Triumph Over Adversity: Desiree Wood's Fight for Women in Trucking

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You are live.
Good morning, this is Tammywith Truckin' with Tammy.
Today I have guest Desiree Wood.
Desiree is the founder andpresident of Real Women in
Trucking.
Let me say that correct.
This morning and today we'regoing to talk to Desiree not
just about her foundation andher organization, but we're also

(00:22):
going to get down and dirtywith Desiree, the person and her
beginnings, where she herjourney and where she is now.
So good morning Desiree.
Good morning how are you?

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Cold, we got a lot of snow this week.
Okay, sorry to hear that Idon't like the cold.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Yeah, normally where I live we don't get much, but
this last 10 days we got twohuge waves of snow, so I have
still not buried everything outyet.
So, as I told you, I want toget to know you, the woman and
your stars.
So way back when, when, beforetrucking, what was life like for

(01:08):
you?

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Uh, it was um complex , I'll just say so.
Um, I uh ran away from homewhen I was 14 and I got pregnant
when I was 15.
So I was a single mom.
I didn't have any familysupport.

(01:31):
I got married kind of young, tosomebody you would think would
be every parent's wet dream acollege graduate that you know,
with a 4.0 grade point average.
He ended up joining the army,became an officer, but he was a

(01:55):
wife beater and so I left himwith my kids and so I had a

(02:16):
pretty difficult life when I wasyoung, trying to survive with
two kids and try to pay the rentand pay the babysitter and all
of that stuff.
And then I started working inclubs and we had a really nice
life and we had a very we'reable to take vacations and live
in Hawaii.
I lived in Key West for a longtime.
I traveled a lot.
I had a pretty nice life,considering my start, and so I

(02:43):
ended up in Las Vegas around theearly 2000s, late 90s, after
living in Hawaii and Key Westfor a long time, because at that
time I was working in a hoteland I wasn't going to get any
further in the job unless I hada degree.
So I came to UNLV, whichobviously lots of hotels here

(03:06):
and and had like a five-yearplan, and was executing that
plan, bought a house, makingmoney, you know, doing really
well, and then everything justsort of like collapsed on me.
I was always kind of a goalsetter and you know, when I set

(03:27):
my mind to something, I do it, Iget it done, I visualize it and
it happens.
And this time it wasn'thappening, like everything I did
just turned to shit and I waslike what is happening here?
So I sold my house.
I went back to Key West, Ibought a house, just like a

(03:47):
whole chain of events happenedwhich led to like this massive
depression I went into in theearly 2000s and I just even
became homeless at one point andI called up a girlfriend and I
told her I'm like I can'tfunction.

(04:08):
I'd always kind of been aninspiration to my, my
girlfriends during those yearsbecause I was like I'm moving to
Hawaii, bye, you know, like Ijust said I'm doing this and I
did it and now all of a sudden Icouldn't do that anymore.
I was like non-functioning.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
So I'm going to ask this?
So because I went throughsomething similar in my own life
, where I was always fearlessand then I got to a point where
I couldn't even pick out towelsfor my kitchen.
So I understand, I know what mypivotal point was.
What was the pivotal momentthat switched you from that goal
setting, fearless, determinedwoman to that downfall?

Speaker 2 (04:49):
Well, there was a couple of things that happened.
One, I think I listened to oneof your earlier podcasts and I
heard you say empty nestsyndrome.
You know, that was one thing.
I, as a teenage mom that Ididn't have no grandma, no
sister, no aunt, no, I was on myown, like my family is not
anybody I can rely on foranything Never, could never have

(05:13):
so the responsibility.
I was always like, okay, I'mgoing to be free on this day.
And then when it happened, Iwas like what am I supposed to
do?
Like all I've ever done is takecare of people.
And now I have like I couldn'tjust exactly what you said.
I just couldn't seem to getanything together.
That was one thing.

(05:34):
9-11 had kind of a big impact onme.
I was living here in Las Vegasand I was like, wow, like that
somebody could come here andjust like do something horrible.
And you know, like what arethese people?
That's always been something inmy head since I was a child is

(05:56):
a disaster, a massive disasterthat happens, that makes people
unable to, that makes peopleunable to survive in the way
that they're used to.
I don't know if that makessense, but I'm looking at the
fires right now, and so arepeople going to attack each

(06:17):
other or are they going to cometogether as a community?
And so at that time, when I waslike a junior at UNLV I was a
year away from graduating I waslike thinking, well, I have all
these problem solving skillsbecause of the life that I had
as a single mom.
So I thought but I can't workin an office, I'll go nuts.

(06:38):
So what will I do when Igraduate?
Will I go?
I thought I'll go to Africa andI'll give immunizations to
children there or something.
But when 9-11 happened, I waslike why do I want to go to
another country?
Why I want to do something inmy country to make my country
better, and so that was a bigturning point for me.

(06:58):
Right there.
Also, there was something eatingat me.
I guess you could say there wassomething eating at me and I
wasn't quite sure what it is.
The non-functioning part, I'mnot really sure.
I did go on antidepressants fora while, but I found that they
were making me worse, not better.

(07:18):
They were making me have tonumber one pay for a very
expensive prescription that Ididn't have insurance for.
And then I had to have them, orI would have like a complete
meltdown and I was like I can'tbe on pills for like the rest of
my life.
So that was one thing too.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
Yeah, I'm not one for pill pushing.
There's so many otheralternatives for depression.
Uh, to get those you know thesame dopamine fillings and make
you feel like you can stillfunction.
Uh, as those you know the samedopamine fillings and make you
feel like you can still function, as me.
You know I was on them when Iwas in my early 20s, when I went
through a divorce, and it justmade me feel like a zombie.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah, I didn't like.
I didn't like the feeling and Ididn't want to have to be
dependent on this thing.
So that made me on this thing,so that made me upset, and as
this thing changed, oops, mylittle earbud fell out.
I see that what I needed washope.

(08:17):
I needed hope and somethingthat interested me again, and
nothing at that time interestedme.
And so when I got into truckingI was like I like this right
away, like I love this and thissuits my personality.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Okay, so we leave the hotel, we leave the college, we
leave Nevada, we go back down.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
Where did trucking even come up?
I'm not even really sure how itpopped into my mind, but when I
was staying at my girlfriend'sand another friend came down
there like what do you want todo?
And I'm like I'm thinking soone of the parts of my
personality is I've always moved, I've always moving, I'm always
going somewhere, I'm alwaysdoing something new.
I learn things quickly and onceI learn them, I get bored.
You're like my twin, so yeah.

(09:14):
So I needed something where Iwas moving around, doing
something hard.
It was challenging every day,and that's why I like the hotel
industry is that every day it'sdifferent.
But the hotel industry hadchanged a lot, where they wanted
to make you a manager and thenyou're on salary so that you're
working 80 to 90 hours a week,and that comes up to you making

(09:37):
minimum wage.
And I was seeing a lot of themanagers taking jobs where they
were tipped employees becausethey were making more money,
which is what I was doing.
So bombshell right here Ididn't just work in the hotel
industry, I was also a stripper,and so I had to at one time

(09:59):
decide do you want to have thecareer in hotel industry that
you want to have, or do you needmoney right now?
And so this was always a battlefor over 20 years, Like I know,
I'm, you know, functioning inmy mind that I could do
something incredible, but I needthis cash right now.

(10:20):
So that was like really kind ofthe battle.
And then obviously, you know,getting older you got to start
making a plan for the future.
So for me, moving around waskind of the attraction to
trucking going a different placeevery day.
I like the idea of climbingaround in the trailer and seeing

(10:43):
something different all thetime.
So that was really it for me.
And uh, so you know, I went toa CDL school and that's kind of
where it started.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
We lose audio.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
Did we?

Speaker 1 (10:59):
go Okay, got it.
Okay, got it.
Okay.
That was weird.
Did you catch all that I did?
I did.
Okay, sorry, I had.
There was this.
It was like feedbacking umthere for a second, so it must
have been maybe a wi-fi, uh,internet connection.
So that's uh, that's quite thechange then, going from that

(11:24):
kind of environment to trucking,money-wise, the isolation.
So how did you handle that?
Because when you're in thehotel industry and you're in the
entertainment industry, there'salways people, they're coming

(11:44):
at you, they're invading your,your, your private space.
You know, uh, you areconstantly the center of
attention, the, the go-to personfor everything in the hotel.
So now you're switching to anindustry where you're isolated.

Speaker 2 (11:59):
Yeah, well, that's what I wanted, because I was
very high profile when I workedin clubs.
I was, I mean, I literally mademoney off my looks for over 20
years, and people followed me.
I was in magazines, I was in thenewspaper every week.

(12:20):
Everybody knew me where I went,so I wanted isolation.
I wanted to be anonymous.
I wanted to be valued for thework that I was doing, not for
my appearance, and that wassomething that bothered me,
because I think I was like early40s.

(12:43):
I was tired of people putting alot of value on my appearance
and not the substance of mycharacter and my ability to do
all kinds of different thingsand the whole like well, what
are you going to do when you getolder?
Well, I'm going to get older,you know, like I'm cool with it.

(13:06):
Are you cool with it?
Like, is it a problem for you?
Because it's not a problem forme.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
I'm the cool grandma, so yeah, so I.

Speaker 2 (13:15):
I, I was ready to be alone and be with myself, and
I've always enjoyed spending alot of time by myself.
So that's why I thought itwould be really perfect for me,
because I, I partied.
I mean, I've been to all theclubs, I've been all the
restaurants, I've been on yachts, I've been in limos.

(13:37):
I, I lived that life.
But I was ready to like, bewith.
What can I do?
Like, when push comes to shoveand I'm in a snowstorm all by
myself, can I figure out how toget out of it?
And that was really what wasimportant to me.

Speaker 1 (13:56):
So at this point, where were the kids?
Were they grown at this pointwhen you made this transition?

Speaker 2 (14:02):
Yeah, my kids were grown up.
You know, being a mother asyoung as I was, I was, uh, had
my first grandchild by the timeI entered trucking.
So they were my kids were offdoing their thing.
Now I have six grandchildren,so the the missing of the
birthday parties when they werelittle, but it wasn't my, you

(14:25):
know, not my kids, but I couldsee that at the time I entered
it was a lot of grandmas my age,their kids were grown up, it
was just them.
A lot of women that just gotdivorced and they were just on
their own.
So I felt like all right, these, this, we're all doing the same

(14:45):
thing here.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yeah, yeah, and that was mine.
I was an empty nester.
My kids were spreading all overand, um, you know, I was
getting angry, I was gettingfrustrated, I was unhappy, um,
emotionally.
I mean, I was just cranky aboutit, you know, because I had my
first child.
I got pregnant at 16.
She is 32.

(15:08):
My youngest is 18.
I have been a mom for themajority of my life and, you
know, having four kids at homewhen they left, I couldn't deal
with it at all.
So trucking gave me the abilityto travel where they were.
You know that and that was thatwas a thing too.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
That was a thing too is how do I go visit my kids and
my friends, all these differentplaces that I've lived, that I
have friends and family, andyeah, that was definitely a
thing Like I'm just going to godrive and I'll just take my time
off wherever.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
I'm at.
Yeah, you get paid.
You know you're not paying forthe travel, so it was a great
pull for me, so you got intotrucking.
I don't know a lot about yourstart.
Um, I know you, uh, as a personfor the last eight years of my
career, but how did your careerstart?

