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Hannah Dannecker - Empowering Women in a Male-Dominated Industry

• David Turetsky • Season 9 • Episode 6

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Hannah Dannecker, Managing Partner of the Better Together Group, joins us this episode to discuss staffing in the transportation and trucking industry. We explore the growing push over the last decade to bring more women into the historically male-dominated field. 


[0:00] Introduction

  • Welcome, Hannah!
  • Today’s Topic: Transforming the Trucking Industry Through Gender Diversity

[8:32] How Hannah got into the transportation industry

  • Understanding transportation’s male-dominated landscape
  • Comparing men’s vs. women’s workplace priorities

[20:15] Why many have built a lasting career in transportation

  • The unique appeal that keeps industry veterans engaged 
  • Transportation’s resilience through economic challenges

[28:47] Championing women in transportation

  • Industry federations’ role in promoting female representation
  • Addressing safety perceptions in the trucking profession

[45:15] Closing

  • Thanks for listening!


Quick Quote:

“For the [trucking] industry at large . . . females are valuable. Female truck drivers are incredible—their safety ratings are fantastic; they’re dedicated; they’re diligent. They're great employees.”


Resources:

Hannah's recent books

Well Shit: Time To Grow Up


Contact:
Hannah's LinkedIn
David's LinkedIn
Dwight's LinkedIn
Podcast Manager: Karissa Harris
Email us!

Production by Affogato Media

Announcer:

The world of business is more complex than ever. The world of human resources and compensation is also getting more complex. Welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast, your direct source for the latest trends from experts inside and outside the world of human resources. Listen as we explore the impact that compensation strategy, data and people analytics can have on your organization. This podcast is sponsored by Salary.com, your source for data technology and consulting for compensation and beyond. Now here are your hosts, David Turetsky and Dwight Brown.

David Turetsky:

Hello and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast! I'm your host, David Turetsky, alongside my friend, BFF, actually, partner, consultant at large, Dwight Brown from Salary.com. Dwight, how are you?

Dwight Brown:

I'm great! How are you doing, David?

David Turetsky:

I'm okay! I'm okay, okay. But today I'm outstanding, because today we get to talk to Hannah Dannecker. Hannah, how are you?

Hannah Dannecker:

Doing very well, thank you. Doing doing good.

David Turetsky:

So, Hannah, why don't you tell everyone a little bit about yourself?

Hannah Dannecker:

Yeah. So I am the managing partner from the Better Together Group of Companies. We are a group of staffing agencies that help companies find the employees that they desperately need. So we've got a couple different things that we do, drivers, labor and office. And then I specifically also focus on the Better Together Group consulting side. A lot of a lot of that is where my where my heart kind of comes out, and I love to be it's good to do the other things that you're good at and fun to do the stuff that brings, brings you joy. So where I find that is through, uh, lots of talking about Generation Z. I give presentations to mainly employers, but HR professionals, and more recently, some parents, some teachers, just older generations who are trying to understand who the heck Gen Z is, and how we are supposed to communicate and collaborate with them effectively. So that's, that's kind of in a very big nutshell, who who I am and where I come from.

David Turetsky:

Well, we're gonna have to talk afterwards so I can connect with my Gen Zers. So

Hannah Dannecker:

Absolutely! I look forward to it. I'll give you every tip I can give you.

David Turetsky:

That's awesome. You have a book out?

Hannah Dannecker:

I do! I do. I actually am just about to release my fifth book, which is crazy, I know.

David Turetsky:

Ooh! Tell us about them.

Hannah Dannecker:

Yeah. So I have my my very first one I published. The name is and I don't want to get you in trouble. Are you a are you a rated podcast? Can I swear on your podcast?

David Turetsky:

You can swear, but don't use the F word.

Hannah Dannecker:

