Q&A: NTI’s Leah Shaver on What’s Keeping Women Out of Trucking – Drivers

Leah Shaver is president and CEO of the National Transportation Institute. As a woman who’s been working in the trucking industry for more than two decades, she’s passionate about issues affecting women in a traditionally mostly-male industry. And she has some ideas.

While NTI originally researched truck driver compensation, it’s since branched out to include tracking compensation for technicians and consulting with motor carriers on driver recruiting and retention.

Shaver has been with NTI for going on 10 years, but before that she worked in human resources in recruiting and retention for a motor carrier. NTI is woman-owned, she served six years on the board of directors of the Women in Trucking Association, and she recently became a parent — so the topic of women in trucking is something she’s personally and professionally passionate about.

NTI recently conducted a survey about the experiences and challenges encountered by women in the trucking industry. That and her own experiences led her to write about what she called “the one vital element we must get right as an industry for women to join us and excel.”

On the HDT Talks Trucking podcast, Shaver shared highlights from that survey and from her own experience, plus some ideas on what motor carriers and the trucking industry can do to address some of those issues.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Lockridge: Leah, you and I have been in this industry for a while. What are your personal observations, as far as how far the trucking industry has come regarding attracting and supporting women, from truck drivers up to the executive suite?

Shaver: Certainly there’s been more and more discussion. When NTI started tracking the percentage of women in trucks and in leadership, very few companies were even looking at that data — or even had considered examining it.

So you know the old saying, we can’t fix what we don’t know. Simply asking the question allows these companies to look within.

Lockridge: NTI recently conducted a survey about the experiences and challenges encountered by women in the trucking industry. What were some of the top takeaways from that survey?

Shaver: Respondents overwhelmingly referenced work-life balance, career advancement, professional development, and mentorship. Not a whole lot of surprises there, but the granularity and diversity of the responses based on job type is what stood out to us.

Work-life balance affects folks in the truck, in the cubicle, in the office, and in the boardroom. Career advancement is important to everyone at all stages of the organization. Respondents identified both hurdles and ways companies have supported them. When it comes to professional development, there are opportunities to accommodate women in terms of clothing, support, and leadership programs at all levels of the industry.

For example, we often see female drivers, later in their careers, start to examine what else there will be for them when they either age out of the truck or leave it. Most drivers don’t typically retire; it’s often an event outside their control, or they’re just not up to it anymore. Rather than retiring naturally, they look for other options.

And in terms of attracting more women, how can we better support and keep women safe? How can we change the expectations of what work-life balance looks like, of what the career path looks like for women? And in terms of messaging and what’s offered to them, what they’d like to see and how they think it should be delivered.

Lockridge: Anything in the survey that surprised you?

Shaver: Yes. What stood out to me is that these issues aren’t just behind-the-wheel issues. Many women are on leadership tracks or have the potential for career advancement, but the greatest hurdle for them can actually be the personal demands they face at home and professionally at work.

Deborah Lockridge: We’ve been having conversations for years, even decades, about the obstacles and barriers women face in the workplace overall, but especially in industries like trucking that traditionally haven’t attracted a lot of women. How has the trucking industry typically responded to these kinds of barriers in the years you’ve been working in it?

Shaver: Historically, the answer was often either, “We’re not considering a woman for this role,” or “If she doesn’t fit, then I guess this role might not be for her or for women in general.” The expectation was that the job wouldn’t change, so the employee had to acclimate to the job.

And that mentality isn’t exclusive to women. How many times in our many years in trucking have we heard, “That’s just the industry,” or “That’s just trucking”? We often ask drivers, and women in particular, to acclimate to the job rather than adjusting the job to accommodate them.

Lockridge: A lot of that has to do with work-life balance, and you specifically focused on one particular part of that in a blog you wrote — childcare. What did you hear about that issue in your survey?

Shaver: Childcare is one of the great challenges that I am passionate about, not only now that I’m a new mom, but also from my experience working in human resources, when I had many discussions with women who were missing work due to child illnesses or absences from school or daycare.

Now, I see women approaching me, looking for mentorship and guidance because they’re on a career path but can’t advance due to shift requirements, scheduling conflicts, or location changes that make commuting intolerable.

The issue is either a lack of access to childcare, or having to accommodate work demands that make it difficult to participate in family activities.

Lockridge: And it’s got to be even tougher for drivers with their long workdays, right?

