Sisterhood steering careers
When Jess Mclachlan wanted to become a truck driver, her son told she couldn’t because it was just for boys.
“Just watch me,” she responded. Mclachlan,nowa Taranaki-based Fonterra tanker driver, is one of the handful of women in the male-dominated role being celebrated this International Women’s Day to encourage others to give it a go.
The mum of three is one of the newest on the team, transferring to trucks after spending 11 years in the Whareroa Fonterra dairy factory near Hāwera.
She wanted a new challenge so, despite having no experience with truck driving, decided to do a course in New Plymouth to get her licence.
“In the factory it’s very isolated whereas every day is different as a driver. I wish I had done it sooner.”
After getting her class 5 licence, Mclachlan said she begged the team to take her on and got some experience through the winter off-season.
When friends see her in the driver’s seat, they can’t believe she’s driving something so big. “It just feels like driving a car; you’re still in the same position. You forget how big it is.”
Mclachlan said drivers have no idea where they’re going until they turn up to work and jump in the cab. “We jump in the truck and you sign in and it brings it up on a map where you’re going. Every day is different.”
Driving 500km in a day is the norm, travelling anywhere between Waikato and Pahiatua.
Mclachlan acknowledges how male dominated the job is, but it doesn’t bother her.
Having a good sense of humour is key, she said. “You’ve got to give as good as you get. You can’t be so serious.”
Karla Jamieson joined Fonterra five years ago, and got her truck licence when she was 18. She echoed Mclachlan’s enjoyment of the job, and the variety of places involved.
“The other day my truck was loaded with cream so I had to take 2500 litres of cream to Ferndale in Eltham and then bring the rest back to unload and then went down to Apiti.”
She used to work six days on, three days off, but now she works four days on, four days off, which involves two day shifts and two nights. It gives her a better quality of life, she said. “Six and three is hard yakka. This gives me more time to spend with my horses and bike riding.”
The key to working night shift was all about getting your routine right and making sure you got a good sleep, she said.
Before driving for Fonterra, Jamieson was dairy farming for 15 years.
Her advice to women who were thinking about truck driving was just to give it a go.
“We need more women in the job; we’ve got more attention to detail.”
When Dayna Thompson, who moved from the hospitality industry, started driving trucks, she said it was hard as a woman to find someone willing to give you experience.
It used to be an employment requirement for drivers to have a minimum two years of class 5 experience. Fonterra now prefers people who are natural drivers with a little experience, because they can then train them in the way they want them to drive, rather than having a driver with years of bad habits.
“We have a programme called the Te Kura Programme that the depots run,” a Fonterra spokesperson said.
“It’s all about getting inexperienced drivers into the workforce,” they said. “They take them from a class 5 L to full class 5 and looking at class 4 now too; they are bonded to Fonterra on completion but also puts drivers back into the national driver pool.”
Thompson said she was lucky when she was getting her licence that she had a cousin in the industry who she could get her hours through. “I think the age-old view of ‘the stay-at-home mum and the man does all the heavy machinery jobs’ mentality is running its course, because we can do it just as good as men.”
The mum-of-one worked in trucking in Brisbane before moving home to Taranaki.
“It’s not actually hard work. It’s not like we’re lifting bloody logs all day, or chucking chains over the back of loads, which is what I was doing in Brisbane. It’s pretty easy. Being women, we just get it done.”