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This trucker is here to remind women they can do it all and secure a bag, too! Clarissa Rankin may be familiar to some. The trucker, entrepreneur, and social media guru has created a lane for women in a predominantly male-driven industry, which in turn started to make ends meet for her family. In 2018, as Rankin was obtaining her commercial driving license, she noticed there were not any Black women in the orientation class.
Education may not be everything, but a strong work ethic is, and Darrel Harris is proof of that in the trucking industry. For Harris, formal education wasn’t in his plans when he sought a career, but making money and a life for himself was. Thanks to advice from his mother’s boyfriend at age 19, he landed a job as a dock worker where he says the money made was like a dream come true coming from where he was from, Yahoo! Finance reports. “I went down there and applied for the job and I’ll never forget they offered me $10.50 an hour as a part-time dockworker and where I come from that’s real money,” said Harris in an interview with Black Enterprise. “I remember at the time thinking if I can hang on to this job and make $10.50 a year for the rest of my career I’ll be happy.” Life had bigger plans for Harris, who over about two and a half decades managed to work his way up the trucking and shipping industry ladder to become Yellow Trucking’s first Black president. In April, Harris...
Without the trucking industry, the world would not be the same. When it comes to trucking, people rarely make the connection that the driving force behind it is technology, but for Pierre Laguerre, he’s made it his mission to bridge the gap between the two. “People think that trucking is a cowboy industry, that doesn’t need technology,” said Laguerre during the latest episode of Black Tech Green Money with host Will Lucas. “What technology can definitely do is destigmatize trucking.” With its fair share of prejudgements, people think that trucking is all about older drivers who have to spend hundreds of nights away from their families which in turn leads to poor food options. However, Laguerre shares that technology is changing all of that. “In my own experience I’ve seen that you can leverage technology to create a system, to create a community where drivers have better flexibility, better scheduling and allow those within the business to understand the data points of where a...
Because Black women can drive big rigs too! When it comes to the $800 billion trucking industry , women are often left out of the conversation. The Leading Ladies of Logistix are using their platform to change this. Samantha Smith, Tawana Randall, Tristen Simmons, and Vanessa Gant created the organization to not only empower businesswomen of the transportation and logistics industries but to also educate and create opportunities for them. “I was just looking to connect with other women in the industry that either had trucking companies or worked within dispatch or broker freight,” said Smith in an exclusive interview with AfroTech. “It’s definitely more of a value when you have everyone that can collectively come together and provide different pieces of the industry and different types of values from the industry and then mentor other women who wish to join the trucking industry,” Randall added. Each of the Leading Ladies of Logistix offers a different asset to the organization as a...
Fleeting, a Black-owned commercial trucking and fleet management services company has announced its seed round investment of $500,000 from NBA superstar Kyrie Irving and his newly-founded KAI Eleven Consulting, LLC (KAI 11 Consulting) along with Lockstep Ventures, a new venture fund founded by Bonin Bough, Marcus Glover, and Michael Loeb. “I am thrilled to receive this investment from KAI 11 Consulting and Lockstep Ventures to further scale our business and empower those from underserved communities,” said Fleeting’s CEO and founder Pierre Laguerre in an official press release. “The trucking industry is one of the fastest-growing in the U.S. and I want to ensure it provides access to everyone who wants to be part of it. I intend to help those in the Fleeting family to become financially independent and even entrepreneurs themselves.” In the new joint investment from KAI 11 Consulting and Lockstep Ventures, Fleeting aims to grow its social impact arm to include hiring and training...