burden of raising the children with only telephone support from their spouses and short visits every couple of weeks. Their support system is comprised of family and friends that can come and fix a leaky faucet or baby sit while they rush around to work or errands. Their best friend becomes the yellow pages or a fixit manual to take care of routine household maintenance. Many face children’s illnesses and pregnancies alone for the most part. Some women do the dispatching and accounting chores for their spouses and partners, putting in long hours learning about road and fuel taxes and then taking care of the figuring and paying of them, laws and regulations concerning trucking, collecting revenues due to the truck from shippers and brokers, pay for on road expenses while budgeting for the house, filing and sorting a mountain of paperwork, and providing support and sympathy to their driver loved one. All of this while dealing with their own jobs and supplying most of their own emotional needs. They wait with breathless anticipation for the phone to ring to hear their loved driver’s voice and wait even more breathlessly for the sound of the truck coming down the drive or to come into the truck yard. Then the hard part of their job starts, dealing with a tired, sometimes stressed out driver that has overwhelming needs of their own…a shower, a home cooked meal, laundry to be done, a good rest and some downtime from the stress, fear and constant mix of hours of boredom interspersed with the occasional adrenaline rush of the road. The lucky ladies that stay at home have spouses/partners that understand the loneliness and stress that their ladies go through while they are on the road and help out around the house when home. The driver takes some of the burden from their ladies, take them out for dinner or a movie and take up some of the slack of the child rearing while at home. Other drivers just zone out, wanting to do nothing but rest up and let their ladies wait on them hand and foot. Being one of the other women in trucking, the stay at home woman, is hard, I have tried it and didn’t like it at all. I found that I didn’t have what it takes to see my other half leave out after too little time at home and live with the uncertainty of ever seeing them again. My hat is off to the other women in trucking that have found the strength and tenacity to stay at home and be the support base for their driver spouses and partners. You are a very special breed of women, I salute you! |
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