Female truck driver Shannon Smith is featured in the June 2012 issues of Oprah’s O Magazine.
In 2008, Smith was featured in Career World magazine. Smith’s feature caught the attention of writer Jeanne Marie Laskas, who is currently writing a book about people who work in often unrecognized professions. Laskas also wrote Smith’s feature for O Magazine.
Smith, a driver for Landstar, says she always wanted to be a truck driver.
As a child growing up in Georgia, Smith says she watched trucks driving up and down the highway and always imagined herself at the wheel, blasting the horn. One day I’m gonna blow that horn, she said.
Smith grew up around trucks. Her dad is a diesel mechanic and advised her to learn the mechanics of the trucks and to learn how to fix an engine if she wanted to drive a big rig.
Some years later, an army recruiter called, and Smith asked him if the Army could teach her how to fix trucks. He told her they could, so she joined and spent the next next six years with the Reserves as a heavy-duty mechanic.
At 23, Smith attended truck-driving school. After receiving her CDL, she began working as a professional driver and is now a member of Women In Trucking.
Shannon’s story has done more to show women that they can have a great career as a professional driver by sharing her story in O Magazine than this industry could have imagined, said Ellen Voie, Women In Trucking’s President/CEO. Watch for Smith’s story in Laskas’ upcoming book, Hidden America, to be released in September by Putnam.
To read Smith’s story, check out the June edition of O Magazine– on shelves now!