Speaker 2 (16:01):
So I went to a school in Miami At that time there was
nothing on the internet toprepare you for CDL training.
Because I searched and I'm goodat searching stuff, you know,
and I'm very computer literateforum and a girl had posted that

(16:26):
she had a trainer and thetrainer was drinking vodka and
she reported it to the company.
And all the other drivers onthe thread attacked her for
reporting it to the company andtold her she was a snitch and
she shouldn't be in trucking.
And I'm like, okay, this iswhat I'm getting into.
That was all that I could find.
So I started at this school andright away I could see that

(16:48):
people were dropping off likeflies and that they were just
basically taking us down towhere these old trucks were and
leaving us there and say we'llcome back at seven.
You know, go figure it out.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
It's like the old throw you in the lake and you'll
either sink or swim, kind of.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
Yeah, and so we kind of developed a method between us
to do the pre-trip and, youknow, work it out, and then they
take us and drive around theblock three times in an
automatic in Miami and I onlygot to do it like two times.
Everybody else got to do itlike three times and then we
tested out.

(17:26):
So I was like I didn't grow uparound truck drivers but my
father was a commercialfisherman and we had boats that
were like over a hundred feetlong.
So I grew up around bigequipment, big engines, and my
dad was safe, safety, safety,safety, hotel industry safety,
safety, safety.

(17:46):
You got to know how to evacuatethe hotel if there's a fire and
keep everybody safe.
It's very organized.
You know everybody's got astation, what they're supposed
to be doing, and I just was like, wow, this is a really
important job and this is likereally throwing these people out
there.
So I was taken aback by that.
And this is like reallythrowing these people out there.
So I was taken aback by thatand they weren't really giving

(18:06):
us a lot of clear informationabout what exactly are we going
to be doing, like they weren'tever spelling it out.
By the way, you're going towork 11 hours a day or you're
going to drive 11 hours a day,you're probably not going to get
to shower every day, you know,like they weren't really
spelling out the whole situationand they weren't spelling out

(18:29):
the situation with the teamdriving either.
So I ended up at CovenantTransport and one other
classmate ended up there too,and one guy he went over to
Stevens and we all kept in touch.
And when I got to Covenant,stevens and we all kept in touch
, and when I got to Covenant itwas just like a who's who of

(18:49):
criminal activity, likeeverybody there either just got
out of rehab jail, they werebragging about what they were in
prison for and I'm like, okay,we're supposed to all live
together.
So I did ask for a femaletrainer, which I got, which I'm
of kind of lucky she was.
She was a non-smoker, so thatwas kind of the only way that

(19:10):
they would match you up is bywhether you smoked or not and
where your geographical hometime was.
And I didn't have ageographical home time
preference and have ageographical home time
preference, so you know, I waswilling to take my time off

(19:30):
wherever, and so that was kindof it.
My trainer turned out to be apill popper.
She was doctor shopping acrossAmerica, speeding, yelling at me
to speed like her, cruisingtruck stops for guys.
Um, just, it was just likedrama nonstop.
I think she was like 26.

(19:52):
And I was like by that time inmy 40s, something like that.
So I just was like you know,and I'm just, I'm not going to
say anything, I'm just going to,like, get the information I
need from her.
But when she ran out of pillsand she couldn't get any more
prescriptions on the road and wewent to an emergency room and
they wouldn't give her any painmeds, she wanted to go home and

(20:14):
leave me at a truck stop and Icalled the company and threw a
fit and, you know, ended upgetting into a safe.
I thought she was dead.
At one point I had to getanother driver because I
couldn't move her and that thepill bottle is empty in the
trash.
Can?
I'm like this chick is going todie and I'm going to be stuck

(20:34):
with a corpse on the road.
So I was really pissed off andI wrote a complaint about it and
, um, you know, it just was likeabout it.
And um, you know, it just waslike, put me, set me on a course
to be on all these differenttrucks with co-drivers that were
worse, if not worse some othernonsense so I wrote the story.

(20:58):
I wrote a story.
This is when blogs wererelatively new, social media
wasn't really happening andwithin nine months, dan Rather
who a lot of people don't evenknow who that is now, but he was
a I do Okay Within nine months,dan Rather wanted to interview
me about my student truckerstory and did a series of

(21:20):
investigative reports on it.
The first one called Queen ofthe Road and I was asked to be
in the Twitter documentarybecause I was going on it.
The first one called Queen ofthe Road, and I was asked to be
in the Twitter documentarybecause I was going on Twitter
and talking about it to getpeople to read the blog and that
sort of really just launchedthe whole thing because I had
joined.
This other organization wasseeking help.

(21:42):
How do I get through this?
Because I loved driving, I waslike I love this job, but why
are they making me go throughsix months of hell with all
these crazy people?
Like I am not here to babysitpeople and I don't want to die
doing this, and it just seemedlike such a screwed up situation

(22:03):
for all these people and I wasmeeting a lot of people too that
were in the same situation andit was just like they were
setting you up to fail, and itjust pissed me off.

Speaker 1 (22:15):
And even now I still hear that you know those same
words.
You know they're setting me upto fail and that seems like the
industry has improvedtremendously in a lot of areas
with that, but still that samesentiment still holds today.

Speaker 2 (22:30):
It's like dumb luck if you make it and that's how I
felt.
It was like you have goodtrainers that are getting paired
up with crappy students, andthen you have good students that
are getting paired up with badtrainers, and if you happen to
get a good student and a goodtrainer together, it's just like

(22:53):
you know, dumb luck.
You know there's no real goodcoordination to make sure this
person's here for the rightreasons and this person's here
for the right reasons.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
So your your time away from the spotlight did not
last long, uh, with that blog,and then the day and rather
series.
So how many companies did youend up switching from before you
finally found a home for awhile?

Speaker 2 (23:22):
I stayed at covenant transport.
I never left.
Yeah, I did the story.
They couldn't do anything to mebecause-.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
How did they treat you with that?

Speaker 2 (23:33):
They told everybody to not talk to me.
I was treated like a socialpariah, so they told everybody
to not talk to me.
But when I came to theheadquarters, talk to me.
But when I came to, like, theheadquarters, people would come
find me and I, when I walkedthrough the walls, people would
pop up from their cubicle Hi,desiree, I saw you on television
.
Hi, desiree.

(23:53):
So I was a little bit of a folkhero, but people feared me at
the same time.
Like I don't care, you know, Imean, I, I, I, I had already
been from my previous life.
There's people that love you,and there's people that hate you
, and there's people thatjealous of you, and there's
people that go to bed everynight hoping you'll die.

(24:15):
I mean, I've I've lived withthat for for two decades already
, so I don't really care.
You know, you don't pay mybills.
I don't care, and I don't haveanybody pay my bills but me, so
that it doesn't bother me.
What does bother me, though, iswhen people came to me for help
, and I wanted to help them.
So I would tell them you know,make sure you know how to get a

(25:12):
hold of the right people in thehuman resources department.
Don't talk to this person, talkto that person, watch out for
this person, watch out forthat's what I started doing was
trying to help people avoid thebad people and find the good
people so that they could getthrough that hellish first six
months.
And and as I started doing that,and obviously through the down
rather thing, I was blogging andthen somebody posted about CRST
.
The same thing was happeningover there.

(25:34):
So then I started talking todrivers at other companies and
seeing, okay, this isn't justhappening here, it's happening
at all the companies that havethis particular business model.
And this particular businessmodel is the team driving
students, where you're makingpeople live together for long
periods of time unsupervised.

(25:56):
And that made me start studyingtrucking and the history of
trucking and how it turned intowhat it is today.
And it just led me down thiswhole path that I naively
thought, oh, if I just raiseawareness of this, these people

(26:18):
be like oh, I want to help, Iwant to fix it, and and and.
Instead, what I found waspushback.
And that motivated me more,because when you're a determined
person and somebody says youknow, we already know it's a
problem, move on, and they'reletting people suffer and get

(26:40):
hurt.
That pissed me off so.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
Yeah, they, they, you know they can go home and sleep
in their own beds at night andthey're not the ones that are
having to deal with it on adaily basis.
So you know to them they're notaffected by it.
Until people are actuallyaffected by it, they're not
going to make any effort tochange it.
Yeah, exactly, so that that wasa lot.

(27:05):
So once you saw the CRST andyou started doing your research,
are you blogging about it thiswhole time?

Speaker 2 (27:11):
Yeah, so I originally started blogging on a blog
called truckerdesireecom, whichis still up, yeah.
I've seen that and and so I waswriting there now the student
trucker story.
I had written one button at atime on a little Palm trio.

(27:31):
Cause this I started right whensmartphones came out.
So I was driving when the wholefirst smartphones came out, so
there was the whole adoptionperiod of the old timers going
I'm not, I don't want it.
So I had this little palm trioand one button at a time I was
writing this story, so I it wason the Ask the Trucker blog and

(27:53):
the Ask the Trucker blog wasAlan Smith and Donna Smith and
they had a podcast that wassuper popular and so all those
original posts were on that blogand I've recently taken it down
to edit it and make it into anebook.
It's just taken me forever,because I think it's still as
relevant today for people tounderstand how CDL school goes,

(28:17):
how the training goes, all ofthe different situations, not
just with the people but withthe weather and the ups and
downs of the money and theexpectations, and then the
feeling of being alone for thefirst time, which I don't think

(28:38):
they put enough effort into.
Once they forced you into thisteam driving, then you're on
your own and you're like nowI've got to manage my hours a
lot differently to get parkingand, you know, work within the
hours of service and the ELD.
So anyway, I'm working on that.

(28:58):
But yeah, I was just doing iton the blog.
I'd gone to Twitter, buildingthe Twitter following, did the
Twitter documentary and thenjust like this barrage of people
asking me to comment on a lotof different things the Wall
Street Journal is calling me,new York Times is calling me,
and now all of these people arecalling me to comment on things

(29:20):
on trucking and I'm like, well,I don't want to sound like a
moron, so I better research thisand call on people that I know
that have been in this industrylonger, and so that made me
really start educating myself onthis industry and its inner
workings.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
And that's keeping you pretty busy.
Is there any social life?
I mean keeping you pretty busy,Is there any social life?
I mean, while you're working oneverybody's problems in the
industry, is this your entirefocus at this point?

Speaker 2 (29:54):
For the first few years.
So I stayed at Covenant forfour and a half years, you know,
and what they did was they putme on the Walmart dedicated
account, which was kind of acushy job.
Um, I think that theirmentality was let's keep her
rolling, cause if she's notrolling, she's not writing.

Speaker 1 (30:15):
Yeah, yeah and they couldn't do anything.
Cause.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
I was a good driver.
I mean I mean the.
The minute I pulled the stop,you know the brakes, I did my
log book and I was.
I followed the letter of thelaw.
But, yes, every time I wasparked I was writing or I was on
Twitter.
So they were like you gotanother load.
It is a long one.
So I had a good relationship.

