As the founder of the Women in Trucking Association, Ellen Voie has trailblazed a path in the trucking industry, advocating for more diversity, creating benchmarking studies, and growing the association to include women in all aspects of profession nationwide.
Talk about your background and career. How did you get involved in focusing on promoting women in trucking professions?
My passion has always been focused on the human side of the trucking industry. However, my career in trucking was unintended. I was working at a steel fabricating plant in central Wisconsin, and they asked if I would be interested in transferring to the shipping department. I became the assistant traffic manager and after earning my diploma in Traffic & Transportation Management, was promoted to the traffic manager position. I was responsible for all raw steel products incoming and all outbound material handling equipment. After starting my family, I used my education to freelance as a consultant for 18 years—licensing and permitting carriers and keeping their trucks and drivers legal. During that time, I co-owned a small fleet with my former husband. I also earned my bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in communication from the University of Wisconsin in Stevens Point. I completed my master’s thesis on the “Complex Identities of Women Married to Professional Drivers.” This started my recognition as an authority on family dynamics in transportation careers. I wrote for several magazines and authored a book called, Marriage in the Long Run. In 2000, I was serving on the board of directors of Trucker Buddy International, a pen pal program for professional drivers. I was hired as the executive director and held that position for six years. I was then recruited by a large midwestern carrier as Manager of Recruiting and Retention Programs. My role was to explore corporate level initiatives to attract and retain nontraditional groups as drivers. This included women. I started my research and discovered that the industry wasn’t really gender inclusive and there wasn’t a level playing field. I was in the process of obtaining my private pilot’s license and belonged to a women’s aviation association, so I decided the trucking industry needed something similar! In 2007, I put together a board of directors and completed the paperwork to form the Women In Trucking Association, Inc. (WIT).
What was your motivation in creating the Women in Trucking Association and how did it develop?
For as long as I can remember, there has always been a need for more drivers and women were an untapped resource. The problem was there wasn’t a level playing field. Women had to fit into the dominant norm of a male populated workforce. From trucks that weren’t ergonomically designed for women, truck stops that contained locker room type showers, and uniforms designed for men, women were expected to adapt. Most companies weren’t even aware of their gender diversity numbers for drivers, safety directors, dispatchers, and women in management. I wanted to industry to be more inclusive. At the time, I didn’t have any data to justify why we needed more women as drivers, executives, and more. I consistently asked carriers, vendors, and the government for gender-related data. There was none.
Finally, around 2015, we started seeing safety and retention as well as recruiting data involving women from technology companies such as DriverIQ, Omnitracs and StayMetrics. The American Transportation Research Institute found that male commercial drivers are 20 percent more likely to be involved in a crash in every statistically significant area. This gave us the impetus to start benchmarking and we created the WIT Index to annually track gender data starting in 2016.
How has your role within the association grown? What are you most proud of so far?
In 2007, I hired my friend, Char Pingel, who was the only paid employee at the time. (I was still working for a carrier.) As we grew and expanded our team, I was able to delegate activities and programs to others and focus on growing the organization by speaking and presenting at industry events. I spread the word and recruited members by attending trade shows and spoke at events as well as reached out to people in the industry I knew from my prior position at Trucker Buddy. We currently have 8,000 members in 10 countries. We also have 13 team members (in nine states) who all work remotely and independently and 17 board members (see Women in Trucking Board of Directors sidebar).
Do you see the trucking industry even more inclusive, diverse in the last five to 10 years?
The trucking industry is truly working to be more inclusive by creating employee resource groups (ERGs) and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs. There is a very deliberate effort to attract and retain women as well as a more racially and age diverse workforce, including the LGBTQIA+ community. In fact, we have seen an increase in the number of women working for waste and recycling companies, as they are home daily and have a better work-life balance.