Okay, absolutely, I will not. So the name of my first book is, Well, Shit. And the whole concept behind this is, it's made for kids who are graduating high school and graduating university, and they're going, oh my gosh, what the heck do I do now? Well, shit, it's time to grow up. Like, what does this look like? What are we doing? How do we do this? And so that started in the midst of COVID and was originally a diary that I had written for my someday children to have just of different life lessons that I had kind of learned and different things that people in my life had taught me. And then naturally, because they were lessons that other people had taught me, I wanted to put them in paper so that I could share it with those people. And by the time I had typed it all out, I was like, Well, I mean, I'm here. I'll publish the dang thing now. So I published my first one, which was that, and that's I used to tell people, it was like a memoir of my life. But it isn't necessarily quite like that. I've kind of shifted gears to describe it more as just a combination of really valuable lessons that were humbling and humoring and embarrassing and motivational and all of these amazing things that I think would probably be pretty helpful to anyone who is about 20 and trying to figure stuff out. But that was really fun. Then I have a couple other ones. I've got one all about how to hire employees with intensity, integrity and intentionality. So how do you find that in an employee? And how do you, how do you actually hire them, and what does that look like in an interview? And how do you ask questions around that? Then we've got another one for employees, which is how to find a job. How do you, how do you go out into this marketplace? How do you dress professionally? How do you physically shake somebody's hand if you've never done it before. How do you properly format your job description type, type of things? And then there's another one that is a accidental leadership book. So that is for somebody who went through school and immediately came out of school and started working, and they didn't necessarily get an education, per se, but over time, all of the employees around them have just come to them because they're like, you're you've been here. What do I do here? And they've naturally formed into this leader, but they don't have any training for it, and they don't necessarily know how to use all of the tools that are available to them, so it's kind of putting all of those different tools into a really applicable and easy way to reach them. So when someone comes to you and they're like, I need help with you're like, great, I have this book.

David Turetsky:

That's great.

Hannah Dannecker:

Help me, help me figure it out. And then the newest one, the one I'm most recently so excited about, and gets me so pumped, is a kids book. And it's my first kids book, and it is going to be, ideally, a series in the future, but the hope is to try and help kids understand the joy of what jobs truly are. I think so oftentimes adults talk to kids about work, and they talk about it like it's a crappy thing. Oh, I have to go to work today, or I have to get up tomorrow morning or whatever, and we're setting them up for failure! Because Because work and careers, they can be amazing, they can be beautiful things that people can do with their lives. But if we're teaching kids to hate them before they even know what they truly are, it's gonna, it's gonna create this negative approach to it that I think is not the best you know as they're starting and so this one specifically, I talk about transportation and driving a truck, and what does it mean to be a truck driver, and what does that look like? But hopefully, like I said, it will turn into a very long series of all the different types of careers and opportunities that kids could truly grasp, but in a way that is fun and entertaining for them to come to. So

David Turetsky:

Well that's awesome.

Dwight Brown:

That's cool.

Hannah Dannecker:

Sorry, such a long explanation, so many books!

David Turetsky:

No that's okay. We'll provide links to your books in the show notes.

Hannah Dannecker:

Thank you. Yeah, absolutely.

David Turetsky:

But before we continue, we need to know what's one fun thing that no one knows about Hannah?

Hannah Dannecker:

One fun thing that no one knows about Hannah is that she has a button collection. I love buttons. I think there's

Dwight Brown:

Button collection?

Hannah Dannecker:

Yeah, so random. I just saw it the other day while I was at home, at my parents house. It's been there for 22 23 years. I started when I was just a baby. I thought that they were so cute and tiny.

Dwight Brown:

Do you keep the buttons in a box, or do you have a display board, or what?

Hannah Dannecker:

No, they're just in a box. There's, they bring me joy every time I see them, like it's my buttons. There's literally no rhyme or reason to it. It's just funny.

Dwight Brown:

I love it.

David Turetsky:

I gotta be honest with you, I love that too, and I've had collections of things like that for for a long time. And when you move from house to house, when you graduate from your parents house and they get left there and your parents decide that it's time to throw them away without you knowing about it.

Hannah Dannecker:

Oh yeah

David Turetsky:

yeah, there's that.

Dwight Brown:

Yeah.

Hannah Dannecker:

It will happen, I'm sure eventually. But

David Turetsky:

Well, and we're going to leave that right where it is, because we've all got collections of stuff, and people are now thinking to themselves, where did I put that collection of things?

Hannah Dannecker:

That random little box that you love so much, for sure.

David Turetsky:

Exactly. Today, though, we have a topic that's near and dear to a lot of people's hearts, because it has a lot of impact on a very large portion of the workforce. And it's a large portion of the workforce that has been traditionally, I will call it undervalued in many ways, and we're going to talk about the impact to the world of females in male dominated industries.

Hannah Dannecker:

I'm so excited. It's going to be such a great chat.

David Turetsky:

Well, our first question, Hannah, is, how did you end up in transportation and logistics? It's a very male dominated industry!

