Women at the Wheel
Newnan resident trades desk job and pearls for work boots and a big rig
Written by Jackie Kennedy | Photographed by Sara Moore
Brittany Parks left a desk job to become an over-the road trucker.
“I was standing up all day where I’d been used to sitting at a desk with my pearls on, looking cute. And then I start trucking, and I’m a grease monkey.”
At one point, Brittany Parks was planning to retire from the utility company where she worked. The job was a perfect fit for the fashionable lady who wore pearls and high heels to the office.
“I worked there, in sales, for five years and was the top performer every year,” says the 34-year-old mother of two.
But by late 2019, she was feeling ambivalent about her job. Then, in early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“I had been wanting a change,” says Parks, of Newnan, recalling the tension of telling customers their electricity would be turned off for nonpayment. “It was stressful dealing with customers anyway, but the pandemic just added stress, and I wasn’t performing like I needed to.”
In late August 2020, she left what she’d once considered her dream job. The next month, the 2005 Newnan High graduate took a truck driving course at Roadmaster School in Lithia Springs to get her commercial drivers license (CDL). In October, she passed the state exam and soon after started over-the-road training. Sometimes, according to Parks, it was overwhelming.
“I’d never looked under the hood of my car, never checked my oil, never looked at my tires,” she recalls. “I’d never done manual labor. I’d never done anything mechanical in my life. If the oil light came on, I went and got the oil changed. If we were going anywhere more than four hours away, I was like, ‘No, we’ll fly.’”
All of a sudden, the comfy office and routine hours were history as she worked 10 to 14 hours a day learning the rules of the road.
“It’s the most physically and mentally challenging thing I’ve ever done in my life,” says Parks. “I didn’t want to quit, but there were a lot of days I felt defeated because it was hard. We were outside all day in rain, sleet or snow; lightning was the only thing we came in for. I was standing up all day where I’d been used to sitting at a desk with my pearls on, looking cute. And then I start trucking, and I’m a grease monkey.”
Putting in physical labor like she’d never done before has been beneficial, according to Parks.
“I went down two pants sizes and have no need for an exercise program,” she reveals. “After getting up and down out of the truck for a year, I can tell I’m stronger.”
By early 2021, Parks had met all her requirements and started driving. She worked for various companies before landing what she considers a great job – driving for an established company in Peachtree City.
“It’s hard to get a job with a good paying company,” she says. “It takes at least a year of experience.”
Part of her experience included getting used to the shock and awe some men still express when encountering women truck drivers.
“It’s rough out here for women,” she says, recalling various incidents. “I was in a truck stop and this guy just walked up and grabbed my arm, and I knew he wouldn’t do another man like that. He was trying to be friendly, but he didn’t know me. You kinda have to have a stern face a lot of times.”
With grit and determination – and an innate sensibility that keeps her from being dogged by anyone, man or woman – Parks plowed through.
While no one paid attention to longtime male drivers backing their rigs in, she noticed it was all men on deck watching when she backed her trailer into a space at a warehouse.
“They’ll give me a hard time,” says Parks. “They don’t do men like that.”
Over-the-road driver Dawn Sheets Christman, 60, of LaGrange, has driven for 20 years and says that attitudes toward women drivers have improved in that time.
“Used to, men didn’t take you seriously,” she says. “Women are more accepted now because men realize we know what we’re doing. I think it just gradually changed after they saw what women could do.”
While some men still give women drivers a hard time, most welcome them into the fold, according to Christman.
“If you need help doing something – some things are just too hard to do, like sliding the tandems on the back of the truck – you’ll find guys who are more than willing to help,” she says. “There’s enough of them that look out for you that the others don’t bother me at all.”
As Parks gained experience – and after backing her trailer into close quarters became a seamless procedure – she saw attitudes change.
“To watch a lady driver do that, they are impressed,” says the younger driver. “But that’s the thing: You have to be twice as good in this field because it really is a man’s world.”
In 2021, ten percent of all long-haul drivers in the United States were women, according to Women in Trucking Association, a nonprofit group that works to minimize obstacles faced by women in the industry.
Born and raised in Newnan, Parks had male family members who drove trucks, and the idea interested her from the time she was a teenager. But, reckoning it was a man’s job, she took a different route. When she did leave her job at the utility, it was with mixed emotions punctuated by a fear of failure.
“I was so ashamed about resigning from my job,” she recalls. “I didn’t tell anybody, not even my mama, that I was going to trucking school. I finally told her because I needed a babysitter.”
Parks says she moved to trucking mainly for the higher income it offered. According to the U.S. Labor Department, those in the trucking industry in 2021 averaged making about $27.50 an hour.
“I’m a single mom and had to figure out how I could make the money I need, and trucking is that job,” says Parks. “It’s good money, and money is freedom to me.”
Only a month into her second year in trucking, she already had doubled what she’d been making at the utility.
“If you want to maximize your income, this is the business,” she says. “You can eventually make six figures a year, and you don’t have to have a college degree.”
While she drives for a company now, Parks looks forward to buying her own rig.
“This is the road to being my own CEO,” she says. “My plan is to buy a truck and have a driver. I can pay them to drive while I’m home with my kids, and when they can’t drive, I can get in my truck and drive it myself. That’s my short-term goal.”
Long-term?
“I envision owning my own trucking company,” says Parks.
Chances are good she’ll be hiring family members, like her big sister Tomeya Reid, also of Newnan, who got her CDL last fall.
Parks sincerely believes women are better truck drivers and says trucking has made her a safer driver all around.
“If you ask anybody in the field, women are the best drivers because we’re patient and we’re safe and we don’t complain,” she says. “I’m aware of everything around me, and I feel so safe in the truck, even in the rain. You’re the biggest thing on the road. It’s 80,000 pounds if I’m loaded, so I have traction.”
After driving big rigs for more than a year, the lady trucker admits it may be time to trade in her BMW: “It seems so small now and too low to the ground.”
For women interested in making more money or pursuing work that leads to self-employment, Parks is quick to promote trucking.
“Don’t put it off,” she says. “It’s never too late to pursue anything. In the beginning it’s rough because there’s a learning curve, but you can’t give up. Your body’s going to hurt and you’re going to be tired, but you live to do it another day because the goal is to make it home.”
For Parks, that means making it home to her kids, Pierce, 14, and Kelcie, 10.
“My son and daughter have both ridden with me, and my daughter loves it and says she’s going to be a truck driver,” says Parks. “People talk about music influencing kids and musicians not being good role models, but I’m my daughter’s role model. You have to be the role model for your kids.”
For her own children, Parks models a disciplined path toward meeting a goal.
“I believe in making a plan,” she says. “Write your vision. Plan it. Write it out, step by step, and make it plain.”
Then, follow your plan.
Because she followed hers, Parks has the finances she needs to treat herself to travel that doesn’t involve steering a truck. Later this year, she’ll take a birthday trip to Turks and Caicos. After that, she looks forward to revisiting her two favorite destinations: New York City and the Bahamas.
In the meantime, she’ll keep on truckin’.
“I love driving,” she concludes. “It’s definitely a man’s world out here, but if I can do it, anybody can do it.” NCM