Overcoming the Past

By Sandy Long

Many of us ladies entering or who are in the trucking industry didn’t start out at 21 as truckers. Most of us come from another career, marriages and relationships both good and bad, poverty situations and some even have suffered abuse from parents, spouses and partners. A lot of us have grown children and have had to overcome family objections to us becoming truckers, some of the objections strenuous, from our kids, parents, spouses and friends. Many of us carry a lot of internal emotional baggage with us on the road. Overcoming it can be a real chore, but is necessary to succeed.

Women who carry emotional baggage tend to get stuck in what I call ‘victim mode’. These are the women who have survived abuses or tremendously bad situations. Some may have self esteem issues due to their size or looks and cannot see their own inner beauty so because they may have had bad experiences with other’s comments, actions and attitudes, they tend to think that everyone will treat them the same way…badly.

Some Misconceptions about Truckers/Sharing the Road with Truckers

Copyright Sandy Long

One of the biggest misconceptions about truckers is that we are unsafe to be around and cause accidents. There are roughly 3.5 million commercial drivers in the US. The statistics are not up yet for 2008, here are the statistics comparing 2006, 2007.

In 2007 there were 4,808 fatalities involving large trucks. 802 of those fatalities were the drivers of the truck; 502 were truck drivers in single vehicle crashes, 300 were truck drivers in multi-vehicle crashes. 3,601 were occupants in other vehicles, 405 were non-occupants (pedestrians and bicyclists). The numbers were slightly higher in 2006; 5,027 total fatalities, 805 were truck drivers with 500 in single vehicle accidents and 305 in multi-vehicle crashes. 3,797 were occupants in other vehicles with 425 being non-occupants. This means there was a decrease in fatalities involving large trucks of 4.4% between 2006 and 2007.