(30:40):
Whatever happened at the endthat I left there and the and
one of the reasons I didn'tleave is I knew you would be
blacklisted.
I was told I would beblacklisted, so I needed to get
that two years of solidexperience before I attempted to
go anywhere.
But because I was on theWalmart dedicated account is

(31:00):
really cushy, drop and hook.
Um, I was like I'm cool with it.
I didn't take a lot ofvacations.
I would work three months at atime.
I didn't make a lot of money.
I decided to myself if you'regoing to do this being outspoken
thing, you can't, because Icoveted a lot of these big

(31:22):
companies.
They shave pay in a lot ofdifferent ways.
I just told myself you caneither sit there and get pissed
off because they carved a $5here, you know a nickel here,
whatever, what's ever going onwith all the other drivers.
We're just focused on the work,and so that's what I did and I
learned to live on very littleand it was a good life skill to

(31:50):
build because I had come from alife where I could go make you
know a couple grand easy.
You know what I mean.
Like I was going through atransition also on how to live
on less, and that was a biglesson for me because money just
came before Right.
So that was an important lifeskill that I was learning from

(32:12):
living with less and getting toknow myself and my ability, and
social media was helping me havean outlet to talk like therapy.
What happened was my truck wasgetting retired and so they had

(32:35):
me come in to switch trucks andthe truck that I was supposed to
take was in the shop and duringthat I slipped on algae and
shattered my kneecap oh no andyeah.
So that put me in a trauma wardand in a leg brace and out of
trucking for a year.
And I moved to Mexico and whileI was in Mexico, people were
still contacting me, researcherswere calling me and I was like

(32:58):
Holy crap.
But one thing that I did was Ienrolled back in school to
finish that college and, yeah, Idid come back to Covenant but I
had some wires left in my kneethat hurt really bad so I had to
leave.
That was how I left.
Really was because the metalthey left in my kneecap was so

(33:19):
painful.
When I did return to truckingafter I got those removed, I did
a couple different companies.
One was furniture.
They didn't get me home in time.
Did one that was ltl food.
They would have me switchingtrucks all the time.

(33:40):
I was in like 16 differenttrucks and like they're always
breaking down.
Move to this one just reallykind of a screwed up company,
and the winter having to chainup, and I was like like why am I
doing this?
Like I have enough experience,I don't need to do be chaining
up, you know.
So I ended up moving down toFlorida.
I did some local work.

(34:01):
I wanted to do food delivery.
I wanted to know what it waslike to do these different jobs.
So I took time to do fooddelivery, local delivery,
unloading.
I learned to use a doubleloader.
I had one where I was doingplants across the country, which
I really liked a lot.
I loved the plants and I lovedmy boss.

(34:22):
But I had the opportunity tobecome an owner operator.
It was a little crazy in thebeginning but once I started
booking my own loads I was likewhoa, this is like a completely
different trucking and this isdifferent Like I'm negotiating
the rate, I'm going where I wantto go.

(34:43):
I could never work for acompany again after that.
You know, like this is the dealand I loved it, but my trailer
got hijacked.
And when my trailer gothijacked, that was sort of the
beginning of the end and, um,that's hard to recover from

(35:05):
financially.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so, uh, so.
So that was kind of thebeginning of the end.
I drove a little bit more afterthat.
I did, you know, aldisupermarkets, I did foreign mail
.
I did a lot of reallyinteresting things.
I did some flatbed for a thingwith Florida Power.

(35:29):
So I feel I got my degree and Istarted being asked to speak
and do webinars and be an truckdrivers more, because I did have
the boots on the groundexperience and there's really a

(36:01):
disconnect that I know driverssee is that there's a lot of
people that are in trucking thatdon't know anything about the
job in trucking, that don't knowanything about the job, and so
I felt like I need to bring thisover to this group here,
because there were some reallygood people that are trying to

(36:23):
figure out how to make thesupply chain better and they
don't have access to drivers,and so I felt like I I've got to
forge this path over here tobring the voice of what's going
on with the drivers to peoplewho want to figure it out also.

Speaker 1 (36:42):
Okay, and while you are advocating for all the other
drivers out there, how are youand your mental health Cause?
When you came into thisindustry, you weren't where you
needed to be.
And your mental health Becausewhen you came into this industry
, you weren't where you neededto be.
And so now you've had all theseyears, you've went through all
these situations on your own.
You're helping all these otherdrivers.
How's Desiree's mental healthgoing through all this?

Speaker 2 (37:10):
Well, it was hard because it was always oh, wake
up in the morning, what aboutthis, what about that?
Trucking Going to Mexico helpedme a lot.
It helped me reconnect with theperson I was in Key West in
Hawaii, which is I love theocean, I love open spaces, I
love walking.
I did that when I was trucking.
I adopted a street dog and meand her went for long walks and

(37:31):
went on adventures.
So I was able to reconnect withthings I love to do.
I love riding my bike, I loveswimming in the ocean and going
to national parks and I starteddoing that again and I started
unplugging from social media and, and, just, you know, looking

(37:51):
at things, I like to laugh, Ilike flowers, you know and start
doing the things that I like todo again.
And during that time was kind ofthe rise of Instagram and other
social media platforms, and Ireally wanted to kind of pull
back.
So I sort of tried, startedlimiting it, you know, and

(38:18):
reconnecting with the real world.
I guess you could say and andand.
That's where I really um, justthat was something that I I
needed to do for myself.
I did weaned myself off theantidepressants, you know, when
I started driving and I neverneeded.
I never had to look back atthat again and I remember

(38:42):
talking to the doctor andtelling her she needed to sign
off on a paper for me to get mymedical card.
And she was like, reallywanting to increase my dosage.
And I'm like, no, you don'tunderstand what I'm saying.
This job is making me feelbetter and you, giving me a
prescription is making me wantto kill myself, so you need to
sign off on this fucking paperright now.

(39:02):
You know, I was like, reallylike I'm fucking serious because
I'm weaning myself off thesepills and you're trying to
cripple me.
So just sign the fucking paper.
And and she did.
You know, and I don't recommendthat for a lot.
I wasn't on any serious meds,but I've seen other people do it
.
It can be very dangerous.
I don't recommend anybody, butI have seen that there's a lot

(39:24):
of people that have mentalhealth issues that have entered
trucking and it's helped them.
It's helped them.
Uh, you, you're, you're sofocused on the truck and staying
, there's no time to let yourmind wander on all this other
stuff, and that's what I what,what I think is very healing for
me, at least with trucking, isthat I have a very busy mind and

(39:47):
the truck and the road is veryhealing for me.
It puts everything in place.
What I need to do next?
What's the next thing that Ineed to do to get closer to what
I'm trying to do?

Speaker 1 (40:01):
Yeah, healing and my thinking time.
So I'm, I'm, I'm calm when I'mon the road.
Um, I can leave anything thatI'm overthinking away.
You know, um, I concentratelike I'll be driving down the
road and ideas will pop into myhead lines for things.
I'm writing on ideas and I'mconstantly going.

(40:23):
Siri open voice memo.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
Siri open voice memo you know, yeah, I never, I never
.
People would always tell meyeah, I I like.
I always say I solve all theproblems of the world while I'm
driving.
And then when I turn off thetruck, I forget all of them.
Right, that's what people sayyou should record it, and I said
but then I won't, I won't doanything, then I'll have all
these recordings, you know.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
Oh, I have a lot.
I have a lot and but but youuse them when you need them.
I mean, I I literally sat downthe other day and I was going
through all the voice memos andI'm like, oh I forgot about that
.
Oh, when did you do that, youknow?
But yeah, it's great, becauseI'm the same way.
Once I parked, I'm like whatwas that that I wanted to do?
What was that I was thinkingabout earlier?

(41:06):
Um, so, voice memo is great andyou can do it while driving.
That's a great thing.
So you go back to college.
What degree did you end upgetting?

Speaker 2 (41:16):
Well, all of that time I was studying
international business, globalbusiness and public policy.
But as the organization startedhappening, I called my school
and I'm like, I've been doingthis, you know, like group for a
while and it's seems like mylife is forcing me to do this

(41:40):
path.
So what's the fastest way?
I could just graduate and getout of here.
So, although I had all of thisglobal business and public
policy supply chain classes thatI was taking accounting, I
ended up graduating with adegree in business
administration to just get outof there.
And then I started a graduateprogram for nonprofit

(42:03):
association management and Ididn't finish the graduate
program.
I would love to be able toresume it.
I had a class that didn't gogreat.
I had a lot of turmoil going onin my home and I was like I'm
just, I'm going to get it, I'mjust not going to finish school
right now because I don't havethe peace in my household that I

(42:27):
can focus on learning right nowand getting the grade that I
need to get.
So I put that on hold and thenthe organization tasks just took
off, so that that'll be on theback.
That's on the back burner now.
But the, the, the businessdegree is enough to open a whole
bunch of other doors for me andI, I, I, I think a lot of

(42:52):
drivers really need tounderstand there's a lot of
other opportunities for yououtside of the truck if you will
just get a business degree.
You know it might sound like alot that I started college in
when I was 37.
I had a sixth grade education.

(43:14):
I never even did division orpercent.
I had to take all theseremedial classes just to get to
college level math and English.
It is possible, just one stepat a time, and it does open a
lot of doors for you to stay intrucking when you can't drive
anymore, and which is a realconcern.

Speaker 1 (43:37):
I mean yeah, we all have that line where we can't
drive anymore.

Speaker 2 (43:41):
Yeah, it does happen in.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
A lot of schools now are online, so you can get a
full degree online in your truck.
I am currently working on mybachelor's, from the truck
mostly, and on my off days Ilike you.
I did graduate high school, butcollege for me has been very
random and I've had classes hereand classes there and I was

(44:08):
working on my bachelor's inpsychology and then I was only a
couple of classes away and Iwas working on my bachelor's in
psychology and then I was only acouple of classes away and then
life happened.
I went back and I switched itto business admin with human
resources.
Some of my credits transferrednot all, so I'm working on that
but it's available online, youknow, uh, it is really big right

(44:32):
now and a lot of drivers needto look at what was I.
I was researching, um, the newautonomous training that's out
there, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
Yeah, they had an ad for that.
I was at my friend's house inTucson and they have like the
little weekly local paper andthey had an ad for people to
work on autonomous and then youhad to have a CDL and I'm like
why are they advertising thishere where no drivers are going
to see it?

Speaker 1 (45:01):
You know like, because that's where they are.
That's where they are.
Are studying the actualautonomous, yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:09):
But you're not going to get a CDL driver, that the
randomness of picking up a localnewspaper like advertise it
where the drivers are, and thatreally showed me kind of the
disconnect of, you know,credible educational

(45:32):
institutions that are studyingthings relevant to trucking
engineers that are really smartbut they don like I've talked to

(45:54):
MIT, I talk to engineers a lot.
I look at plans.
You know I get sent plans.
I'm like this isn't going towork because the trucks doesn't
turn this way to park in thiskind of a space.
But like I'm sort of a unicornand I'm like drivers really need
to know that there's a lot ofopportunities for them if they

(46:16):
continue their education whilethey're in the truck, like
you're doing, and it doesn'tmatter if it's all over.
I used to worry about the samething because I moved, went to
this community college, went tothat community college, went to
this four year university andnow I'm on the road.
Four-year university and nowI'm on the road.
I finished with the Universityof Maryland online.

(46:37):
Just do it, because 99% ofwinning is showing up and that's
what I saw going to college isthey want you to just if they
tell you to write a 20-pagepaper with citations yeah, it
sucks, but that you have tofinish it.
It's following through, it'slearning how to do the format.

