The Women In Trucking Association (WIT) has announced Jo Lynn Kelley as its February 2025 Member of the Month. Jo Lynn is a professional truck driver with Walmart’s Private Fleet.
Now in her sixth year as a professional driver, and with more than 400,000 safe miles, she attributes her safety, passions, successes and joys to her unwavering faith in God. “I may drive an 18-wheeler but in my cab, God is truly in charge of that 19th wheel,” she states, referring to the steering wheel.
Beginning her driving career with Schneider National, she drove over the road long haul where she got to visit 47 of the 48 contiguous United States. In this time, Kelley acquired skills for hauling dry van, tanker, flat bedding, and teaming. She chose Schneider National for three main reasons: their safety rating, their diversity in haul types, and their acceptance of students who just earned their professional truck driving license.
“I absolutely loved driving that big rig all over the United States,” she said.
Jo Lynn’s driving force for entering the trucking industry after careers in art and accounting was to earn a paycheck while traveling the U.S.
“Throughout the miles, trials and tribulations since entering this industry, my spirituality has deepened to a complete and unwavering reliance upon God and all His promises in the Bible,” she said. “With God, all things are possible.”
Kelley recalls one of the lower points in the beginning of her career when she struggled with wanting to give up. Praying, she realized that she needed to get out of her negative mindset and do for others. This inspired her to make wallet-sized cards proclaiming to the recipient that they were truly a valued person. She left these all over the U.S. at truck stops, rest areas, and other places she thought others might be feeling invisible or under-appreciated.
The idea grew into a small campaign of her purchasing five-dollar coffee gift cards and attaching them to the wallet cards. After that, the wallet cards became company trivia-question cards where the recipient was instructed if they guessed the trivia answer to keep the gift card, or if not, to pass the gift card to another. When she told her employer at the time about this campaign, they liked it so much they purchased a few dozen $5 gift cards to keep it going.
Kelley used her artistic skills and penned two interactive trucking books in her first three years with Schneider – Trucking with JJ: Volume 1 and Trucking with JJ: Volume 2. The books are photo-based with story shorts which include QR codes to view additional video shorts she’s made. You can download Adobe PDF versions of the two books for no cost here: Trucking with JJ Books.
After deciding she wanted a break from the truck cabin and developing enough safety experience, Kelley joined Walmart’s team of private fleet drivers where she now enjoys regional driving and a balanced amount of time at home. Kelley describes Walmart Transportation as a group of seasoned and safe professional drivers, many of which have hundreds of thousands of safe miles on record in their driving careers.
“The walls in all of our distribution centers are packed with plaques of 500,000-mile, 1 million-mile, 3 million-mile and higher driver careers,” she said. “I feel humbled and honored to be among such a stable and safety-driven family of truckers.”
Kelley, who is currently one of three female drivers at her base yard team of more than 140 drivers, said she enjoys participating in WIT events. Additionally, she pulls the WITney Educational Trailer to events where she typically manages the truck driving simulator inside the trailer for visitors to test their skills and enjoy the thrill of safely driving a big rig.
Kelley lives on an award-winning horse farm in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia and considers herself now retired from her artistic career, which included painting, photography, designing, machine embroidery, writing and blogging.
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