Since our last post was about a couple of famous male truck drivers I though I’d devote a post to the first female company truck driver.

Trucking and Women are 2 words that were never put together at the beginning of trucking. Not until 1929, about 30 years after trucking started, did the first woman get her license and her own trucking company. Lillie Elizabeth Drennan, from Galveston, Texas, was the first frontier in this man’s world. Given up for adoption at three weeks old in 1897, she was raised by a couple that divorced when she was 17 years old. In fifth grade, Lillie dropped out of school and when she was thirteen, she became a telephone operator until age 22 when she lost her hearing (most people believe from scarlet fever as a child). She wore a hearing aid for the rest of her life.

From age 20 to 32, she was married to her first husband, Willard Ernest Drennan. She then married S. B. Boulware at age 34 and divorced at age 46. She co-purchased a trucking company early in her second marriage, and when they divorced, she gained the company, Drennan Trucking Line, along with a bottling plant.

It wasn’t easy gaining her license, as the Railroad Commission was concerned with her hearing as a safety risk. Lillie’s response to this was “If any man can beat my record I’ll just get out of here.” Then she got her CDL.

Her safety record was awesome and she got safety awards from the Texas Motor Transportation and the Railroad Commission. And in 1950, she drove an obstacle course in the Dallas state fairground, showing how good her driving skills were. Isn’t that amazing?

As a frontier in the trucking business, Lillie not only went into the business, but she also did better than the guy drivers in most areas of the field.

Now days, women are 200,000 strong in the 3.2 million drivers in trucking. Thank you Lillie.

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/article/0,,id=170623,00.html

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/DD/fdr15.html

http://www.jobmonkey.com/truckdriving/women-in-trucking.html