(46:58):
It's not like there's like onecorrect answer and you're bad.
It's the process of startingsomething and finishing
something with the instructionsthat you were given.

Speaker 1 (47:09):
And with these new autonomous trucks and I'm just
going to say this out therebecause I've been researching it
the typical truck driver thatwe have today is not the trucker
of the future.
Everything I was reading wasvery degreed certifications,
engineers, cad there was a lotto these autonomous trucks very

(47:30):
extensive training, had therewas a lot to these autonomous
trucks, very extensive training.
And if you want to remain inthe trucking industry, you are
going to have to change with itand that is having a degree,
certification and training inthese IT departments engineering
, because that's what it's goingto take to drive these
autonomous trucks.
They're not just going to takea CDL these autonomous trucks.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
They're not just going to take a CDL, no.
What I mean, though, is like wejust had a.
We we just had real women intrucking was asked to sit in a
work group with some engineersfrom a study group I think
they're from Virginia tech,whatever and we were asked by
Steve Vasselli, who wrote a bookcalled Big Rig Trucking and the

(48:13):
Decline of the American Dream.
He's a labor sociologist, hewas also a truck driver, and I
have come to know Steve over theyears.
In fact, he knew me.
When I saw his book came out, Iwrote him, and I'm like hey,
I've been writing about all thisstuff about truck driver
training, and I saw your book,and he goes hey, I know who you
are, I've read your blog, so healready knew who I was, and he's

(48:37):
been trying to raise this alarmabout what autonomous trucks
are going to do to the labormarket, so he asked us, real
women in trucking, to sit inwith some engineers that are
testing some autonomous trucksup in winter conditions, and
they were telling us some of thethings that are happening with
them, and we were telling themthis is what we've been saying
all along, because what happensin winter with these sensors,

(49:03):
you can make a truck drive inpristine infrastructure.
But we don't have pristineinfrastructure.
That's not reality.
And winter, you drive through ablizzard and there's you know,
ice chips all over everything.
That's glass.
So if you're relying on asensor, what are you going to do
?
Get out every five minutes andclimb up on top and clean the

(49:26):
sensor off and it's going to getdirty again, like they're going
to malfunction.
So all of the things thatdrivers have expressed concerns
about before they started allthis crap are happening.
Um, you, you need.
You need to have real worldexperience and all of that stuff
, but but also just to be at thetable, to have the discussion

(49:51):
with that person and be able toarticulate it in a way that they
can understand it.
You know, this is the realityof it.
It's really important.
So I just, I really just hopemore drivers will see the value
and continue your education.
If you, if you love thisindustry and you know your body

(50:13):
can only take so much.

Speaker 1 (50:15):
Right, exactly.

Speaker 2 (50:16):
I know I'm at that point myself, your body can only
take so much, and then realitysets in.
So I started with onegrandchild.
I have six now.
I missed pretty mucheverybody's birthday parties.
I just went to mygranddaughter's eighth or she
graduated to go to high school.
That's the first one I've everbeen to.
I just went to mygranddaughter's eighth or she
graduated to go to high school.
That's the first one I've everbeen to.
I'm like all these years passso fast.

(50:38):
You know and you get to a pointwhere you're like I don't want
to.
I don't want to miss any, anymore of that stuff.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
Right.
So I don't want to go on toomuch of the autonomous because I
want to do a whole segment onthat.
So I would like to invite youback to discuss autonomous at a
later date, because there's alot of information that I want
to put out there that's not outthere as widely as it should be
with truckers.
But going back so, when youwere talking about getting

(51:08):
involved in the or you keepsaying the organization and the
group, where did this group?
What was this group thatstarted back then?

Speaker 2 (51:20):
So we, I became.
I went to CDL school in 2007and I'm on the truck with this
female trainer that's you knowpopping oxys and driving truck
with this female trainer that'syou know popping oxys and
driving.
And we're driving.
I think we were driving in someplace, it was a snowy, and I
saw this sign women in truckingand I'm like, oh, there's an

(51:41):
organization for women truckdrivers.
I'm going to join as soon as Iget home.
And I did.
And I joined the organization.
And then, when I started havingall these horrible experiences,
I was on a truck with a guy thatbasically wanted to tell me
about how great he would be inporno and to all this, you know,
hitting on me, and I was like,dude, I'm old enough to be your

(52:02):
mother, you know.
Like quit, you know stop.
And started getting veryaggressive with me up to the
point where he got it up in myface and he was like I just want
you to know I would never forceyou to have sex.
And that triggered in me someuncontrollable shaking, um, uh,
that I could not operate thetruck.

(52:23):
It was my turn to drive in my.
My body started convulsing andI said I can't do this.
I got to get off this truck,got on another truck with a guy,
ended up being left out in thedesert bleach sprayed on me.
So every time these things werehappening and I'm reporting
them to Covenant they're comingafter me like well, you seem to
be the common denominator.

(52:45):
Yeah, I came to find out theseguys had had multiple complaints
against them, but they werecoming after me and that turned
a switch on me.
So I was going over to this neworganization that I joined and
saying this happened to me and Idon't know where to get help.
I also wrote to Alan Smith, theAsk the Trucker blog.
Like I really want to do thisjob.

(53:06):
I feel like I'm being set up tofail and I'm like in my three,
four month part and I didn'tknow where to turn for help.
Women in trucking just attackedme, just like you must have
done this.
What did you do, you mother?
Like I was like holy shit.
You know, like whoa, what thefuck.

(53:26):
I was just taken aback by howthey came after me for
complaining.
Now, later I found out that'show they got rid of people that
complained about this and I wastold.
I was told by one of theiroriginal directors.
You're not the first one thatcame here and talked about this.
You just would not go away andI just found it very fucked up.

Speaker 1 (53:49):
So me, and it hasn't changed though.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
No, it hasn't changed .
It's like a false front, aHollywood.
So I grew up in SouthernCalifornia Okay, I grew up
around movie sets.
I've known actors and actingand you know what's on fire
right now is where I grew up.
So it uh, it just uh, uh,revealed to me women in trucking
is the false front of a movieset.
There is nothing behind it, andit frightened me that they were

(54:19):
actively covering up rape thatwas happening at companies, and
they were companies that sponsorthem corporate sponsors.
They were companies thatsponsor them corporate sponsors.
And then we were actually toldat one point yeah, we're
grooming them to be, you know,corporate apologists, basically.
So I was like, wow, this is sofucked up.

(54:49):
So me and a couple other womenhad written these 32 questions
to Ellen to get her to answerare you for the drivers or are
you for the carriers?
Because they would never bereally clear.
They always wanted to hangtheir leg on both sides of the
fence to the companies.
Use the picture of womentruckers to say look at us,
we're women in trucking.
But in reality, to the truckdrivers, it's like we want your

(55:10):
picture, but fuck off.
And you know, it's aboutdispatchers, it's about, you
know female executives.
Every time they would go toWashington DC I was like are
they going to bring up the badtraining?
Are they going to bring up youknow?

Speaker 1 (55:27):
the race with me, and no, they weren't.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
It was like take a picture with our doll so that we
can sell more dolls.
And so we wrote this letter.
We got her to answer.
That was the first blog post onreal women in trucking.
It was an informal protestgroup from 2010 until 2013.
And that's when I wasrecovering from a second surgery

(55:51):
on the knee, sat down with abook how to write a make a
nonprofit file.
The paperwork became a realnonprofit and the minute we
became a real nonprofit, companystarted calling me wanting to
sponsor us.
But I was like, okay, if I justtake the money from whatever
company so that they can have acheck mark on their box, I'm

(56:14):
just like her Right.
So that's where I have todecide.

Speaker 1 (56:19):
Right.
So who was your starting group?
Who was in your initial?

Speaker 2 (56:25):
So the person that wrote the original letter was
named Heather Rosen.
She was actually a trans driver, a third generation truck
driver, and she wrote theoriginal 32 questions.
The original board members wereme and Sandy Talbot Idella

(56:47):
Hansen, tracy from the CRST case.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
That was part of the CRS the very famous case very,
very big, big one, and um forthose of you of you that don't
know, tracy uh sued CRST for theum sexual harassment and rapes
that were going on at CRST,along with how many women there
were, seven.

Speaker 2 (57:13):
No, there was originally in that case 265
women, something like that.
Then it got knocked down to now.
A lot of this is documented onmy truckerdesireecom blog
because she posted there.
She's like I'm from CRST, Minewas excused and who we found was

(57:36):
the safety guy who also postedon the blog from Oklahoma that
backed up her story.
So he's in the Dan Rather thatfirst Dan Rather show.
His name is Tom Hanson.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
Yeah, so it's a very big case that happened back when
.

Speaker 2 (57:51):
Back and it started with somebody named Monica Stark
.
Anyway, it went on and on andon.
It got dismissed.
The EEOC did a lot of bad, notbad things.
They kept putting cases inafter the fact.
They did a lot of misstepswhich ended up doing a huge
misjustice to the women.
There were 13 women.
The judge wouldn't let the 13women testify for the one woman

(58:14):
because they didn't all have thesame trainer, even though they
all had the same experience.
There was a lot of shit thatwent down on it.
Then another lawyer came in andpicked up the individual cases
and tried to take on some ofthose cases.
They were making a lot of goodprogress, but then another judge
came in and dismissed it.
That that law firm I, joshFriedman.

(58:37):
There's a lot of videos on ourYouTube channel of them talking
about that case.
It was just a lot of shit goingon.
At the same time you had theprime discrimination case
happening, the CR England rapecase happening.
So there was stuff going on atall these different companies,
but it was all the same stuffand it was pretty clear it was a

(59:03):
way of doing business andthey're making money by saying
look at us, we're bringing allthese women into trucking, but
they're not talking about howmany are not making it and being
traumatized for life and 23%,if you want to know, I looked
this up 23% of women leavetrucking for sexual harassment,

(59:26):
discrimination.

Speaker 1 (59:27):
They don't feel safe.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
No, they don't feel safe.
And they feel safe, and theyand they.
Why should they?
You know, we have an industrywhere you could rape somebody
and then still have a job andstill be training and bring
another woman into thatenvironment.
Yep, you just dump the girl offand say she can't drive.
You know that's like the deathnail in your coffin for somebody

(59:52):
to say you can't drive, theydon't want to hear anything else
about you.
The cr england rape guy he he'sin, he went to jail.
The cr england guy is like youknow, the heat was high on him
so he walked across the streetfive, five miles down the road,
got a job with Watkins Shepherd,got a verification of

(01:00:15):
employment and he's drivingagain.
So it was very clear thatpeople that do this rapists,
predators.
They can go from one company toanother company and they
generally go to trainingcompanies because they have
access to fresh meat and theyknow nobody cares.
So they can blend right back inthe population.

(01:00:35):
So this guy he's been in jailfor five years.
He's getting out this year.
We have nothing in place totake his CDL away right now.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
So he can go back to a company that allows felons.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
Yep Allows felons and say I'll be a trainer.

Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
So you started your organization with some pretty
big headliners.
Then you you were making wavesall across trucking.
You're out in the spotlight,Tracy's in the spotlight as well
at this point.
So you have a lot of peoplethat are in the news starting
your organization.
So you have a lot of peoplethat are in the news starting
your organization.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
Yeah, and it took a toll on all of us.
You know we had a lot ofjournalists wanting to do
ride-alongs.
We got approached for a lot oftelevision shows.
Of course they wanted us tojust be bozos and sexualize us.
And you know the sexy truckerthat drives all day and, you
know, picks up a different guyevery night.
So we had to like really be onour toes to be, professional.

(01:01:39):
Sometimes shit can the plan, youknow, and and Tracy had a hit
job piece done on her thatreally hurt her feeling, so she
was like I don't want to do thisanymore.
All of us, it's taken a toll onus doing all these interviews
and putting our lives out thereto just say, you know, this is
the good, the bad, the ugly.

(01:01:59):
My life is not perfect and andand stuff.
Michelle Kitchen got involved.
She's been really like my righthand because she's tough.
Deb Dingo, and it has taken atoll on all of us because we
don't want to be out in front.
We have, you know, idella losta child when she was younger.

(01:02:23):
She lost her daughter a coupleof years ago, who was a very
active supporter of real womenin trucking.
You know we've had stuff goingon in our family that had taken
a toll on us.
And then sometimes you havewomen that seek our help, that
they kind of get obsessed withus.
You know like they want to be,like they want like every single

(01:02:48):
day, you know, and it's reallyhard, you know, know.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
Then with the rise.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
It is, it's, it's, it is draining, so it's.
It made me start hiding, youknow, and just checking out more
, having anxiety attacks.
You know, like some people, youcan't please, um, uh.
Then there's a lot of peoplethat want to spread you into all
of these different issues.
So I had to.
We had to like kind of likecircle wagons and say, okay, we

(01:03:17):
got to stick to like our coreissues and stuff, because really
we don't have the funding.
Like women in trucking, they'rebringing in over a million
dollars a year and what are theydoing?
They're having parties and andmaking dolls and stuff, but
they're not.
When we started the protestgroup, we were trying to push
them to do their job.

(01:03:39):
We didn't want to do it forthem.
I didn't want to be in chargeof shit.
I've been in charge ofsomething my whole life.
So we were only trying to put afire under their ass to do the
job they said they were doing.
And then now we're having to doit on a shoestring.
And then we started seeing themcome back into the picture and

(01:04:00):
try to take credit for the workthat we were doing and taking
our talking points and adoptingthem, and for me I would.
Part of me was like, ok, nowthey're doing their job, but
then it gets to the right, tothe implementation part, and
then they bail.
So we watched them monetize theissue, get it to right here

(01:04:23):
before implementation, and thenthey're on some other
nonsensical bullshit.
So we had to like stay with it.
And it has been exhausting, ithas been draining, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:36):
Yeah.
So you took this protest groupand you formed all you ladies
get together.
You formed this real women intrucking organization nonprofit
and you have sponsorships comingat you and you're saying no,
you're saying we, we areactually going to.
You know, we don't want thefluff, we want serious change.

(01:05:00):
And how did the industry handlethat?

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Uh, so we had us foods.
They were like one of our first, this one lady, but at the time
that we had to like say we'renot going to have any more
corporate money because we don'twant to be a checkmark box.
So we had this one, us foods.
I was talking to all thesedifferent, a lot of companies
that were calling me.
Sometimes I'd have to say,realistically, your job sucks

(01:05:25):
Like I don't.
You know, like realistically,even if you and people would get
mad at me and they'd be like,well, what if?
If they've got Walmart, what ifyou get Target?
Well, target's doing kind of,you know the same.
You know they're taking thestudent fleets.
I mean, ideally, companieswould take a look at their

(01:05:45):
supply chain rotation and saywe're not going to take any more
student fleets because we knowwhat's going on there.
We're going to pay a little bitmore to have an ethical company
.
How do we get an ethicalcriteria?
And that is just not a wordthat you hear in trucking.
Ethics and trucking are not.
So then we said, well, whatabout law firms that are going

(01:06:09):
after companies fordiscrimination, sexual assault,
wage theft?
So we that's how we supportedourself for a really long time
was law firms that were tryingto fight for the rights of
drivers and, um, you know, andthen when the pandemic happened,
like the skids came uh, youknow, on everything.

(01:06:32):
We did get some COVID moneythat supported us for a couple
of years and then we got a Cypreaward.
We had started truckers,emergency assistance responders
to help drivers that getstranded on the road, and we got
a Cypre award, which is when abig class action lawsuit happens
and they can't find all theclass members.

(01:06:55):
The money sits in the bank fora certain period of time and
then it has to be given to anonprofit that has a mission.
That is similar to what thecase is about.
So we had gotten a large sideprey award for TEAR, which is
the acronym for Truckers,emergency Assistance Responders

(01:07:15):
and from the Navistar classaction, where the engine was
yeah, the bad engines, yeah,yeah, the bad engine, and that
supported a lot of activitiesfor TEAR.
We were able to do a wholebunch of.
We got some money during COVIDto give care packages to drivers

(01:07:36):
from a lot of differentcompanies and then, when all of
that ran out, basically it cameto us.
Michelle and Idella have givena lot of their own personal
money to keep things going.
I work seven days a week.
We've had a lot of membersretire from driving seven days a

(01:07:58):
week.
We've had a lot of membersretire from driving and as we've
gotten FMCSA to start actuallytaking this issue seriously, we
have wanted to like back away.
But we have to see it through.
So right now just trying tokeep it all together.
So the work I do, consulting umexpert witness, that money goes
to real women in trucking tofund our activities.

(01:08:22):
Um, I was only able to paymyself a salary maybe two years
in the 15 years we exist.
So I and it wasn't really stillunder the poverty level, but it
was enough to take the heat offof me.
So we really fund a lot of itourselves.
You know, and we were like, ifyou do the math on the
membership, you got to have alot of members to support the

(01:08:49):
activities we did in themeantime.
But this is what I learned fromit.
You know, we started the queenof the road awards.
What we learned is it doesn'treally take that money to have a
huge impact and theseorganizations that are bringing
in the money they are, they arecompletely fucking over a lot of
people.
Sorry for my French, but it'sthe truth.

(01:09:10):
Yeah, it only takes really 10 or15 people that are on it all
the time making phone calls,writing letters, going to
meetings, showing up in personto make a huge difference and
impact, and that's what'slacking, and so people need to
hold these associationsaccountable.

Speaker 1 (01:09:31):
Right.
Most of the associationsthey're they're um.
Women need to feel like they'rea part of something.
Um, not all of them areadvocators.
Um, they're just.
They're um groupies.

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
Yeah, and that that's a hard thing, cause we've had
that too.
We've had people that are theyget a little obsessed, they get
a little fixated on one of usand then if you're not there for
them at the drop of a hat whenthey call you, then you're a bad
person, you're a horribleperson.

(01:10:07):
But you know, the truth is somepeople want to be involved for
the wrong reasons.
Yeah Well, I just want to putthis out there.

Speaker 1 (01:10:17):
If anybody wants to be my groupie.
I am horrible at returning textmessages and phone calls.
You can ask my best friend.
She may not talk to me formonths, so I love my.

Speaker 2 (01:10:30):
I have great girlfriends that I've had for
like over 30 years, but theyknow me Like I show up when I
show up and I'm, I always loveyou, you're.
When we're together it's likewe were never apart.
But I'm just not a phone callperson and I'm just.

Speaker 1 (01:10:44):
I'm not.
I'm not a fluff person and you,I text with you.
So you know I have very shorttexts.
I am short, blunt and to thepoint.
I'm all business and I knowthat it gets on people's nerves.

Speaker 2 (01:10:56):
I mean, I've had people that were in our
organization.
Call me, she likes you, you'rethe flavor of the month, they
would say.
And then she doesn't.
And here's my thing.
If you're helping the cause,I'm all about you.
But when you want to starttalking to me about what
so-and-so is doing over here andwhat color I, I tune out like I
don't have time for that stuff.

(01:11:18):
I'm all business.

Speaker 1 (01:11:19):
Yeah, and I'm not a follower, so I'm not going to
get on your little, your littlefollow train and be your little
girl.
No, I'm a leader, I go my ownway, my drum beats to my tune
and and my tune only you know soI, and I love that I love.

Speaker 2 (01:11:37):
I love being around leaders and people that are
doing their own thing and theyare self-driven, and those are
the kind of people.
Now I do wish that I could getmore people to coalesce around
this one issue, because it's adifficult topic and, going back
to an earlier question, why Itook it, the reason I stayed on

(01:11:58):
it, because I knew it was such adifficult subject matter for
people to talk about that nobodywas going to talk about it and
get down to the nitty gritty,down and dirty right.
It needed to be said.
The words need to be said.

Speaker 1 (01:12:11):
So we're going to get into your issues here in a
minute.
What I want to tell ourlisteners today is so, after all
these years of being a trucker,getting into these
organizations, getting youreducation, you actually took a
job, you bailed on us in thetrucking industry and you are

(01:12:34):
enemy number one.

Speaker 2 (01:12:37):
No, I'm still tell everybody I'm a truck driver.

Speaker 1 (01:12:42):
So you took a job with Nevada's DOT.

Speaker 2 (01:12:48):
Yes, I did.

Speaker 1 (01:12:48):
Correct.
So what's your role at DOT?

Speaker 2 (01:12:51):
What do?

Speaker 1 (01:12:51):
you do.

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
I am a transportation planner, analyst of freight.

Speaker 1 (01:12:57):
So she's not at the weigh station, y'all I just want
to put that out there.
Which, if she was, she'dprobably hammer, you just saying
, but I would.

Speaker 2 (01:13:05):
There's certain ones I'd be calling in if I did that.
No, I'm not.
I'm not in that division, I do.
I can't talk a lot about my jobyou don't have to, but part of
my job is to work with theNevada Highway Patrol Oversize,
overweight, and there's thingsthat they're trying to get done

(01:13:27):
to modernize their facilitiesfor Nevada trying to get done to
modernize their facilities forNevada.
What I look at is truck parkingand projects that will make the
freight move smoothly andefficiently through our state
and hopefully as amulti-corridor partner with our
neighboring states.
So that's my job to look atthat as a whole and what I

(01:13:52):
always do is bring it from theeyes of a truck driver.

Speaker 1 (01:13:56):
Right yeah, so you as a truck driver and being on the
other side of it.
It does make you look at thingsa lot differently, Having the
experience of both.

Speaker 2 (01:14:08):
Yeah, it does, because now it's easy to say,
okay, they don't know what it'slike out here.
You know these paper pusher,pencil pushers I've said it
myself you know.
You know moving papers aroundyour desk.
Now I'm having to see how slowthings move.

(01:14:31):
When you have a newadministration, a lot of people
change positions.
No, you have to wait for allthose people to learn what the
job is that they got themselvesinto and see if they're going to
stick around and do it.
That's very probably thebiggest challenge right there
and it's complicated to winpeople over.

