In honor of Women’s History Month, we decided to share a few of the most interesting “firsts” achieved by women throughout the transportation industry.
The first African American driver for the U.S. Postal Service was Mary Fields in 1892 who, at 60 years of age, drove a team of six horses along her delivery route in the rough lands of Montana, earning the nickname “Stagecoach Mary”. She was quite a character known for her fearless demeanor and unfailing reliability, and she carried multiple firearms as protection from thieves and bandits.
Only 17 years later Alice Ramsey became the first woman to drive a four-cylinder car coast-to-coast from New York to California in 1909. At a time when women were discouraged from even driving, this 59-day, 3,800-mile journey must have been one epic road trip. It’s worth also mentioning that in 1960 the American Automobile Association (AAA) named Alice the “Woman Motorist of the Century.”
According to most accounts, the first female truck driver was Luella Bates who started her career in 1918 when she was hired by Four Wheel Drive Auto Co. in Wisconsin to test drive its vehicles. After World War I, Luella became the first female truck driver to travel across state lines and received her commercial driver’s license in New York in 1920.
Lillie Elizabeth Drennan was the first woman to receive a commercial driver’s license in the state of Texas in 1929, and she went on to found her own company called Drennan Truck Lines (DTL). These early years were difficult for women in the transportation industry, and she faced significant challenges and discrimination. Lillie persevered however and her company thrived over the next 24 years. She was one of the industry’s first to understand the importance of setting delivery schedules to ensure timely deliveries and DTL had a truly remarkable 100% safety record.
The first woman to drive for UPS was Mazie Lanham in 1943. During World War II, while most young men were serving in the military, UPS hired many women to help handle operations and deliveries. The male UPS drivers were known as “Brown Buddies”, so Mazie and her peers were called the “Brown Betties”, and they paved the way for women to build careers in the package delivery industry.
These pioneering women were indeed trailblazers for the thousands of women who followed in their wheel tracks. Today it’s more common than ever to find women bringing their energy, determination, intelligence, and drive to benefit all segments of the transportation and logistics industry worldwide.
