Women are getting behind the wheel to drive powerful trucks and articulated lorries, and what's more they're good at it. Alison Healy meets three women drivers who love the life
A new American website forum aimed at women features discussions about recipes and exercise advice. Nothing that Martha Stewart hasn't done before, perhaps, except that the recipes are for cooking in the confined space of a truck cab, the exercises for keeping fit on the road. The Women's Trucking Association set up the website to serve the estimated 600,000 women who drive trucks in the US.
There are many wistful postings from women who put their driving on hold when their children came along. One talks about swapping long-distance driving for a school bus run. When she has dropped her passengers off every day, she drives with the door open to smell the diesel. Another writes of how she cannot look at a map without missing her former life on the road.
But many also write about the loneliness of leaving families behind, sometimes for weeks on end. One mother advises truckers to put a map on the wall and let the children stick a pin in it to track mum's journey. Another speaks into a tape recorder, then leaves the tapes for her children to find when she is away.
"It can be a lonely life," says Kicka Pocan, the president of the Women's Trucking Association. Although the US has plenty of truck stops, she says they don't alleviate the loneliness. Chatting at coffee counters is the closest drivers get to human contact. Women drivers also have to be alert to the dangers of sexual assaults and harassment.
In Ireland, women truck drivers are still a rarity: there are an estimated 30 to 40. Truck-driving schools are getting more and more inquiries from women, however. Of the 200 people who have done Fás courses in articulated and rigid truck driving in Dublin in the past year, five were women.
The Nessan School of Motoring, in Limerick, regularly instructs women who are preparing for their truck tests. "If you get a good woman driver, you get a very good one," says Patrick Galvin, the owner of the school.
"We get a lot of women who want to drive buses, and they are well suited, because they have better patience for dealing with the passengers than many of the men."
Eamonn Morrissey of the Irish Road Haulage Association has employed many women truckers in his Co Clare haulage business; he does it for sound business reasons. "With all the women drivers I've had, I've never had a problem. They just get on with it and do the job," he says. "What more could you want?"
The Women's Trucking Association's website is at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/womenstruckingassociation
LONG DISTANCE LORRY DRIVER
When Ann McQuaid was a child she used to play with her brothers and sister in a large field at the back of their home in Boyle, Co Roscommon. Ann and her brothers always pretended to be lorry drivers, like their father, while her sister pretended to be a vet.
She went to work in the family haulage business after school, but she soon tired of the office and itched to drive out of the gates with the other truckers.
McQuaid passed her truck test on the first attempt and has been driving for 15 years. Now she runs her own haulage business and drives a powerful Scania articulated lorry. Its 580 brake horsepower are somewhat softened by its white, pink and blue livery. "It's known as the Barbie truck," she says.
McQuaid transports insulation panels, coal, road chippings and steel. "I usually go off on a Sunday night to Cork or New Ross or Foynes," she says. "Then I'm ready early in the morning to get on the road again. I get home around 3pm, relax for a few hours and head off down the road again at 8pm."
She feels safe sleeping in the cab, as she usually parks at the yards she is delivering to. "I don't find it lonely travelling in the cab, but some days it is good to have company. During the school holidays I could have some of my nephews and nieces with me."
McQuaid knows few other women truck drivers, perhaps as a result of the lack of trucker facilities. "You don't get to stop to talk to any of them - we just wave to one another as we pass," she says. "In the UK and on the Continent, you have proper truck stops where you can have a shower and meals and meet up with other drivers. Most of them are open 24 hours. But we have no truck stops, and most of the service stations close at 10pm, so you cannot get a meal or anything after that unless you go to a takeaway. Then you can't always get parked near them."
What advice would she offer a young woman interested in truck driving? "I wouldn't discourage any girl from going for the HGV licence, but it is a job with a very different social scene. Even now there are nights out that I have to pass up on due to the work schedule," she says. "But I love the travelling. I don't think I would ever go back to full-time office work. I just love the freedom of it."
CEMENT MIXER DRIVER
Karen Fitzroy may be the only cement mixer driver in Ireland who gets her nails done every fortnight. When we visited her at the Kilsaran Concrete quarry in Lucan, Co Dublin, her French manicure was still immaculate. And her mixer would be easy to pick out in an identity parade. Apart from the Karen's rig nameplate in the front window, the row of cuddly toys might give away her gender, not to mention the copies of celebrity magazines in her neat cab.
Fitzroy, from Navan Road in Dublin, took the scenic route before settling on her driving career, working as a hairdresser and shop assistant. "But you wouldn't get me behind a counter now. I'd have to be tied down first." Her late father drove for Texaco - "you could say I grew up in the tanker" - and when she joined the FCA, in 1991, she learned how to drive a truck before she could drive a car.
She then took a number of delivery jobs, for which being a woman was an advantage. If her truck was blocking an entrance and an irate motorist came in to find the driver, they never guessed that she was in charge of the load. "And I wasn't going to tell them, was I?" she says.
Almost a year ago, Fitzroy decided to approach Kilsaran Concrete for a driving job. She left her CV with the company on a Wednesday and was sent out on a job with a colleague the following afternoon. "It's been so busy since, I can't even remember my first day on my own," she says. Work begins any time from 6am, including Saturday mornings. A delay in a concrete pour early in the day will have knock-on effects for the following jobs. "But we all pull our weight. There's no favouritism here."
Her deliveries take her around building sites in west Dublin and parts of Cos Kildare and Meath. But no matter where she goes, the reaction is the same. "You will see a cluster of men gathering around and whispering, and one of them will always think of something smart to say to the fella who is getting the concrete. Or maybe one of them will be brave enough to say something to me."
And what of the future? "I'll stick around for as long as they can stick me," she says. "I love it. We could cut each other's throats with the slagging, but behind it all we are like a big family. If anything happens we all help each other out." It can be a dirty job, "but you have to keep your feminine side, too", she says. "The boys here know I get my nails done every second Saturday, no matter what, so don't delay me on that day."
DELIVERY TRUCK DRIVER
As a little girl, Tina Long, who is from Kildimo, in Co Limerick, was always fascinated by cars and trucks, and she used to watch carefully in the car as her father manoeuvred gears and pedals. "I always wanted to drive a truck, but I didn't think it was possible. Then I did the test and went to look for a job." She did not succeed initially but doesn't blame this on her gender. "I just didn't know anyone in that circle. People get jobs by knowing people and being recommended by people," she says. Then she went to Eamonn Morrissey's haulage company in Clonoughter, Co Clare, and found herself driving a truck that had only ever been driven by women. "Two women drove this truck before me. It was never driven by a man."
Long's rigid truck is contracted to the courier company DHL. "I deliver different types of freight. It could be oil, it could be computer parts. It's always different." It's a busy day, with 10 to 15 deliveries to be made, in and out of awkward corners and tight bends. Long is still amused by the common reaction when she arrives at a factory to tell someone their delivery has arrived. "They usually think I'm just the passenger. Even yesterday a man said: 'You'll never be able to reverse in there. I'll move that truck out of your way.' I said, 'No, it's fine,' but he still went off to get the truck moved. And when he got back I had reversed in. At this stage I can go backwards quicker than forwards." After four years of truck driving Long cannot imagine a life off the road. "It's an addiction, and you never get fed up with it. You have your days when you are tired, but isn't every job like that? All that jumping in and out of the cab keeps you fit. You wouldn't be able for the gym at the end of the day. You'd be tucked up in bed at 9pm."