(01:14:51):
To almost come full circle forme, because I'm dealing with a
lot of policy now, which is whatI ended up going, you know,
when I started out in collegeand somehow went on this other
path and came all the way aroundback, and now I'm coming back
to policy and global businessand how that all works and

(01:15:20):
global business and how that allworks.
But I'm also dealing with peoplewho think complete streets is
the most important thing, andscooters and bicycles and bike
paths and how to get them to seethat freight is critically
important to everyone.
And, ironically, one of thevery first interviews I ever did

(01:15:41):
it's still on YouTube was withOverdrive magazine, todd Dills,
and I was telling him how truckparking because it doesn't have
its own set aside funding has tocompete with other projects in
transportation and so there hasto be more advocates to explain

(01:16:04):
why truck parking is important.
Because you're up againstpeople that want walking paths,
who can actually show up tomeetings in person, to city
commissioner meetings, and winbecause there's no truck driver
there to say but wait a minute,isn't it more important that you
have your stuff at the store?
So I said that in thisinterview with Todd Dills all

(01:16:27):
those years ago, and now I'mliving it in my job, where I've
got to be in a meeting with allthese different groups that are
like this is important, that'simportant, and I'm like wait a
minute, that's too.

Speaker 1 (01:16:41):
So that, yeah, and that's very important Um, which
also comes into play with thecore issues that you are dealing
with on the real women intrucking side as well.

Speaker 2 (01:16:53):
Yes, it, it.
You know.
I mean it's important tounderstand that.
I started the real women intrucking for the sexual assault
and the bad training issue.
What happened from my activityon Twitter was getting asked all
these questions fromjournalists because the only

(01:17:14):
truck driver they knew wasTrucker Desiree on Twitter.
I was one of the first femaletruck drivers in social media so
I didn't follow other truckdrivers.
They followed me, butjournalists and elected
officials and people that weredoing stuff are who I followed.

(01:17:35):
So when people from magazinesand articles would say, what
about this trucking issues, oneof the things they said was what
do you think about this guy,jason Rivenberg, that was
murdered when he was trying topark?
And I read the article and Iwas like oh my God, and I
started talking about truckparking, which led me very

(01:17:57):
quickly to meet his widow, hopeRivenberg, and she was going
around trying to get petitionsignatures.
I don't know if everybody knowsthis story, but for me it was
heartbreaking.
She's pregnant with twins, herhusband shot for $7.
It was visible on his dashboardwhile he was staging to park.
It deliver a food lion, a loadof milk.

(01:18:20):
The teenager kills him for the$7 and she gives birth to the
twins, 14 days later in a murdertrial and is trying to collect
petition signatures to raiseawareness of the lack of truck
parking for truck drivers atCounty fairs.
And I'm just like she alreadyhas a two-year-old.
I'm just like, okay, she's losther husband, she's got two

(01:18:42):
infants and a toddler and she'sout there by herself.
So I started sharing thepetition on Twitter.
Asked the trucker, alan Smith,and Donna Smith mobilized a
movement.
The bill became a law.
It was incredible we got somany people on Twitter to help
us.

Speaker 1 (01:19:02):
The law is what?

Speaker 2 (01:19:03):
Tell them what the law is now the law is Section
1401 of the Moving Ahead forProgress Transportation Bill
Jason's law.
You can Google it.
It is the law of the land.
It made truck parking aneligible activity for funding
when states included in theirfreight plan.
Here's the thing Before Jason'slaw, states just got money for

(01:19:28):
transportation OK, and then theyall fought over whatever they
got.
Jason's law made them now haveto make a freight plan and study
truck parking.
Jason's Law made them now haveto make a freight plan and study
truck parking.
So now all these states arelike what's a freight plan?
How do we do it?
What's truck parking?
Why do we need it?
So you have all these peoplethat have worked in state DOTs

(01:19:51):
that now have to do a new jobthat they've never had to do
before and they don't even knowwhere to begin to do it.
That takes time.
So that all was around 2011.
We went to all the meetingsreal women in trucking.
I went to every single meetingthat Federal Highway had and I
made a lot of connections duringthat time, which is kind of
what led me to the job that Ihave now but got very involved

(01:20:13):
in this truck parking thing andfrom going to those meetings,
the more I went, the more Ilearned that people really
wanted to solve this problem butthey didn't really understand
the behavior of truck driversover the road truck drivers.
So I began doing consulting.
There's a study that's comingout in spring that we've worked
on to really get down to thenitty gritty, to teach people

(01:20:35):
that work on this problem why weneed to park what we need to do
when we're there, parked thethings that we need.
People didn't realize that wedo our laundry on the road.
They didn't understand thatthere was no toilet in the
tractor.
Nobody told them this.

Speaker 1 (01:20:54):
So they thought we were rolling with an RV.
So they thought we were rollingwith an RV.

Speaker 2 (01:20:58):
Yeah, so I mean, and I always tell them you know we
have autonomous trucks on theroad, but nobody's ever thought
let's put a toilet in the semi.
You know they already have anRV.
Dump at all the truck stopsLike what's the problem here?
So there was so much to connectthe dots that needed to happen

(01:21:22):
over these years, and so thatreally led me into getting
really a lot more involved inthe truck.
Parking was Jason's Law andHope, and so Hope gave birth to
the twins.
She remarried.
The twins are now teenagers.
There's a lot of people thathave been working on this issue
behind the scenes that thedrivers have never seen.
But the driver behavior too isthere's always new people coming

(01:21:47):
in.
Nobody teaches them how to findother alternatives besides big
chains.
You know they're sort of taughtto just go where you get your
fuel points and never goanywhere else, right yeah and
but.
But over time, when you becomean experienced driver, you're

(01:22:08):
like, okay, I'm gonna take myshower in the afternoon, when
it's less crowded, and then I'mgonna go park at this little
hiding spot that I have, that'svery peaceful, that I'm not
going to tell anybody about, andyou learn that over time.
Or this old mom and pop placethat has a great restaurant, a
gigantic parking lot, that youcan get a spot any time of the
day, 24 hours.
Those are the little hiddeninside grapevine things that you

(01:22:31):
learn over time that's nottaught.
And there's a lot about livingon the road that we don't teach
the new drivers.
And there's a there's a lotabout living on the road that
that we don't teach the newdrivers.
And because they're alwayscoming in and cycling out, you
always have this churningproblem over here that you know.

Speaker 1 (01:22:51):
With parking, yeah, so we have um the core issues.
With real women trucking, youhave the sexual assault and the
trainers, you have the parking.
What other core issues are youguys focused?

Speaker 2 (01:23:03):
on right now.
What has sprung up in the lastyear and a half two years is
hiring discrimination.
There's just a lot of a lot ofcompanies that are not hiring
women.

Speaker 1 (01:23:12):
Period end of story, which is weird because they keep
saying they're trying toincrease the percentage of women
.
Um, I, where I work, um, thereare not very many of us women
drivers.
At the terminal I work at, I amactually the only woman driver,
and it hasn't been easy, um,but yeah, I.

(01:23:33):
So it's crazy to think that, oh, we are trying to increase the
number, we are trying toadvocate, we are, you know,
advertising for women, we arepro-woman, but when it comes
down to it, they aren't when itcomes down to it.

Speaker 2 (01:23:46):
No, they just they say whatever they want and they
make a lot of money.
They make a lot of moneytelling and these companies
don't check out anything.
They just like this is ourwomen.
Same with truckers againsttrafficking.
A lot of companies are likethey're the companies, they're
not even good companies andthey're like they'll support
truckers against trafficking.
This is a great cause, but theydon't want to clean up their

(01:24:08):
own house.

Speaker 1 (01:24:13):
They're like well, we have our checkmark women's
issue over here, and so it looksgood for PR's all it looks good
for their marketing, butthey're all full of shit.

Speaker 2 (01:24:20):
All these companies are on the best women to fleets
to drive for.
It's like a joke, you know?
Like no, no, they're not.
Um, so it's all pay to play.
It's a bunch of total nonsense.
It's very confusing for womenbecause somebody who's wanting
like we used to be when we weresingle moms, looking for a job

(01:24:40):
that they could have make a nicelife for the kids is seeing I'm
going to be a truck driver.
And then they get in the CD andthey don't realize that these
companies are making money offof you.
You're a little dollar sign forthem when you enter trucking
because they get a tax creditfor you because you're minority
or you're just whatever it is.

(01:25:01):
I got a list of tax credit foryou.
Dislocated worker, all thisstuff and they're getting all
these grants and governmentmoney but at about the three or
four month mark they don't careabout you and you're on your own
.
So you're in this space whereyou're not insurable yet and
you're just that far from youknow being and you just can't

(01:25:22):
find a spot.
So the discrimination we'reseeing a lot of uh companies
just saying they have a waitinglist for women.
They're not hiring women.
That is illegal.
It violates the civil rightsact of 1964, title seven.
So if anybody's experiencedthat, please call us.
There's a few companies thatwe're going after on that

(01:25:44):
Retaliation and blacklisting.
We're having a lot of women andthis goes on with a lot of
drivers.
But women need to really payattention.
When you leave a company andyou had a little fender bender,
they put it on your record as apreventable accident.
I mean it's really hard to getthat off.

Speaker 1 (01:26:00):
Uh abandonments, you know I mean so I had to fight an
incident.
Um, and I didn't even have anincident.
I had a guy who got mad becauseI had to merge in construction.
He was behind me, but you knowhow cars, when you're merging,
they try to go around you.
He couldn't go around me.
He called the company and saidthat I broke his mirror off.

(01:26:22):
Okay, the company sent amessage on my, on my navigate on
my.
What do we have back then?
Um, I am sitting in trafficnext to the SOB with his mirror
intact.
Not even a scratch on it.
I have a message from safetyabout it.
I can't take a picture of itbecause I'm driving and I'm in

(01:26:44):
traffic or I will get fired.
There's nothing I can do.
The guy's just mad woman driverhe's going to be.
You know, he never sent in anyproof, but yet they put it on my
record and I had to fight that.
Yeah, and it wasn't easy.

Speaker 2 (01:26:59):
Yeah, it's hard.
I mean once somebody putssomething on your record, I mean
I'm really lucky because I Ifollowed.
But I had a guy one time he wascutting me off and being a real
asshole on the road and um, Iflipped him off.
I was like fuck you.
He called my company and Icalled my company.

(01:27:19):
I said this guy, he goes.
He already called me, don'tworry about it.
You know my boss was cool andstuff.
But there are people out on theroad like that.
Yeah, that are just assholes andthey have nothing to do but
just try to be.
You know?
And the safety departmentdoesn't care.

Speaker 1 (01:27:36):
Oh, we got a call, so it doesn't matter that there's
no proof, you're still gettingit.
Why?
I mean, I was on the phonesaying, hey, I'm next to him.
Oh well, there's nothing youcan do about it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:47):
Women have to be really cover your ass.
Yeah, you know, if you'releaving a job, take a picture of
all sides of the truck to provethere's nothing you know wrong
with the truck.
That it's where they want.
I mean, these companies willscrew you every way to Sunday to
make sure that you can't getanother job.

(01:28:08):
So you really have to likewatch yourself, especially in
those early years when you don'thave enough solid experience to
get to the next job.
So I see a lot of that.
So that's one of the issuesthat we're kind of dealing is
trying to teach women about thisbefore and how to, you know, go
and fight it with higher rateand stuff like that.

