An Arkansas Woman Found The Road To Success By Challenging Tradition

The next time an 18-wheeler passes you on the interstate take a close look at the driver. More and more women are driving big rigs, and Jeanetta Wright is one of them.

“I just have one truck and I’m leasing it through Twin City Transportation,” Wright said. “I basically run from Arkansas to Pennsylvania back and forth and come home every other month.”

Wright and her twin sister, Danetta Davis, are rewriting the statistics on truck driving. The two African American women are defying the odds. Wright delivers paper goods, and Davis travels cross-country navigating a refrigerated truck filled with groceries.

According to the American Trucking Association, female truck drivers rose 68 percent between 2010 and 2018. But the industry remains overwhelmingly male: Of the 3.5 million drivers in trucking, 234,000 in 2018 were women, claiming 6.6 percent of the industry’s jobs.

The sisters have been driving for years with Wright hitting the road first.

“I trained my sister,” she explained. “I had her go to the same truck driving school.”

Truck driving is a family business in many ways for Wright whose husband also drives an 18-wheeler. They thought it might be a good idea to even work together.

But Wright said with a laugh, “We tried that … we tried running teams. I drive totally differently from my husband.”

Now, they spend time together outside the cab of a truck as often as they can by taking “a lot of vacations” and making family a priority.

The early days

When Wright first started driving trucks, it was difficult balancing work and motherhood. She remembers those tough days.

“I struggled for six years going from apartment to apartment,” she recalled. “I chose a career I knew it would take me from my girls.”

She admitted she could not have done it without the support of family. Her oldest daughter is married now and has two children and her “baby girl” has just completed her first year in college. Wright also has two sons. She and her husband wanted to create a family business as a legacy for future generations.

Wright said, “My husband and I tried, and they don’t want to drive. I think it’s more that it’ll hurt the business if we invest in trucks and can’t find drivers.”

With more women entering the profession, Wright understands the opportunities that are available. But she sees new ones in her future. She wants to build a restaurant with her sister. And their younger sister is already the owner of a polished dental company in Fort Worth, Texas.

Although Wright and her sisters suffered a great loss when their mother died early in their lives, they were raised by a family Wright credits with showing them the value of hard work.

“We’ve learned everything from Mr. Salley by watching him every day,” she stated. “He raised his kids and then he took us in because our mom died. We watched him get up, drive a school bus, work as a teacher, and his day never ended. He then went to the farm and by 7:00 o’clock, he was home for dinner. We have our work ethic from Mr. Salley; it was instilled in us.”

The example of commitment helped shape her. And while Wright said she made some “bad choices” during her younger years, she has also made some smart decisions as evidenced by her years of success in a male-dominated industry, those she has helped along the way, and the aspirations she has set the years that stretch before her.