Hannah Dannecker:

Absolutely. So I ended up in transportation and logistics. I tell people that I teethed on transportation. So my my father owns transportation company, revolution staffing, and we help find truck drivers for companies who can't find them. And he has owned that business, it was the first one he started that I grew up watching grow. And I fell in love with, there's a there's a trucking show called Truck World, and they do it every other year. And I grew up going to this, this conference, this trade show that you would walk around. And I used to explain it to people, kind of like the coolest jungle gym for a kid to go to, because you go, you know, kids love trucks. They see trucks on the highway. They do that. They do the whole the double arm toot. Yeah, they want to get them. They think they're really cool. But hardly ever does a kid have the opportunity to actually go up and touch it and go up and climb into it and hold the wheel and understand the enormity of what those things are, because trucks, they look cool from a distance. You know they're pulling something. You're like, Wow, that's great. It's a truck on the road. I've seen them every day. I see them all the time, but you don't really, truly come to value it. But then so I fell in love with like, the shine of the industry as a kid. I thought it was cool. I thought that it was sparkly. And then in the midst of COVID, I never expected to go into transportation. I never really thought that it was going to be the home for me. But then in the midst of COVID, like most people in a family business in a pandemic, you do what you have to do. So I started working for the family business and leaning into it. And I absolutely fell in love with it. I fell in love with the concept of what transportation is. It literally helps the entire economy move and function every day.

David Turetsky:

Oh, sure!

Hannah Dannecker:

Every everything you love, everything you see, everything you touch and feel and eat, it arrives on a truck. Everything you put on your body, it arrives on a truck, everything you put your head on that you get comfortable in, like everything.

Dwight Brown:

your buttons.

Hannah Dannecker:

Yeah, my buttons! They all came on trucks! And so this, this joy, this passion, is not shared with many kids, is as for any career, is hardly shared with kids, let alone transportation to females, or just male dominated industries to females. And so I started, in the midst of the pandemic, to see the true value behind what it really was, and not just the cool, shiny surface. And as soon as I saw that, I mean, I was bought in for life. There was there was no getting rid of me from there.

David Turetsky:

Well, when I went to Penn State, we actually had a logistics major, and I knew of, because I was friends with, many females that were actually part of that. Because Logistics was math! It was solving problems. It was being able to to move supplies around, and be able to figure out problems that were extremely difficult to do. So, so there's that part of it, which is just, you know, very math based, very logical.

Hannah Dannecker:

Puzzles.

David Turetsky:

And they were perfect fits for it, that all my friends, they were like, they were brilliant. They could have been economists, but they chose to go into logistics because they wanted to apply math to a specific function.

Hannah Dannecker:

Yeah, that's, that's, that's cool. I wonder, do you know kind of what the percent was male to female ratio in that, course? I'm curious.

David Turetsky:

Oh, it must have been like 80/20 very male dominated, but, but still, there was a very strong group, and they were highly sought out.

Hannah Dannecker:

That's, that's great, yeah. I mean, females naturally have a set of characteristics. Men and women, typically, just by nature, have a set of characteristics that are really valuable. And females, specifically in transportation, just like what you said, so undervalued. They're looked at, unfortunately, as if they have little to offer. However, when they come in and they have the education background now, just just a female in general, has so much to offer the transportation industry. But, I mean, when you put on top of that, somebody who also has the background for it, that person's gonna struggle to not have work. Yeah, they'll struggle to be born, right?

David Turetsky:

I mean, we've seen, especially in the drivers category, that obviously very male dominated. But we have seen that because there's been such a and maybe, maybe there's a question for you. Has it been because we can't find enough drivers, especially CDLs, the ones that actually have the certifications and the licensure that they've gone looking in other directions?

Hannah Dannecker:

I'm sorry. I just, I want to make sure I understand your question correctly. Are you asking? Are we seeing more females because of the driver shortage?

David Turetsky:

Yeah

Hannah Dannecker:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, lots of companies. I think there's a couple different reasons that we're seeing more females. I think it's 2024 and companies are coming to understand the true value that has not always been prioritized in the last decades. You know, like in the 90s, it wasn't as popular to want a female driver, and now people are seeing the stats of female drivers. I mean, bringing a female into transportation is one thing. Bringing a female into a truck is also a whole other thing. The industry at large, behind the wheel, under the hood or at a desk, females are valuable. But additionally, even more than that, female truck drivers are, I mean, incredible. Their safety ratings are fantastic. They are great. They are dedicated, they're diligent, like they're just, they're really, really good employees. And so I think that a nature of the it's 2024, people are coming to desire to change the difference between male dominated industries. They don't want them to be as male dominated, just by perception as they have in the past. But then also, yes, there is a driver shortage, and there will continue to be a driver shortage. And anyone who is proactively looking at what they can and should be doing about that should be looking at females as an opportunity that they're missing, for sure.

Dwight Brown:

Do you see a greater proportion of females in the back office functions than you do the driver functions?