(01:28:29):
There's not enough women thatknow that they don't have to
drive in dangerous conditions.
It's winter weather surfacetransportation assistance act.
We put a number of videos onour YouTube channel about that.
Paul Taylor truckers justicecenter specializes in that.
Um, but you need to know how toreport it.
There was a very big case thathe did Cynthia Ferguson against

(01:28:52):
prime and she was saying youknow it's not safe to go and
they wanted her.
They fired her for not goingand she won that case.
It was a significant settlement.
Cynthia Ferguson has passedaway, but her case lives on and
it's really important for womento know there's other women that
paved the path for you.
Yes, exactly, and you need toknow about the sacrifices that

(01:29:19):
they made so that you could bedoing this job.
And please, arm yourself withknowledge.
You know if a company istelling you to drive in a
blizzard and you know it's notsafe, you're the captain of the
ship and you need to know how tosay the magic words to them,
because they don't teach thesedispatchers, they incentivize

(01:29:40):
them to get you to keep moving.
They don't care if you die, thefreight's insured, the truck's
insured and if you're a?

Speaker 1 (01:29:47):
CDL and your job and your livelihood.

Speaker 2 (01:29:51):
And the truth of the matter is, if you die on the
road, they're not going to bringyour body back for your family
your family's on their own tofigure out how to bring your
body back.
For your family, your family'son their own to figure out how
to bring your body back.
So you have to think aboutyourself, because they're
thinking about themselves.

Speaker 1 (01:30:04):
Um so I?
Those are our core issues.
Yeah, I always tell drivers.
First of all, if you'redispatcher or somebody calls you
and said and gives you a hardtime, first words out of your
mouth should be send it to me inwriting.
Yes, absolutely.
Do not answer the phone.

Speaker 2 (01:30:20):
Don't answer the phone.
They're calling you becausethey know there's no record.
As soon as they start callingyou, you know they're trying to
get you to do something.

Speaker 1 (01:30:27):
That's illegal and once they send it to you in
writing and you say it's asafety concern, it's their job
on the line.
So you have to make sure youcover cya yeah, it's like hot
potato.

Speaker 2 (01:30:41):
I always think it's like hot potato.
They say something to you andyou say something back to throw
the hot potato back in their lap, which is it is not safe to do
that.
Right, and the word safe is theword that you need to.
You know, because it is abouthighway safety.

Speaker 1 (01:30:58):
It is and and if you don't know, a lot of people
don't realize Warner had a hugelawsuit a few years ago where
there was a newer driver drivingin bad weather.
Uh, there was an accidentacross the median.
But the car came across themedian, hit the truck.
The truck was nowhere nearwhere the accident started, but

(01:31:19):
because the truck was out ininclement weather and it was
just there, the um, the uhaccident was more severe and the
injuries were more severe andthe driver of the car won a
humongous lawsuit just becausethe truck was there, even though
the truck had nothing to dowith it.

(01:31:40):
So even when you're not atfault, even when you're nowhere
near and you just get ran intoin today's society, you are
still at fault.

Speaker 2 (01:31:51):
Yeah, if you're a CDL driver, you're going to be the
one that gets left holding thebag.
Yeah, you know, and thecompanies are not.
You know, everybody goesrunning for the hills and you're
the rogue driver and you needto think about that.

Speaker 1 (01:32:06):
Yeah, so yeah, you're the one that's going to take
the fall.
It's going to be your name inthe news all over the place.
You know it's going to be.
Oh, why were you there?
Why did you do it?
And nothing you say is going tomatter, because you were the
one behind the wheel and thatmade the decision to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:32:22):
Exactly so.
So, yeah, yeah.
So that's about it.
I'd mentioned two other thingsthat we're doing.
We've been working a lot on ourwebsite is the independent
contractor rule.

Speaker 1 (01:32:33):
Um, oh, I'm going to send you a text, by the way.

Speaker 2 (01:32:36):
I got a.

Speaker 1 (01:32:39):
Oh, I'm going to send you a text.
By the way, I got a.
Um, I actually I was going tomessage you about this.
I got a text message this weekabout a job offer.
Um, and it was so much senseper mile and it was 10, 99 and.
I read it and I responded andI'm like, is this a lease
purchase?
And they're like, no companydriver driver.
And I was like, how did you getmy number, you know?

(01:33:01):
And they're like, um, youapplied?
I'm like, no, I I haven'tapplied to anyone.
And they're like, oh, oh, um, Idon't know, we'll take your
number off, but I have the textmessage, the company name, the
recruiters name and number andthey are recruiting illegally
1099 for a company driverposition.

Speaker 2 (01:33:23):
There's so much abuse happening in the industry right
now.
There's so many offshorecompanies coming in setting up
brokerages, setting up truckingcompanies, having drivers do
these lease purchase, rent.
I've met drivers that are theircompany driver.

(01:33:45):
They're paying for the fuel.
They have got them doing somany illegal things.
It's like a boat is sinking andyou're trying to plug all these
holes and we are just notequipped to deal with all the
situations happening.
We just urge drivers do notwork for a 1099 company.
You are guaranteed that you aregoing to have your checks

(01:34:06):
stolen, bag for some reallydangerous situations and I just
can't even.
There's not even enough timefor me to share all of the
horror stories that I've had.
So we have put some letters out, we have some law firms that we

(01:34:27):
are working with to talk aboutthe independent contractor rule
and you know, obviously we don'tknow where a lot of stuff is
going to go because of theadministration change.
And then, lastly, I have hadsome guy.
There's so many differentdriver groups now, but three
driver groups got ahold of me acouple of years ago.

(01:34:49):
Whatever asked me to sit in onsome meeting about the broker
transparency.
We had this meeting with thisoffice, a small business
administration.
They said you know, everythingyou guys are describing is an
antitrust issue.
You should write to the FederalTrade Commission.
So I had actually met Lena Kahn, who is the commissioner of the

(01:35:12):
Federal Trade Commission, at acocktail party when I was in
Washington DC and we had writtenher about the independent
contractor rule and she knew whoI was.
She was like oh yeah, I'mreading a letter from you right
now.
I said, well, I just was inthis meeting about this broker
thing and it's like antitrust.
And she said, all right, theletter.
So I did, I wrote the letter.
She's probably leaving officenow, but right away when the

(01:35:34):
letter got published it waspicked up by some Washington DC
circles and some antitrustlawyers called me right away and
they're like there's somethinghere you know.
So I'm like OK, you know.
So as a supportive measure,that's not one of our core
issues.

(01:36:01):
Something there with this brokertransparency that really needs
to be unraveled, because I havespoken to some shippers about it
and I believe that if we getdown to the nitty gritty, we're
going to find out the shippershave been paying market rates
and then the brokers are turningaround and making the second
contract and cutting all theprofit out and all the fuel
surcharge and nobody's the wiser, and then listing that load up

(01:36:23):
on the load board for thisgrossly reduced price when in
fact they are paying over here.
So they're like believing thatthe shippers are believing we're
paying, so where is it going?
And there's just a lot ofpeople in the industry that
shouldn't be.
There's a lot of foreigncompanies, like I said, and I

(01:36:46):
believe that it puts our supplychain at risk when you have so
much corruption happening, somuch wage theft happening people
just getting a truck, wagetheft happening, um, people just
getting a truck.
And we're going to have anotherwave of it because when the
freight slowed down, thecomplaints slowed down, because
so many companies are goingbankrupt but as freight picks up

(01:37:10):
, I just got called by usa today, a few days ago, because
they're doing a whole truckdriver shortage.

Speaker 1 (01:37:18):
There is not a truck driver shortage.

Speaker 2 (01:37:23):
They're like there's no truck driver shortage.
Yes, I'll talk to you, but youhave to understand the ATA does
this like every three months andthey do it to ramp up.
People go to CDL school, get intraining.
Now you have a low wageworkforce that doesn't know

(01:37:44):
what's going on.
So it's it's a mechanism tokeep those people coming, you
know.

Speaker 1 (01:37:52):
And they're overpaying for overpriced this
is my rant.
I mean I just did my podcastabout this the other day
overpriced CDL schools that donot.
I mean I just did my podcastabout this the other day
Overpriced CDL schools that donot give proper training and
then they're coming out with nojob because there is not a
driver shortage.

Speaker 2 (01:38:08):
Yeah, there's no driver shortage.
Then they get them involved inlease purchase.
Then they get, you know, theirwages stolen.
Then they, you know like, itjust sets off the whole chain of
events all over again and it'sjust exhausting to keep up with.
You know, like, how do you getthese people to not do this

(01:38:31):
carrot and stick thing that theydo?

Speaker 1 (01:38:34):
Well, from what I heard, the schools are getting
grants for the people that theysend through these driver mills.
And that's my word, that's mystatement, that's what.
I put in and I stand by that.
They are driver mills, they'reCDL mills.

Speaker 2 (01:38:52):
The students are their own industry and I said
that in the Dan Rather show backin 2009, that the student
trucker industry is an industry.
Within trucking, it's an inner.
Recruiters make money.
Recruiters make more money thanthe drivers.
Yep, Everybody is getting akickback from getting these

(01:39:16):
people in and they work cheap.
They run the freight, They'lldo the team driving.
They're making money from thegovernment.
Everybody's giving themaccolades because they're
bringing, they're creating jobs,but there's no tighter
retention.
Nobody's going and saying youhired 5,200 people last year and
you're still saying that youhave a driver shortage.

(01:39:38):
What happened to those 5,200people?
Like, let's have an audit andfind out what happened to them.
And that is just a lot ofgovernment waste that people
need to pay attention to becausethe taxpayers are funding that
ultimately, and you know.
And then everybody's like, oh,we're creating jobs.
Like, no, you're not.
You're creating an indenturedservitude operation.

(01:40:02):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:40:05):
Exactly 100%.
That's my soapbox right there.
You don't want to get mestarted because you know, coming
in as a driver and being adriver trainer, I have seen some
crazy girl and she literallydidn't even have three hours
behind the wheel at the schoolshe went to.

(01:40:26):
Her instructor was also her,her test out and he passed her,
knowing she failed and couldn'tdrive.
And this girl almost killed methree times in her first hour
behind the wheel.
She did not even have the basictools.

(01:40:48):
You know, she did not have thebasic skills down, not even the
basic.

Speaker 2 (01:40:54):
I mean I, I don't know how this mess.
I mean I don't know how thismess.
I mean money.
Basically that's really what itis.
That's how the mess hashappened.
We've seen DMVs just since I'vebeen in trucking people getting
paid off the DMV to pass people.

(01:41:16):
Fraudulent CDL is given topeople.
There was a big bust in Floridaa few years ago.
A school in Memphis got bustedbecause they were paying people
off to pass people that didn'thave the skill.
So it is a real freaking mess.
And then I've actually met.

(01:41:36):
I met this Serbian guy who'stold me he was brought over here
, taught to drive in two daysand you know, just doesn't know
anything about the regulations,wasn't taught how to park, only
to go forward, drive 11 hours,pull over on the side of the
road, call this number and thenthey give you more hours to

(01:41:56):
drive.
Or the Serbian companies whoare?

Speaker 1 (01:42:00):
yeah, and I know a Serbian driver who just worked
for a company before he came towhere I am and he was working
two different clocks.
He was, he was team driving asjust one person and it was
exhausting, yeah 16 hours andthey tell him I have text
messages.

