* Ontario - ... Or is it both?
-- I’m tiring of truck driving being promoted as a “lifestyle.” Trucking is a field of specialized training (profession) not a set of attitudes (lifestyle), in my opinion... A huge problem that we face as professional drivers is that we don’t have a broad set of standards under one umbrella around which we can coalesce. Unlike the carriers we work for, we don’t have an organization that represents our profession. We are fragmented and spend far too much energy focusing on our differences surrounding lifestyle issues rather than focusing on the skills we all share and the social issues we all face... There are some great examples of drivers coming together on social media to address industry-wide issues. One of those issues is driver training and mentorship... Shelley Uvenile-Hesch is a long-haul driver for Sharp Transportation. Through her persistence and tenacity she has brought to life a non-profit named the Women’s Trucking Federation of Canada. It started a few years ago with a will to expand the employment of women across the Canadian trucking industry... Through Shelley’s membership in Facebook groups and her dogged determination, she built a following that led to the incorporation of WTFC in early March of this year... A group of six full-time drivers form the WTFC board. With a focus on co-operation, positive attitudes, and a desire to build relationships across all lines – drivers, carriers, government, training organizations, vocational schools, other social media groups, etc. – professional drivers are coming together to share their knowledge with new recruits and renew the camaraderie that so many seasoned drivers have been pining for over the past few decades... This is a great example of how drivers can come together to share our common skills and experiences. This organization is not designed to represent drivers but to empower them. WTFC challenges the authoritarian model that the trucking industry has developed over the years. In essence, it presents a new paradigm of problem solving from the bottom up rather than the top down...
(Photo: A female truck driver in a Canada's truck) -- Toronto, ONT, CAN - Trucks News (CAN), by Al Goodhall - May 25, 2016Labels: news Canada, women in trucking
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