After decades in the trucking industry and through a variety of roles, Ellen Voie continues to break stereotypes and open doors for women entering the trucking field.
By: Sana Fatemi
When Ellen Voie began working in the trucking industry in the late 1970s, women were rarely visible in the sector, particularly in operational or leadership roles.
Now, more than four decades later, Voie is best known for her immense impact on women in trucking. Voie is the founder of the Women in Trucking Association (WIT), an organization she launched in 2007 to promote the employment of women in the trucking industry. The organization addresses workplace and safety barriers and measures industry progress on gender inclusion.
Voie’s influence spans advocacy, recruitment, policy advising and industry education. This summer, she published a book, From Dispatcher to Disruptor: One Woman’s Journey to Drive Gender Diversity in the Trucking Industry,
reflecting on her career and the changes she has witnessed in transportation; a milestone that comes after decades spent shaping how the industry understands gender, safety and opportunity.
Early life and entry into trucking
Voie has said her interest in transportation began with a willingness to pursue skills traditionally discouraged for girls. She took shop class, auto mechanics and welding courses, often repeating the message she would later become known for: girls can do anything.
She entered the trucking sector in 1978 at a steel-fabricating plant in Wisconsin, where she drafted material-handling equipment before transferring into the company’s traffic department, according to North America Outlook.
As traffic manager, Voie coordinated shipments, managed a small fleet of trucks and oversaw the movement of raw and finished materials. The role offered early exposure to freight logistics and the operational challenges facing carriers.
She later worked as a dispatcher for a grain-hauling carrier before co-owning a small trucking fleet, according to the Insurance Risk Management Institute. After starting a family, Voie spent several years as a freelance transportation consultant, licensing and permitting trucks for carriers across Wisconsin.
Those roles provided her with a broad perspective on the industry, spanning from office work to hands-on operations. They helped shape her understanding of the structural challenges facing both drivers and carriers.
Building perspective before advocacy
Before Voie founded WIT, she held several leadership roles that expanded her perspective on workforce development and industry culture.
From 2000- to- 2006, she served as executive director of Trucker Buddy International, a mentoring program that paired professional drivers with elementary-school students as pen pals. According to the Women in Trucking Association, under her leadership, the program expanded internationally.
Voie later joined Schneider National as manager of retention and recruiting programs, where she developed initiatives to encourage non-traditional groups, including women, to consider trucking careers. She also worked on reducing driver turnover by addressing dissatisfaction related to communication, workplace culture and job expectations, the association reports.
In that role, Voie oversaw newsletters, audio magazines, and a driver-focused website with tools that provided her with insights into driver concerns and the importance of communication in retention efforts.
Together, those experiences positioned her as someone with a system-level view of trucking’s workforce challenges.
Founding Women in Trucking
Voie founded the WIT in March 2007. The association’s mission is to promote the employment of women in the trucking industry, remove barriers to success and recognize women’s accomplishments across the sector.
The association acquired approximately 500 members in its first year, a figure cited by the Mid-America Trucking Show as evidence of early demand for industry-wide advocacy. Membership later expanded to include both individual and corporate members, including carriers, suppliers and manufacturers.
Voie obtained her Class A driver’s license in 2008. This move was intended to strengthen her advocacy by grounding it in firsthand driving experience, as per the association.
Under her leadership, WIT developed programs and tools aimed at turning advocacy into measurable change.
Addressing safety and inclusion
Throughout her career, Voie has consistently maintained that women in trucking face challenges that extend beyond recruitment slogans. She has emphasized that statements such as “we hire the best person” are insufficient without addressing the practical barriers women encounter on the job, including truck design, training practices, uniforms, facilities, and personal safety.
Drawing on feedback from women drivers, Voie has encouraged the industry to address issues that have long been treated as individual rather than systemic problems. Research published under her leadership examined gender bias, harassment, and same-gender training policies, according to Trucking Dive, providing data to support experiences that many women drivers had reported as ignored.
Voie has also advocated for safer working conditions at truck stops, pressing operators to improve lighting and security after women reported concerns about overnight parking and rest areas. She further encouraged truck manufacturers to consider cab ergonomics that accommodate a wider range of body types and to include safety features such as panic buttons, Overdrive magazine reported.
By framing inclusion as a matter of safety, retention and operational efficiency, Voie helped shift industry conversations away from optics and toward accountability.
Building a pipeline for future drivers
Voie has long maintained that improving conditions for women drivers must be paired with changing how trucking is perceived, particularly by young girls.
To that end, she supported outreach initiatives aimed at promoting trucking as a viable and respectable career choice from an early age. One initiative involved the launch of a 13-inch truck-driver doll named Clare, designed to challenge stereotypes about who belongs behind the wheel, according to MOTOR magazine.
Voie also backed partnerships with organizations such as Girl Scouts of the USA, which led to the creation of a supply chain patch and “Trucks are for girls” events beginning in 2014. Over 1,500 girls earned the patch through these programs, MOTOR reported.
She has stated that expanding the talent pool involves reaching future workers before assumptions about gender and work become ingrained.
Measuring progress
One of Voie’s most lasting contributions to the industry was her insistence that progress be measured, not merely discussed.
Under her leadership, the WIT Index was developed as an annual benchmark that tracks the percentage of women in transportation roles, including drivers, leadership, and support positions. According to Material Handling Wholesaler, the index provided companies with data to assess their own performance on gender inclusion.
Industry analysts have noted that the index helped normalize the idea that diversity metrics belong alongside traditional performance indicators, shifting conversations from intention to evidence.
Creating community and visibility
Voie also recognized that isolation was a recurring theme among women drivers, particularly those working long-haul routes or in male-dominated fleets.
She supported the development of conferences, awards, and mentorship programs aimed at bringing women together across roles and regions. Events like the annual Accelerate! Conference and Expo offer spaces for networking, professional growth, and recognition, helping women drivers and industry professionals connect beyond their individual workplaces.
Advocates say those efforts helped validate women’s experiences and created informal support networks that extended beyond formal programming.
Policy influences and advocacy
Voie’s advocacy extends beyond industry forums into national policy discussions. She has served on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee and previously on the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Entry-Level Driver Training Advisory Committee, according to International Newsroom.
In those roles, she raised concerns about safety standards, training quality, and workforce equity, bringing the perspectives of women drivers into regulatory conversations that had historically lacked them.
Recognition, awards, and leadership philosophy
Voie’s work has gained recognition through numerous industry and public honours. Most recently, in 2023, Navistar presented Voie with the Nettie Fowler Champion of Change Award, recognizing her sustained commitment to advancing women in transportation, WIT says.
She often emphasizes that trucking is “all about people, not freight, trucks or customers,” a philosophy highlighted in industry publications including MOTOR. Supporters argue that focusing on people, especially those who have been historically marginalized, has helped turn advocacy into tangible change.
Ongoing influence
Although Voie is no longer involved in the day-to-day leadership of WIT, her influence remains visible across the industry. She continues to speak, write and host the Women in Trucking Show on SiriusXM’s Road Dog Trucking channel, where discussions often centre on safety, career pathways and lived experience.
Many of the initiatives she championed continue to operate, reflecting an approach that embedded change into industry structures rather than tying it solely to her leadership.
Voie’s career demonstrates how sustained advocacy can reshape an industry from within. By elevating women’s experiences, insisting on data and pushing for practical solutions, she has helped redefine how trucking approaches safety, recruitment and workplace culture.
As the industry continues to face labour shortages and retention issues, the concerns Voie raised and the changes she helped promote remain important. Her influence is not just in opening doors for women truckers, but also in ensuring those doors lead to safer and fairer workplaces.