Speaker 2 (01:42:19):
One guy shared the text messages.
They give him more hours, whichis basically whoever it is.
Seats another driver on the ELDand tell him to keep the one
person to keep driving.
And then they're texting himand saying, if you get pulled
over, tell him this is your nameand this is how you pronounce
it.
But they don't know because theway that they got brought into

(01:42:40):
it from their own community,they don't know the regulations.
They were not taught thatthat's illegal.
That's not how you're supposedto do it and you have a right to
say no.
That's not how you're supposedto do it and you have a right to

(01:43:01):
say no, and that's why we havea lot of dangerous drivers on
the road right now.

Speaker 1 (01:43:07):
True.
So you're fighting.
This is new stuff that you'regoing to be tackling as well.
That's a lot on your plate.

Speaker 2 (01:43:21):
I'm not sure if I'm going to tackle it, but I try to
talk to people when I go and dopublic speaking that are in
agencies that have the power topoke around a little bit more
and see oh yeah, I see it righthere.
Illinois has a lot of people inthere.
They need a very big audit inIllinois.

Speaker 1 (01:43:41):
We are probably the most corrupt state.
We had the huge VL scandal withGeorge Ryan back in the day.
Yeah, we are probably the mostcorrupt state when it comes to
that.
It's horrible.
So I got, I went to Wisconsinto get mine.
I had a great uh training up atFox Valley in Wisconsin, it is.

(01:44:03):
It is so, um, I did not gothrough Illinois to get mine.
I was well-trained.
So what?
What else besides uh, you werejust in DC, um, so you're, you
travel a lot for this.
You spend a lot of time workingon the trucking issues.

(01:44:23):
Is there anything else going onin your life besides this, or
does this take up all of it?

Speaker 2 (01:44:30):
Right now, I'm pretty much just working all of the
time Working.
Yeah, I'm pretty much workingall of the time.
Right now, there's not a lot ofdowntime for me.
I have a horse.
Oh, he bucked me off in October.
I spent most of October in thehospital with a broken tailbone.

(01:44:52):
He still loves me and I stilllove him, but I can't ride.
I rode on Christmas Day oh,that was nice.
What's his name?
You know, his name is Scout andhe's a beautiful paint and
that's kind of my downtime rightnow.
I love Washington DC.
I love the conference that Iwent to.

(01:45:13):
I'd love to get more driversintroduced to going to.
It's very expensive, but I feellike there's a lot more value
there.
There's a lot of people thatjust are so eager to talk to a
truck driver Like they can bear,you know well, you look at.
Well, you look at this, does itmake sense, you know?
So it really makes you feellike, okay, I have a, I could do

(01:45:35):
a lot.
You know networking with thisgroup a lot better than going to
this other show.
That's more like junior highschool.

Speaker 1 (01:45:43):
So you know what I mean.
We talked about that the otherday.
Yeah, so I just we're stillgoing.
We're still going, though, butyou know, yeah Well yeah, I'm
not going to go to.

Speaker 2 (01:45:58):
I don't.
We're not going to go to Matt'safter all.

Speaker 1 (01:46:00):
You're not going this year.

Speaker 2 (01:46:02):
No, I'm not going to.
We just pulled out of it, andthe reason why is because the
fall that I had um is going tocause me to have another surgery
and it's going to have to havetake place in the spring and it
just wasn't going to befinancially make sense for me to
travel.
There is a documentary outabout our work called Driver
that premiered at the TribecaFilm Festival in June.

(01:46:24):
We wanted to bring it to Matt'sthe filmmaker I don't know if
she still is, maybe she will.
We wanted drivers to see itbefore it gets on streaming
platforms.
We do know that MIT is going tobe showing it and they asked if
I would come for that.

Speaker 1 (01:46:44):
Is it going to stream anywhere?

Speaker 2 (01:46:46):
It probably will.
It just takes time forstreaming channels to pick up
after it goes on a film festivaltour, so it's usually on a film
festival tour for over a yearbefore streaming channels start
picking up the documentariesthat came out.
So eventually it will.
We did like over over 700 hoursof filming and it's a 90 minute

(01:47:11):
film, so there's a lot ofcontent that's not in the doc.
That I wish was, um, it's moreabout like the precarity of the
job and us trying to help otherdrivers, you know contacting us
for help and trying to live ourown lives on the road and juggle
, all of this kind of stuff.
But for me right now I need tolike see through a couple of

(01:47:37):
cases that we have pending andfocus on my job and do the best
that I could do.
You know, and you know we havethe thing up looking for board
members and you know I'm lookingat you, tammy, because I think
that you would be a greataddition to what we're doing.

Speaker 1 (01:47:55):
Tammy sent her email this week.

Speaker 2 (01:47:56):
She did yeah After thinking about it.
Yeah, I really.
You know we've had people thatwant to help, but then they
there's not follow through ortheir life gets busy.
Some people have gotten, youknow, family issues or medical
issues that have prevented themfrom really contributing, and I
know more than anyone thattrucking consumes your life,

(01:48:18):
like it's hard to have time foranything else.
But if you're going to be inthis industry longer and you
care about making it better, wehave an established voice.
We've kicked down a wall thatcould never be put back up again
and, um, I Della's and you needfighters.

(01:48:39):
You need, we need fighters thatare not afraid to tell the truth
and aren't going to get winedand dined by another association
for 20 minutes so that you'llbe silent.

Speaker 1 (01:48:56):
Yep and then toss you out the back door.
So when you watch this, ladies,and you have had experiences or
you've seen experiences andyou've dealt with this industry
and you want change and you'rewilling to work to help make
that change, you know where togo.
You come over to Real Women inTrucking and you tell them I

(01:49:18):
want to help with change.
I want to be a voice.
We all have a voice and youknow, use it.
This is me using mine.
You know I've been in thisindustry for eight years and if
you wouldn't, if you knew mebefore, you know I have a voice.
I've always had a voice aboutwomen issues.
If you knew me before, you knowI have a voice.

(01:49:39):
I've always had a voice aboutwomen issues.
I've always been in maledominated industries.
I was in insurance for years.
I've always dealt with maledominated industries and when I
came into trucking, I'm like I'mjust going to stay on the back
burner and I was so outragedwith the things I've dealt with
that finally, I'm like I'm done,and you know I'm not an overly
religious person.
I'm done and you know I'm notan overly religious person, I'm

(01:50:00):
Baptist.
But I'm going to tell you whatGod knocked on my head in a
dream one night and he said youhave a voice, use it.
Um, I had a dream about not youknow, and so this, this is
where we're at, and I I'm donewith with just sitting here
complaining about it.

Speaker 2 (01:50:16):
So that was my thing is everybody's complaining about
the same thing.
Let's do something.
I need to find my successor.
You know I can't keep doingthis.
I turned 60 this year and, um,I know that if I just fold it up
, the other organization willjust take credit for a lot of
stuff they never did.

(01:50:37):
Tried to cover up, continue totry to cover up and everything
will just go on.
Now there is a very good studygoing on right now, but you have
to have some outspoken, toughwomen to make sure
implementation happens Right.
You got to go past that stoppingpoint.

Speaker 1 (01:50:57):
You know you got to go past that, that, that
stopping point.
Um, you know you, you want toactually implement.
You don't want to stop at thewhere everybody else stopping.
You want to take it real womenin trucking wants to take it
farther and they want to be partof the implementation and they
want to make sure thatimplementation occurs.

Speaker 2 (01:51:16):
And I, I got to tell you that you know, last I was in
DC for a different conference afew months ago and I was
talking to somebody and she saidyou should really tap into the
insurance industry because theinsurance industry would care
about, because it does have animpact on highway safety.
When you have somebody that'soperating a tractor trailer,

(01:51:39):
highway safety, when you havesomebody that's operating a
tractor trailer who is beingterrorized by the person that's
in there with them, you have ahighway safety issue, and so
sexual misconduct and the lackof a code of conduct of the
kinds of drivers that we have isimpacting highway safety for
everyone, and the insuranceindustry needs to be brought
into that circle.
So you might be just the personto do that yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:52:01):
Parking inadequacy, that also is highway safety.

Speaker 2 (01:52:04):
That is because, yeah , it sure does.
Because of the cargo theft.
Like why do you give me youknow a couple million dollars
worth of cargo and then tell meto go fend for myself?

Speaker 1 (01:52:15):
Or the trucks that are parking on ramps and getting
hit.
It's all part of the same riskmanagement.
I can see where insurancecompanies would definitely play
a part in wanting to see somechange with that.

Speaker 2 (01:52:30):
The problem lies in the companies that are
self-insured.
That can doctor their crashstatistics.

Speaker 1 (01:52:40):
Right, but even being self-insured they do.
I mean there there is an, aninsurer backing them up
regardless.

Speaker 2 (01:52:48):
So that has to be that.
That is where somebody needs todig into further that knows the
inner workings of the insuranceindustry, yeah, so that's
definitely interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:52:59):
Well, I know we have had a very long podcast.
So, desiree, what's 2025looking at for you?
Anything big coming up thatpeople need to keep an eye out
for?

Speaker 2 (01:53:13):
Well, we have some.
We have some big things that wehope will conclude that I can't
talk a lot about in 2025.
I hope that by the spring wehave some noteworthy news.
We'd like to have people joinour fight.

(01:53:36):
Use your voice, if that's yoursuperpower.
Share our news, share knowledgewith each other before we get
the next wave of new students inand it starts all over again
with people making all the wrongdecisions.
And that's kind of the bigthing is how do we help people

(01:53:59):
make the right decisions fromday one so that they can avoid
the obstacles that are in someof these companies that are
setting you up to fail, and youknow we're looking for new
leadership.
A lot of us want to move onwith our life.
Deb is, you know, deb has takenover a um, a company that is a

(01:54:20):
startup.
They're looking for some womendrivers that want to drive
locally now, uh, for a medicalwaste Um, couple of other women
going to get this industrystraightened out.

Speaker 1 (01:54:44):
Okay, and if, like uh , she said earlier in the
podcast if you've experiencedany kind of discrimination with
the hiring process, please reachout to Desiree or Women in
Trucking with that information,as they are gathering all their
data.

Speaker 2 (01:55:02):
Yeah, we really need that information Recording if
it's legal for you to record.
But make notes.
Who did you talk to?
What did they say?
If they sent you emails, saidthings like you know that they
have a hold on women, they'renot hiring women.
Like you know that they have ahold on women, they're not
hiring women.
I mean, we've seen some thingsthat some of these recruiters
have said that are just like wow, you know, you wrote this, you

(01:55:26):
know Right, you get an email.
You said this.
And nobody seems to know thelaw anymore in this industry.

Speaker 1 (01:55:36):
Yeah, people just aren't scared of the law anymore
in this industry?

Speaker 2 (01:55:39):
No, they're not, they're not.

Speaker 1 (01:55:41):
All right, we're going to wrap this up.
Thank you so much, Desiree, forbeing a guest on Trucking with
Tammy.
It has been a pleasure havingyou on Well thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:55:51):
I had a good time talking to you and I am going to
follow up with you.

Speaker 1 (01:55:57):
All right, all right.
All right, Thank you, everybodyfor joining and you guys have a
great day.
This is Tammy with Truckin'with Tammy.
See you on the road, bye.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal

The Joe Rogan Experience

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Triumph Over Adversity: Desiree Wood's Fight for Women in Trucking

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}On Purpose with Jay Shetty

NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal

The Joe Rogan Experience

All Episodes

Triumph Over Adversity: Desiree Wood's Fight for Women in Trucking

On Purpose with Jay Shetty