Hannah Dannecker:

Oh, yeah, I and I wish I had the percents for you, and it would be kind of different anywhere that you go based on what they're hauling. Some companies really struggle. Like, ready mix drivers really struggle to get female truck drivers, because it's concrete, right? Like, that's, it's just a whole different ballgame compared to a flatbed, which is just like it's very separate. And so I don't have the exact percent for you, but yes, in the office, you see lots and lots more females than than truck drivers who are actively driving. And lots of drivers who had been female drivers originally had come in, started working somewhere, say, in a warehouse then they got trained to be a driver, and they got promoted, and now they're in the back office. Lots of people who promote themselves there, kind of as they grow through their careers as well.

David Turetsky:

But Hannah, if you look, kind of look at the different, because you started mentioning the differences in what a driver is because the driver isn't just a driver and a driver because there's lots of differences. There's long haul, there's short haul, there's delivery, there's so many things. And you know, for those of us who you know, get UPS and Amazon packages every moment there's a female driver who you know takes the packages off. You know, more than in my case, I think it's more than half the time. But there are lots of different careers in the driving industry, in logistics and transportation. Where do you see the most penetration from female drivers? Is it in long haul? Is it in more short term? Where is it?

Hannah Dannecker:

Yeah, I would say most drivers, most female drivers, are looking for something that is local, so just LTL work. They want to be sleeping in their bed every single night. And then most of them are looking really just for nine to fives. We find it's, I would say, more schedule, less skill based for females. Typically, people are looking for jobs based on their skill level, which as they should be absolutely I think for a lot of female drivers, they're looking for their jobs based on the schedule, just like I said, of what that looks like. Drivers really often, will prioritize a, oh my gosh. It's a Monday to Friday. It's nine to five. It's consistent work. It's dedicated, like the dedicated freights for them are really valuable. And females, by nature, are looking for something that's a little bit more reliable. I think we see, yeah, more of a desire for something that is consistent from them, whereas somewhere, someone else, might be more open to taking just a long haul or one off shift or something like that that's not as consistent.

Dwight Brown:

Is it a lot like other industries, where a lot of that is due to the family orientation and the roles of the female and in the family. Is that kind of the big driver behind that?

Hannah Dannecker:

Yeah, I would say that that has a massive part to do with it. And there is also this other section that's just about safety. Being on the road at night, not as easy. Being on the road at night as a female, not as easy. There's a really big problem around just, where are they sleeping? Where are they staying? Can they use the restroom? If they have to use the restroom in the middle of the night, do they then have to move to a different lot because they feel unsafe because people saw them walking through? There's a lot of stuff around, just evenings and what can and should be done. And some females have absolutely no problems with it. Some females are still happy to do it, and they are not scared, and they don't feel any danger whatsoever, and that's phenomenal. And some females are a complete opposite of that, and they love what they do, but they understand that, that there are some risks that come with that, and they keep a very stiff arm to them. So yeah, different people, different boundaries. But that's that's kind of, I would say, work, home life. They like to be home for their kids. They like the even if they don't have kids, if they don't have families, they still like the same consistent nine to five that they've experienced in other careers is also plays a piece with it. But that safety is, is, is a significant factor as well, I would say.

David Turetsky:

So to follow up on that, do you see this as a gig work economy as well as being a normal nine to five job? Or do you see this more as a you know, it's a career. You're in it, or you're not.

Hannah Dannecker:

It is a career. It is a career. There are some drivers who are gig drivers, and you can be an Uber driver, and that's amazing. You can deliver food for people, and that's phenomenal. And even some people who are getting, like what you said, into FedEx or Amazon deliveries, you can have a small license. You don't have to have a ton of experience. But a professional truck driver is exactly that, they are a professional. It is a career, and they should be deemed as such, I would say.

Announcer:

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David Turetsky:

Let's get to the next question, because this is going to be a fascinating one as well. So you ever consider leaving the industry, and why would? Why wouldn't you what, what's gotten you to stay? What's what's been the stickiness here?

Hannah Dannecker:

Well, a huge part of it has to do with I come from a family business, and I get to work, I get to work with my brothers. I get to work with my father. I get to wake up every day and get on a call with all of my family and say, How are you guys doing this morning, and what are we doing? And how can we help each other? So there is a really, really big part of that, that is, this is my family, and I was raised in it, and I absolutely love it. And so I I can't not touch on that, because it is such a significant piece. But also, when you start working in transportation and you start driving down the highway, something happens to you, where you become so much more aware of everything that's truly being moved you see all of the trucks, you see all of the names, you see all of the brands. You understand really what's moving past you, and you start to grow in your appreciation for it. So not only am I working nine to five, but every moment of the day, I'm seeing how what I get to do each day helps the world turn in so many ways, right. Like i i run to Starbucks and I see I'm gonna get that coffee, and I know that that cream was delivered because a driver delivered it, because that was what they were doing, and that got me the first thing that made me smile today. And that's beautiful, because I'm one of however many people that that is serving, and it, it just it doesn't turn off. Everywhere you look, there is something that was delivered by a truck and something beautiful that came from that on the other side. And that, I mean, yes, transportation, my gosh, transportation is hard. Being in the logistics industry is not for the week of heart. It is a 24/7 365, Thanksgiving, Christmas. It doesn't matter. You still have drivers on the road, and so it's exhausting. And sometimes I get tired. I won't, I won't say, I don't. Sometimes I'm like, oh, that marketing degree at that corporate law firm looks real nice sometimes, but hardly ever, definitely not in comparison, yeah, yeah, it's, it's a passion.

