After college, I got a good union job working as a garage attendant in the vehicle maintenance department for OC Transpo, which is Ottawa's city transit bus company. That was my first step into having a commercial driver's license. They had their own in-house driving school for a Class C and air brakes Z endorsement.  

After a few years, I concluded that as this was a union shop and seniority dictated what shifts and days off I could book, I would be on evenings and midnights with Tuesdays and Wednesdays off for many years to come. I was in my early 20s, so this didn't leave me much of a social life opportunity. The man I was dating at the time was a heavy tow truck operator, and I went along with him on many late-night calls. One night, I asked him to show me how to shift the truck. It was a 1986 Freightliner FLD with an 18-speed, and we were in a big, wide-open parking lot. It didn't take me long before I got the hang of upshifting and downshifting. I did some soul-searching and research and upgraded my Class C license to a Class A. In 1994, I took a driving school course in which I was the only woman in the class. The company owner was very supportive, and that was the first time I heard that women make excellent truck drivers because, according to him, they are more patient and much easier on the equipment. He also added he had first-hand experience because two of his daughters drove logging trucks in BC. The training was good, and the road test was a breeze. I passed on the first try, and I was pretty proud.

With a new class A license in hand, I set out to find a driving job that would pay me roughly the same as the union job I had but allow me more freedom in my work schedule. I knew I'd be working longer hours, but at least I would have some weekends off. I had always wanted a job where I could "just pack up and leave, travel," so trucking answered that wish. I mailed out a pile of resumes and got a call from a driving agency that offered me some part-time city work loading insulation bails on a flatbed and taking the load to the rail yard to transfer it to a rail car. I did my best at that but soon concluded that throwing straps over high loads wasn't my specialty. I'm not that great at bowling either - the gutter balls count for nothing. But the part-time work at least let me add a little experience to my resume.

A few months later, through a friend of a friend, I was interviewed, did a road test and was hired by Kriska Transportation. They had a fleet of Internationals, pulled vans and ran cross-border. I was partnered with a great trainer for a month and ran team with an experienced driver for six months, after which I was confident enough to run single. I credit those two gentlemen for getting me off on the right foot. A few years later, I was asked to be an on-the-road driver trainer and instructor at the in-house driving school they had started. Both positions gave me valuable experience, sharing the knowledge I had acquired.

This is also where I met my husband. He was the weekend dispatcher and later the corridor dispatcher. I discovered that a relationship with someone in the industry has advantages and disadvantages. Advantages: I didn't have to go into a deep explanation as to why I wouldn't be home when I planned to be there. It's the "stuff happens" factor in trucking. Disadvantages: when you get a phone from your dispatcher saying, "I need this load picked up in Mass on Saturday morning, and Dean (my husband) says you two don't have any plans, so you can go pick it up."

In 1998, I became an owner-operator, which was a whole new learning process. I remember the first time "I" was paying for the fuel going into "my" brand new 1998 Volvo 610. It was only 0.87 cents/gallon – my, how that has changed over the years. Today, I'd be tickled pink with $0.87 /litre!

I learned that building relationships would be key to my success. Not everything is measured by the bottom line number today. Sometimes, what happens today will affect tomorrow. I've earned the respect of dispatchers I've worked with. Sometimes, doing the undesirable load on a Friday turns into the most time-saving and profitable load on Monday. Being flexible and negotiating is part of this industry.

In 2004, I upgraded to a Volvo 780, which had more room and comfort. I also switched to a dedicated reefer division still with Kriska, a different challenge, different work, and the hum of a reefer to fall asleep to.

I left Kriska in late 2007 and worked for another van carrier for a few months, but the fuel price was going up faster than the fuel surcharge I was getting, so I had to make another change that brought me to where I am today. Laidlaw Tank (now Contrans Tank Group) had an ad toting one of the best fuel surcharges in the industry, so I decided to try it. There are no straps to throw over high loads, just a ladder to climb and hoses to handle. I had to learn new skills, but I was up for the challenge, and the fuel surcharge and mileage rate compensation were where I needed them to be. Learning how to drive with a liquid load in a chemical trailer with no baffles took a little adjusting. I left my first plant with a half-full, single-barrel acid tank. The lesson I learned that day is that I will never get a ticket for not wearing my seat belt or what I like to call the wave retention belt.

