Here are a couple of videos outlining the positive outcomes from women truck drivers increasing in the industry. In fact, the drive-to increase the number of women behind the wheel in trucks should be a no-brainer.
We have a drastic driver shortage and 50 per cent of the population are female, if we do not recruit from this potential source of drivers we are going to struggle even more than we currently do, as the freight task increases.
As we can see from these videos, the women who do make it onto the road have done so after overcoming a series of obstacles and are still finding difficulties in securing employment, getting training and being taken seriously today.
It is this sort of negative thinking about the introduction of female truck drivers which is actually having a negative effect on the skill levels in Australia amongst the truck driving community.
The industry needs to get its head around the fact that the typical truck driver from the past is not what we need today. Yes, it’s still a tough life but it is not anything like as physically tough as it has been in the past and it does not need a big strong bloke to drive a truck.
It needs somebody who looks after the gear, is responsible and effective. What these videos show is that there are plenty of women out there who are capable of serving the trucking industry well, but they are all coming across hurdles which they shouldn’t need to get over, purely based on the fact that they are female.
The world is changing and the trucking world is going to have to learn to change with it. The culture and employment policies of the past will not take us through the next 20 years successfully. We need to open our industry to everybody in order to get enough bodies in trucks, on forklifts, in warehouses and in truck workshops, to ensure that economic growth can continue and more freight is being transported around the country.
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