Dwight Brown:

I get the sense that there's a whole community feeling that goes with it as well, just based on what you're saying and just sort of my observations. Is that accurate?

Hannah Dannecker:

Oh my gosh, absolutely! The community behind the logistics industry is insane. Like I'm I have two events that I'm going to this Thursday, and then my father, Dave, who's our owner, he has three events he's attending this week. And, I mean, it's just one of the weeks, one of the random weeks, and one of the months of the year, and it's, and then there's, there's five industry events just this week already. And so it's big. There's a lot of players, and they all want a piece of it. So there's lots of events going on consistently. But then, just like what I explained that, like passion behind truly what we're doing, most of us have it. It's, it's not as not a group of people who come to take a check every week. It's a group of people who come because they have a passion. And when a bunch of people truly have a passion, and you're in a community with one another, I mean, like the friendships, the networking, it's, it's, yeah, it's pretty great. I can't say comparatively. I don't want to speak. I don't know every other industry, but it's got really deep roots compared to what I would imagine most others.

David Turetsky:

Hannah, one of the things that probably hurts the industry, most of all, is because it's so economy based the pace of the economy, whether it's slowing or whether it's it's going gangbusters, really has a gigantic effect on the use of the transportation network. And the transportation network isn't just trucks, it's also a railroad. It's boats. And we just saw that there was going to be this port strike in the east that was going to basically shut down everything across the entire US. So I guess the question is, how do you withstand some of those really heavy economic cycles that is the really disturbing, especially if someone's buying into, you know, being in the logistics industry, being in the transportation industry, it probably more than any other industry, is so reliant on everything just working, and when it doesn't, it gets hurt real bad, right?

Hannah Dannecker:

Absolutely like tangibly, how, how do we, how do we logistically go through it? Or. Or emotionally, like, how do we bounce back from the frustration of that? Sorry, I'm not quite sure I understand.

David Turetsky:

So there's a lot of I guess you have to have a lot of flexibility when you're in the transportation and logistics world, because your job, your role, the hours you work, is so dependent upon the economy. So how you work, how much you work, is based on things that have absolutely you have no control over. So if there's that port strike, you're not moving anything, you're not moving cattle, you're not moving milk, you're not moving anything because there's nothing to move. Or one of your largest clients laid off a whole bunch of people and they're not buying.

Hannah Dannecker:

Yeah.

David Turetsky:

So my question is, how do people in that industry stay so positive, stay so energized, when really it's the the ability to work isn't under your control?

Hannah Dannecker:

Yeah. Okay, thank you for for clarifying. That makes a lot of sense. So, it's hard. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna sugarcoat that for you. Transportation, gosh, it's, it's a challenging thing to be a part of. And we've had days in the past where we've had a massive client that gets shut down, and you're like, oh, that's gonna be a significant deal. And so part of it is, is experience, is knowing that we've experienced that in the past and then intentionally saying, what the heck do we do about that? So it's not having any of our clients be 100% of our business or 50% of our business. It's having multiple of them work in collaboration to help build a significant base. So there is, there is some through, through time, through years, you will grow a significant enough base that when that happens, because it's not an if. You're right, the economy turns, the economy changes, cycles transition, things happen, and sometimes that sucks, and you really just have to be aware that it will be coming, and intentionally and intensely prepare for it kind of preemptively, so that you have in that moment, the stability to step back and say, hey, that's unfortunate. I'm sad that this is happening, but we've probably planned for this. So what are the next steps. What do we do? And then it's diversifying, right? So we've got transportation. We LOVE Revolution Staffing. Revolution Staffing is my father's like business baby like that was what he started when he was young, and he has grown it, and it is a phenomenal thing. But then we have essential staffing, and they do office, and we have help unlimited, and they do labor, and we've got consulting for the other division. So it is having other opportunities and and making sure that while, yes, you are niche, and you do transportation, whatever that looks like, for which every listener is listening, depending on which role you're in, but then you don't corner yourself in there. You don't leave yourself there forever. And so that, as that happens, like you said, you can't, you can't keep it from happening, but as it happens, you have other things to lean on, so it's not so overwhelming or all encompassing. I would suggest.