Shaver: The fact is, if someone wants to become a truck driver, there are very few early-entry jobs in the industry where a driver gets trained and then goes home at night.

It doesn’t mean we don’t have local jobs — believe me, we study the different sectors, we know exactly what type of work is available — it doesn’t mean that those jobs don’t exist. I’m saying that those jobs don’t exist for newly licensed untrained CDL holders.

You usually have to spend the first year or two in over-the-road jobs, which often means being away from home. And this impacts women of childbearing age, making it difficult for them to enter the industry.

This might be an unpopular opinion — I’m not sure there’s a ton of people that really want to change this — we’re not really going to see significant change in the percentage of women drivers until we solve this training requirement that someone is away from home.

And local jobs aren’t necessarily the answer, either. When I worked in recruiting, oftentimes a driver who was in a local job that was looking to get back over the road said, “I get more quality time with my family, and doing the things that I need to do and making doctor appointments, when I’m working over the road regional and have set days off, than I do with my local job.”

And we saw this time and again in survey respondents at the NTI survey. One of the respondents said, “A work day that’s 14 and a half hours a day makes it absolutely impossible for me to also coincide an important appointment or event. It’s just not something that I can do.”

Lockridge: Not easy problems to solve.

Shaver: Which is why I would say that we haven’t seen monumental change in this area.

You mentioned earlier that the pandemic seemed to bring more women into the industry. And that’s true. Why? Because we had great demand for more capacity. And the more demand that there is for capacity, the more industry looks outside of what it’s always done or doing and says, “We need to change this.”

But at the moment, there’s not great demand for more capacity. We have surplus capacity. So what’s happening? We’re not training many new drivers or licensing as many new entrants as we did over the last few years.

We’re not as focused on the global long term look of our industry and diversifying age and gender and other populations that that we’ve historically dipped into or sought out when we had a shortage of otherwise qualified drivers.

So, you know, when there’s great demand, we start to look at some of these alternative options. But today without that great demand, I don’t expect that in any near term future, we’re going to see companies taking big strides to be more accommodating in terms of women in childbearing age, or child rearing age, to get to get more out on the road.

Lockridge: What are some things fleets can do to address the childcare issue and better support women drivers?

Shaver: We see four key areas where companies can make a difference: flexible passenger policies, alternate roles during pregnancy, on-site childcare, and childcare stipends.

Flexible passenger policies allow women to bring a child along if certain conditions are met. Some companies offer alternate roles during pregnancy, but that’s still rare. On-site childcare or stipends are even less common, but they are options.

Additionally, companies could facilitate childcare backup plans within their teams. For example, coworkers could help each other with childcare needs during shifts, creating an internal support network. This could be especially useful for single moms with long commutes and no family nearby to help.

Lockridge: Are there fleets out there that are getting this right?

Shaver: Yes, there are companies that are working on this daily, and let’s recognize that change doesn’t happen overnight.

Back in 2016 when we first started asking [in NTI data] about the percentage of women in trucks, companies were like, “Is that something we’re supposed to know?” Today, it’s a well popularized and talked about number that companies are tracking.

But in terms of childcare and alternate perks that make the job more attractive [to women], there are companies that are looking to not be like everyone else and come up with great new ideas.

Large companies, especially private fleets, look at options and benefits that they offer internally at the warehouse or in the stores or at a manufacturing site and incorporate them into the transportation team and offering some childcare stipend.

These types of benefits are growing, but there’s a lot more room for growth.

Lockridge: But there is progress; as you say, even just people being aware of the issue. And there are fleets that want to find a way to have a competitive advantage, a differentiator. It seems like that’s certainly one way that they could do that.

Shaver: There are also companies that see this as a competition. There are companies that that want to be on Women in Trucking’s list of Top Companies for Women to Work in Transportation.

One of the conditions now to be a top company for women to work for is you have to be tracking how many women are in trucks and in management and in all these other seats. So it makes sense.

If you want to be a great company for women to work for, you have to know these numbers and be looking at ways that you can inch them up.

Lockridge: It sounds like awareness is increasing, which is a positive step.

Shaver: Absolutely. More women are becoming aware of the opportunities in the industry — not just behind the wheel, but in the office, in management, and in leadership roles. And importantly, more companies are realizing that these jobs are something “she” can do or is doing.

We’re seeing improvement, and in anything we’re doing better, there’s always room to continue doing more.