Gay truck drivers

To deal, companies are doing everything they can to expand their recruitment pool offering lucrative signing bonuses and other perks to new drivers. Big Gay Trucker Podcast is a show about life on the road as a truck driver. Truck driving is an industry dominated by white men — but queer people are finding a community on the road.

With two small kids to look after, she needed steady employment. When I started trucking in ’’87, I thought I was the only one. The Women in Trucking Association reports that by the end of the first year, nearly 70 percent of newly recruited drivers leave the profession.

She estimates that trans women, in particular, are a sizable minority, possibly up to truck percent of all truck drivers. Semis tower menacingly above all other vehicles. “How many gay truckers do you know?” Anderson asks. Meet the people driving change.

By Leigh Ann Carey. LGBTQ+ truck drivers are building community, fighting for inclusion, and redefining life on the road. Even with a Ph. While stitching together adjunct gigs, Balay found herself broke. LGBTQ truck drivers are not new to the profession, but their visibility and rising prominence within the industry is.

I have health insurance now. All truckers are familiar with the meditative din of the road, but for the LGBT community, the siren song of the highways can be especially luring. We interview Drivers & LGBTQ Community Leaders giving others a inside view of the life on the road.

The obstacles one will overcome in the industry and giving a face and insight to the driver behind the wheel. For people who present as gender nonconforming or who are trans, trucking jobs bring both relief and freedom. A lot of us are below the poverty line for ages.

Of gay more than 3. Since the early Thirtiestrucking professionals have hewed reliably conservative, white and male. Companies are struggling to find and retain workers to meet the demand. More than 63, truck driving jobs are available at any given time.

In trucking, what you wear, what you sound like, how you present yourself — restrictive aesthetic elements in many jobs — are not barriers. It is harder for oppressive cultural norms to take hold of you if you are constantly evading their grasp. They are purposefully reaching out to millennials, people of color, lesbians and trans driver, and other underrepresented groups in the industry.

Two key trends are driving the diversification of the profession: personnel recruitment and retention challenges within the industry itself and limiting economic opportunities for working-class LGBTQ people. “You probably know many.

With an abiding love of cars, she took a job as an auto mechanic. For bodies often restricted and derided, the perpetual motion the job affords is meaningful. More than one in four transgender people will lose at least one job due to workplace bias.

But LGBT truckers face discrimination from their. Blue collar workers, and truckers specifically, are antsy about declaring their homosexual orientation. I bought an extra pair of glasses just because I wanted an extra pair.

LGBTQ workers face higher unemployment rates than non-queer workers. Now I know hundreds of drivers out there. Climbing up into the seat of her first big rig truck, author Anne Balay felt powerful instead of angry.