Dwight Brown:

A lot of risk management via diversification.

Hannah Dannecker:

Absolutely.

David Turetsky:

Hey, are you listening to this and thinking to yourself, Man, I wish I could talk to David about this. Well, you're in luck. We have a special offer for listeners of the HR Data Labs podcast, a free half hour call with me about any of the topics we cover on the podcast or whatever is on your mind. Go to salary.com/hrdlconsulting to schedule your free 30 minute call today. So let's hit on question number three, which is really kind of one of the keys for what we were going to be talking about today. Why are you so passionate about helping bring more females into this male dominated industry?

Hannah Dannecker:

Because it's the best! It's so good! It is so good. So even though the whole concept of the economy turning and the there's there's a little bit of doomsday around that, like, yes, it is unfortunate that that turns and that we are in not the best spot right now, but as you look at the past 500 years, that'll happen, and eventually it will correct again, and we will come back out the other side. And so when you look at transportation, it is stable. Yes, there are ports that will shut, yes, there are companies, unfortunately, that will close their doors. And that happens every once in a while, because not everybody is going to be successful, and failure is inevitable. But if you look at it just in like a grandiose perspective, a female who comes into the transportation industry will not struggle to find a job, if you and I say that with the caveat of if you suck as an employee and you don't show up to work and you call in sick every single day and you don't finish your duties and you don't attend your meetings. I don't want to speak to that person. That's your own personal, that's your own thing. But if a human who is a good, diligent employee, who wants to work hard and wants to support their employer comes into the transportation industry and is looking for work, it's going to be really, really easy for them to find a job because A they're everybody's looking for them. They're looking for somebody who can come in, who's different, who's unique to their company culture, who can help shape and change and shift. I have lots of companies right now who are doing massive female pushes, looking for female drivers, and so it's not going to be hard for you to find something. And even if the company that you connect with doesn't have a job for you, the industry at large is good enough. And I don't want to use the word comfortable enough, but the network is so solid that they'll find you something somewhere else. We'll be like, Hey, I'm so sorry. Let me wrap my arm around you and bring you in and help you find a different place toland.

David Turetsky:

By the way, figuratively wrap their arms around you, not literally wrap. Okay, just want to check

Hannah Dannecker:

Yes, figuratively, figuratively wrapped.

Dwight Brown:

Good clarification, yes,

David Turetsky:

I'm sorry.

Hannah Dannecker:

But take, take you under their wing was the was the way I was getting to

David Turetsky:

Figurative language. But do you see the pushback on the whole DEI initiatives that you know, it's been called woke in some ways, which you know, you can tell by the look on my face the listeners can't, but I think that's a bunch of horse crap. But the ability to make your workforce look like the market around you. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, that's what we should be always striving for. Do you see any pushback that has changed maybe that a little bit?

Hannah Dannecker:

I think that for the most part, the transportation industry, specifically in the last five years. And I am a Canadian based company. I live in the US, but our business is originally based out of Canada, and so this is more based on Canadian statistics. I'm still learning a lot about the US, and we have a driver division there, but that is not history that I am incredibly knowledgeable about, so I'll speak just to Canadian but I would say in the last 10 years, there has been a lot of federations that have been created that have really helped the movement of the female dominated problem. There's been the women trucking Federation of Canada, and then Trucking HR and one more that I can't remember just off the top of my head, that have all kind of come together in the last decade, and they have brought the community together in a way that is been really valuable, because they're bringing females into the room and they're bringing males into the room, but they're putting females up on stage, and that doesn't happen very often. Typically, you'll go to a conference and you'll have a conference lineup, and it's going to be 80 90% male speakers, and then they will, they will have the others, and they will, they will try to diversify, but it is not necessarily the equal balance. So, but these organizations are predominantly female, female led, female run, and they've had a lot of really good male attendees, so males who are coming and listening. And so, because that happened about 10 years ago, and then COVID, which I can't believe is almost, nearly five years ago now, is insane to think about, but that kind of 10 years ago got them starting to think and starting to function in the way that, okay, we need to make a change. And then five years ago, in the middle of the pandemic, a ton of stuff happened with transportation and with truck drivers, and specifically around just their rights and what they should be given as a human. And it got back to a place because they were taking bathrooms away from drivers. They were saying, No, you can't go in there. No, you can't go do anything. And it got to a spot where they were understanding not just what drivers were experiencing, but what females had been experiencing for all of the years to come. For so long, there was male change rooms and male bathrooms and male male stuff that the male truck drivers could use, and the females were either saying sorry, go find another place, or you can use the guy's room, and that's fine, but again, with safety, you need to really adjust what that genuinely is putting that female in danger of or just putting that female in a place of uncomfortable like, like for a girl to step into a male's change room and and get ready there. That's not super fun for them, or the female showers at a truck stop, or whatever that is. So after that, they started thinking about it, right? And then the five years transition, and then they all got put back to the ground base, and I think that in that spot, a lot of the men were able to go, whoa. Females have been experiencing this forever. And then as they corrected that, and they came back out of it. There's been a massive, at least in my perception, there's been a massive pivot in creating more equality to the resources that are available, specifically to drivers, which is where we see the main problems.

