Short on truckers, Eastern Wyoming College puts girls in the driver’s seat

The horn blast echoed across Eastern Wyoming College’s Douglas campus, and 6-year-old Girl Scout Octavia Ambrose grinned from the cab. Five minutes earlier she’d been under the truck with WYDOT CDL supervisor Erin King, learning what’s what beneath a rig. Being a veterinarian or a race car driver had been on her someday list. Truck driver? Not until today.

“My favorites are the buses,” she announced, pointing at a nearby school bus her mom quickly rebranded as a future tour coach.

That tiny moment captures a big bet the college is making: the trucking industry is short nearly 80,000 drivers nationwide — on track to hit 160,000 by 2030—and only 12.1% of professional CDL holders are women. Eastern Wyoming College sees the gap as an opportunity, not a dead end, and its “Trucks Are for Girls” day is designed to put hands on steering wheels and spark imaginations.

CDL Program Director Ed Kimes launched the event three years ago to show girls what a commercial license can unlock, from school buses and ready-mix to long-haul and logistics. He grew up around women who drove log trucks and heavy equipment and was stunned, once he hit the over-the-road world at 18, by how few women he saw. The pitch he makes now is simple: trucking moves everything — milk and lumber, live fish and electronics — and it pays. With a CDL plus a hazmat endorsement, six-figure starts are realistic; average driver pay hovers around $95,000. For single moms, Kimes adds, local routes can still mean home every night.

Saturday’s crowd ran the gamut. College-age Heidi Moore, a culinary-school grad eyeing a career change, asked pay and training questions while shepherding a family friend through the cab tours. Fourteen-year-old Shelby climbed into a plow truck, discovered the blade was “literally just a button,” and walked away with a new sense of what she could handle — even if she still likes the idea of cosmetology. For younger kids like Octavia, the hook was simple: honk the horn, crawl under the frame, picture yourself in the seat.

Industry pro Dakota Muniz — who grew up as one of her dad’s “prettier sons” and has out-hunted more than a few of the guys who said girls couldn’t — told the group about her logistics job at Refractories West. Trucking, she reminded them, isn’t only about driving; dispatch, routing and operations all need talent. Every time another woman joins the field, she said, it feels like that Shania Twain chorus — “Let’s go, girls!”

The stakes are real. Companies are dangling bonuses while older drivers retire, and the sector can’t afford to ignore half the workforce. That’s why Kimes hopes the Douglas event, the only one of its kind in Wyoming, multiplies. The day runs on volunteers — fuel, time, equipment — because the payoff isn’t immediate. It’s the longer arc: a bigger talent pool, better-paid Wyoming families, and girls who see big rigs as an open road, not a closed club.

“Trucking is connections — we’re a family,” Kimes said, watching another kid hop down from the cab. “Let them climb up today, and maybe in a few years, some will climb back in for a career.”

The original story by Renée Jean for Cowboy State Daily.