I love what I do for a living. It has given me so many opportunities and experiences over the years. I have delivered F1 Racing fuel to the paddocks at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I'm a huge NASCAR racing fan, and my dispatcher at the time knew this, so when he saw a load going from Montreal to Indy and what it was, he thought this was the perfect load for me. He was right. I was like a kid in a candy store. I delivered that a week before the race, but just being there had me smiling from ear to ear.

I have seen both oceans in the same week, from Vancouver to Saint John, NB, via Nashville. That was one of those weeks where everything worked perfectly on paper.

I showed a broken-down driver in Northern Ontario that if you wrap enough electrical and duct tape around a cracked airline, it will hold long enough to get you the 40 miles to the next shop. I'll never forget how that driver looked at me, this 20-something-year-old woman, who had stopped to help. He initially didn't have much faith in my Mcgyverism fix, but when he pulled into the shop parking lot for the night, he profusely thanked me for stopping and helping him out. That's how things worked. This industry was like a brotherhood/sisterhood when I started driving almost 30 years ago. Nowadays, we've lost some of that way of thinking. The CB radio was used more back then as a valuable method of alerting drivers about road conditions. We didn't have radar apps about traffic delays, and we didn't have Google Maps to check on broken-down drivers on the side of the road. We didn't have truck-down apps, but one of the most useful courteous uses of the CB radio was to warn drivers going the other way about a situation in front of them so they would slow down. That saved a lot of accidents. I especially think of the lake effect snow zones in this scenario.

I've slept in some odd places, on top of a hydroelectric dam, because the unloading process wasn't going as the engineers had planned. In nasty neighbourhoods in New Jersey, the ground moved every time a truck went by because they had paved over swamp land. I thought I was Dorothy in South Dakota, and the tornado would take me away.

I've been in every lower 48 state and every province. It took me 23 years to say that as I kept missing Colorado and Kansas. For some reason, my destinations always sent me around those two states. I suppose that means I can officially wear the "Been there, done that" shirt. My personal favourite scenery is the majestic Canadian Rockies - when it's not snowing. I'm a flatlander, and I know where I don't belong. I'll leave the chaining up for the hearty experts.
I feel you get what you put in; to see things change, you must get involved. Getting involved requires time, and time in our industry is very precious, especially home time. In 2012, I was nominated and elected to the OOIDA board of directors. I was the first Canadian driver and the first woman elected to the board. This was a time commitment to attend board meetings in Grain Valley, MO, twice annually and other meetings like the by-annual CCMTA meetings.

In 2017, I was asked to join the board of directors for the Women's Trucking Federation of Canada. Today, I am the organization's Executive Director. Our goal is to promote this rewarding industry to anyone who sees it as a possible career choice. We are a network of supportive and empowering individuals who thrive in this industry.

These positions have allowed me to convey the opinion of our members and drivers in general to government lawmakers on both sides of the border and educate some of them on our day-to-day realities. I've attended CVSA and CCMTA conferences and built relationships with representatives to advocate and convey our thoughts on road safety and enforcement issues. The differences in points of view on the same regulation can be clarified with discussion.

Today, I drive a 2011 Volvo 730 with a D13 motor, the second one in this truck. I blew the original one this past April in West Virginia, with 2.4 million km on it. That gave me some extended home time, two months waiting for the new engine and two weeks for the swap. I was a victim of the supply chain deficiency. The truck has an iShift transmission, which I love, especially in Toronto traffic at rush hour. With a bad knee from a skiing accident years ago, I'm thankful not to have to push a clutch anymore. All 3 of my trucks have been white. The initial one was white because I had to meet a paint code clause for my carrier contract. That is something that has become a thing of the past nowadays. After the paint code went away and I could add a bit of a personal touch to my decal package, I went with a racing checkered flag theme. All black and white, so the saying on the back of my bunk says, "No Grey Areas." I have a Carrier Comfort Pro APU for temperature-controlled comfort in Edmonton in January or Georgia in July.

My husband and I have been together since 1996, and we own a house on a quiet country road. A traffic jam at our house is three deer and 12 wild turkeys crossing the backyard. He had two kids from a previous marriage when we got together, and they're both in their 30s now. We have one grandson, who we love to spoil. There's the pitter-patter of little paws in our house. Our 13-year-old German Shepherd passed away this past spring, and we now have a 10-month-old Shar Pei. She's full of energy, so she keeps us on our toes.