Dwight Brown:

So you're you're not seeing as much pushback as you might have seen in the past from the males against the females. Then no, no, there are.

Hannah Dannecker:

There are northern places and some southern places, you know, southern US, northern Canada, that push back. In some ways, for sure, there will always be people who are pushing back. But I would say, as a majority, as a community, it's not been problematic.

Dwight Brown:

You've really seen a shift from what it used to be?

Hannah Dannecker:

Yeah

Dwight Brown:

That makes sense.

David Turetsky:

So to summarize, what you're basically saying is the transportation industry is much more friendly, much more welcoming, much more open to female participants today than it's ever been in its history.

Hannah Dannecker:

Yes

David Turetsky:

And that there's lots of opportunities that that are now open for female drivers, as well as female back office workers as well as the logistics industry and coming in, you know, try it, and you might find a home for life.

Hannah Dannecker:

Absolutely, absolutely, that's exactly what I'm saying.

David Turetsky:

Yeah. I mean, I'd love to see some statistics on that, and especially see how things have transitioned over the years. Because, you know, we all know that it was such a male dominated industry, especially in the 80s and 90s. And I do know you're absolutely right that there, there are, there are many more females in those industries today, and I'm hoping it improves even more, but I'd love to see those statistics get better.

Hannah Dannecker:

Yeah, absolutely. I'm curious from from you guys, what's your perception of truck drivers and the, the industry? I kind of pre COVID I'd be interested to know and now, and has it changed at all? Have you guys seen that? Because you're right. It like the the and they're minute numbers. I think that in 2000 it was about 3% of females as drivers, and I think today it's about 7% of drivers. So we've, we've had a doubling the statistics there, but not significantly. Do you feel like it's a safe, a good role? If you had a daughter, would you ever encourage her to be a truck driver? Or how would that play out for the two of you?

Dwight Brown:

You know, my perception has sort of morphed over time. I actually, I was born in the 70s, and there was a movie from 1978 called convoy, and it was all a bunch of white males and, and I, I was one of those starry eyed kids. It's like, I want to be a truck driver. And, and then seeing it through the years, and, and now just going, you know, stopping at truck stops, during road trips and stuff like that, one of the things that I've observed has been more diversity, not just gender diversity, but ethnicity diversity with truckers. I gotta say, Would I encourage my daughter to become a truck driver? Gotta say, probably not, just because of the safety factor. That's the piece that I would worry about, is everything that you've talked about, about the safety aspect of things. I would absolutely encourage her from a career standpoint, and if she, if she, that's what she wanted to do, but I would worry like hell as parent with her out there on the road, to be perfectly honest with you,

Hannah Dannecker:

I appreciate the transparency, if you don't mind me asking, what would you, because this is a big part of what I do, right? Like I, I want to help people understand the value of what truly is there to be to be done. What would you have to see change, or what would you have to see transition to be like? Oh, that that looks or that seems like a viable option!

Dwight Brown:

I don't think it's as much a matter of what I would have to see change as much as I would have to work on undoing my perception of the of the safety factor when she's out on the road, you know, stopping at a rest stop to catch some sleep and the dangers that you that you hear of on the news. You know, those kinds of things just stick in the back of my head. So it's not as much a matter of being able to pinpoint something that, that I can say, if I saw change here, I would feel better about it. It's a, you know, I'm, I'm far enough in years that I've got all of these years of seeing these things, you know, and granted, I know that to some extent it's kind of ridiculous, because I'm just focusing on what you see in the news, which is obviously going to be the worst case scenario, oftentimes. But you know, it's, it's like anything with your kids and worrying about your kids and what they're doing, you know, seeing, seeing one of my kids become a cop, for example, and worrying about what goes with that. So I don't have a good straight answer for you. You know, it's, there's a lot of history that kind of factors into it. But I will say that with with seeing the greater diversity in the industry, just through the little bit that I've observed it, you know, it has morphed my thinking to a certain extent. But as a father, I'm always going to be, I'm always going to be worried if,

Hannah Dannecker:

Yeah

Dwight Brown:

if my kids are in a job that has, you know, risk of some type that goes with it.

