Rolling museum with simulator to be introduced in November, formal roll out at MATS
By Al Muskewitz
Sometime in early 2021, coming to a school, truck show or industry event near you, there will be a new tractor-trailer combination on the road that project organizers are confident will be quite the head-turner.
Women In Trucking is about to roll out a fully integrated exhibition trailer aimed at promoting women in the trucking industry and hopefully sparking their interest in making it a career choice.
WIT will introduce the truck during its virtual Accelerate conference in November, at which time it will unveil the heretofore closely guarded wrap design and launch a promotion to name the truck and the woman driver depicted on the wrap’s scene. After a few soft visits, its formal debut will be at the Mid-America Truck Show in Louisville next spring.
Think of it as a recruiting station and women’s trucking museum on wheels. Schneider donated the power unit for the project and WalMart donated the 53-foot reefer trailer. Kellylynn McLaughlin, a Schneider driver and Women In Trucking ambassador, will drive the truck to its various stops around the country.
The trailer – “we call it kind of the education unit,” WIT vice president Debbie Sparks said – will be split off into three sections: a main room containing interactive kiosks with driver-centric videos and exhibits on the history of women in trucking and various aspects of the industry, a theater room and a truck driving simulator. The simulator and theater will be linked for group educational purposes.
Some of the interactive programs will give participants a chance to see if they have the DNA to become a truck driver and how much they actually know of all that goes into being a driver. It falls right in line with McLaughlin’s aim to change the perception of who America thinks its truck drivers are, a stereotype she readily calls inaccurate.
“A lot of the general public think they understand trucking … and in the process of saying you got it wrong we’re going to educate them on what the proper answer is,” Sparks said. “A lot of it is going to be focused on safety, because if we’re not going to convince them to have a career in trucking at least the underlying message is they might be a better driver on the road with us.”
And even if they don’t pass muster as a driver, visitors will have the opportunity to learn about other career options in industry, like fleet management, operations, safety and finance.
“We find the general public sometimes see the truck and the driver and they think that’s trucking, but there’s an entire corporate mega-center that manages and oversees and supports that truck and driver; we’re going to try to tell that story as well,” Sparks said. “One of the stories is ‘From the Driver’s Seat to the Executive Suite,’ how she took everything she learned as a driver and brought it into the corporate office and every decision she makes has an impact on ultimately how it will impact the driver who’s out on the road.”
Of course, it’ll take something to grab their attention and the program managers believe they’ve found it with the first impression. The wrap design was awarded to Canada-based Turbo Studios/Turbo Grafx after six firms were invited to compete for the honor, and all six took different approaches to the challenge. One theme focused on the history of women in transportation who have defined trucking. Another took the work of women in trucking, sort of WIT-branded approach, which was perfect if the trailer were meant only to promote the organization.
Sparks is keeping details of the winning wrap, well, under wraps, but said “the words it evokes is strong, independent and female.”
“It knocks your socks off,” she said. “It meets every expectation we have. When I first came on board my fear was we don’t want to make the exterior kind of mediocre. We had some mockups and it wasn’t working. I’m picturing a reporter sitting in his office, maybe in a small town, and this trailer pulls into town and your head turns and you go, ‘What? I’ve got to go find more about that.’ Or it moves into the high school parking lot and not only the girls, but the boys, all turn during Career Day and say ‘I’m going into that trailer.’ We knew we needed something over the top. We know with this wrap heads are gonna turn.”
The simulator is being installed by Advanced Training Systems, a California-based tech developer that provides cutting-edge adaptive training systems to improve training and produce safer drivers. It will be introduced at a Schneider company function in the Southwest in January.
The truck, the trailer and the trips are all part of WIT’s mission to raise awareness of women in a male-dominated industry and encourage them to think about it for the well-paying, safe and secure job for men and women alike that it is. To date, the number of women professional drivers in the workforce stands at between 10.5 and 11 percent, well up from the three percent when WIT was founded in 2007, but still short of a desired result.
“We’ve made some good progress, we’ve moved the dial,” Sparks said. “We don’t believe one year on the road is going to move that dial from 10.5 to 15, but if we can remove some of those myths, we can make it look not scary, if people can see themselves in Kellylynn or see themselves in the cab of the truck. We kind of know the DNA of the female driver. We know who’s coming in. We know who we can recruit in.
“I’ve been in the trucking world probably since I was 25. I’ve met so many adult men with daughters and I thought how do we get something that will remake a man consider his daughter a career in trucking. It had to be warm, it had to be compelling, but it also had to show that strong independent side. If your daughter is not strong and independent this may not be the career for her. But if she is, she’s going to do great in it.”
The group’s first trailer isn’t even on the road yet and there’s already talk more could soon join it. A couple organizations already have approached WIT about donating more equipment and duplicating the original.
“We do believe this is a really big program and it has great legs,” Sparks said.
She thought about that for a minute, then chuckled. No pun intended.
Photo: Schneider driver Kellylynn McLaughlin will be driving the Women In Trucking exhibition trailer when it begins making stops around the country in early 2021.
Wow, this is a cutting edge opportunity for the trucking industry. My thought has always been that gender balance produced a greater company whatever the product. Kelly Lynn is helping blaze the trail and yeah for this awesome program!