Women driving big rigs making big money in trucking industry

(NewsNation) — Women behind the wheels of big rigs are making big money, with quite a fewfinding that truck driving has been a solid road to making a good living.

April Coolidge, a trucker with Walmart, said she easily makes over $100,000 a year.

“To make that kind of money, as a woman in the trucking industry, I’m just very proud of that,” Coolidge said.

After trucking for more than a decade, Coolidge found she loves it far more than her other career in real estate. She also appreciates the comfort having a larger paycheck brings.

“The financial freedom that have I now, I don’t have to think, maybe I shouldn’t go buy that because money’s kind of tight,” Coolidge said. “I’m in the position now that if I want it, I just buy it and go get it.”

Some women enjoy trucking so much, they’ve created their own companies, such as Tina Peterson, the owner/president of Red Pine Transport. Peterson said she’s put in over 2 million miles trucking.

“Being a business owner, you have more opportunities to make more revenue,” she said. “I went from one truck to two trucks, now I’m up to seven trucks and I’m adding an eighth truck.”

Women truckers are still a minority in the industry, only making up about 8% of it.

But as more women enroll in trucking schools, more of the instructors are also women.

“The limit is, ‘What limit do you want to put on the money that you could make,'” Kenia Davila, an instructor with Masters Trucking Academy, said. “We have people making $150,000 a year now.”

Executive producer and host of “American Trucker” Robb Mariani says the freedom of the open road is still there. Mariani is encouraging those interested in the industry to check it out.

With truckers hauling 70 percent of goods in the country, he says the occupation is more important than ever.

“We saw case and point over the last couple of years. Things got real crazy real fast, with things like toilet paper, every day items that you just expect to go to the store and reach for and buy off the shelf. That’s not magic that makes that happen. That’s the trucking industry.”