Hannah Dannecker:

Yeah, that's fair. I think, I think that humans are concerned for humans, right? Like, the concept is you wear your heart on your sleeve, your your daughter, your child, your significant other, no matter who it is, your parent, regardless, you're still going to care and have to fear for them. I think regardless of what they're doing, even if it's like, I'm a salesperson, you know, I get to walk into businesses all the time. That's not a scary thing. But also, right? I walk into 50 businesses all the time, and just, it just takes one! So it is like, it is the nature, it is funny to go down the line of, okay, like there is genuine danger and risk, and then how do you mitigate that, and what do you do? But then there's genuine danger and risk in everyday life, and so,

Dwight Brown:

right,

Hannah Dannecker:

how do you just continue to move forward? But yeah, it is a funny balance to play. How about yourself, David?

David Turetsky:

As we talked about before, I think there's lots of different opportunities in the trucking and logistics industry where I would certainly encourage my kids to think about those as careers, especially given that the starting rates for those careers have gone through the roof because we can't find qualified individuals. So it's a good career, it looks like, well, it's a career that's never going to go away. And it has potential for longer term growth, depending upon how they want to take their careers. I don't necessarily know if I agree necessarily, and I don't need to, his his thoughts are his own, with Dwight, because you could be driving down the highway and, you know, something happens anyways. So there's, there's always concerns like that. My kid lives in New York City, so crossing the street is a, you know, a lottery.

Hannah Dannecker:

Sure.

David Turetsky:

So A lottery? It's a lottery. You draw, draw the short straw, you get hit by a car.

Dwight Brown:

Rolling the dice here!

David Turetsky:

Well, I mean, you know, it's New York City, right?

Dwight Brown:

It's true, yeah!

David Turetsky:

But, but so, so I don't necessarily agree, because, to your point, Hannah, anything can happen. And so I think it's an industry that should be looked at with now new eyes, given that it has transformed a little bit and it's modernized a lot. The equipment's modern. The technologies that are employed are more modern. Heck, the technologies to being in touch and be tracked are more modern.

Hannah Dannecker:

Oh, all of it! You're, I mean, as a truck driver, for the most part, you're sitting in a cab where you've got a camera facing you that is watching everything you do all the time now! Like it's the technology advancement is insane, absolutely.

David Turetsky:

Well, and it's also everybody around you, because, you know, you have those pesky cars that are cutting you off in front or they're driving too close behind, and I'm sure that there's tons of monitors, you know, Collision Monitors, for things like that. So I actually think I would encourage my kids to be a part of that. So to answer your question a little bit differently than my friend Dwight,

Hannah Dannecker:

That's okay! I honestly, I love that you both have different perspectives. I don't love that Dwight still thinks it's scary. You know, that's not, that's not the goal we're going for. But just to have to have the to have the separation, yeah, I mean, it is a legitimate concern, like, there, there is danger there. I don't want to say that there isn't, but where there is danger, there is opportunity to be safe as well. And so there's, there's the balance of how you how you manage all of that.

David Turetsky:

Exactly. Hannah, it's been fun. It's been exciting. We've talked about a new yet again, Dwight, another completely net new topic that we've never touched on before!

Dwight Brown:

Right? I love it.

David Turetsky:

So Hannah, thank you so much for joining the HR Data Labs podcast. We appreciate it.

Hannah Dannecker:

Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure to join you guys, and I appreciate you having me come talk about drivers. I love the opportunity to.

David Turetsky:

And we appreciate you.

Dwight Brown:

Been a good, good glimpse on the industry. I never, never knew existed.

Hannah Dannecker:

Yeah. Now, when you see the trucks on the road next to you, you'll, you'll tell them to honk their horn, and you'll know what's going on.

Dwight Brown:

I'll be doing like when I was a kid, they still have the do? They still have that where you pull on the chain, and

Hannah Dannecker:

Some of them, it depends when they were made for sure, but some of them got it.

Dwight Brown:

Okay.

David Turetsky:

And for those of you who don't know the movie reference to Convoy, that was there was a hit song that went along with that movie as well, so check it out!

Dwight Brown:

I feel like we should integrate that into the editing of podcast. Convoy! 10-4 good buddy.

Hannah Dannecker:

I like it

David Turetsky:

Thank you again, Hannah, thank you Dwight and everybody. Thank you for listening. Take care and stay safe.

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David B Turetsky

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Dwight Brown

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