Shannon Royce always knew she wanted to team drive with her husband, Greg, when their kids were grown. She didn’t harbor a similar desire to be a photographer, but the first passion led to the second.
Grandson Landyn Royce “hung the moon and stars as far as I’m concerned!” Shannon says.Royce, 45, recalled how she “was trying to be perfect” as she studied for the CDL test once she had her permit and started driving with Greg, who served as her trainer while they were leased to Prime, Inc. “I started taking pictures to take my mind off studying,” she said.
“I wanted my friends and family to see what we were seeing,” said Royce. Most of their travels were far away from their home in Florence, Alabama.
In the two years Royce has been chronicling their journeys, she’s posted hundreds of photos on Facebook and Instagram, many of which get reposted by Women in Trucking fans and others.
Her best work shows landscapes, often under turbulent skies, of the Midwest and West. Many others show closeups of food.
“We eat out a lot,” she said. “A lot of people like to see what we do out here, what we eat.”
“My Fave At Black Bear Diner,” Shannon Royce writes of this dish at a Colorado Springs Black Bear. It’s not part of a truck stop, but she says some Black Bears are.She and Greg had never eaten runza, the bread pockets filled with meat, onions and cabbage or sauerkraut, but found them to be common in Nebraska and elsewhere. “Some friends in Colorado knew what we were talking about,” but those back home didn’t.
Shannon and Greg are now leased to Barlow Truck Lines of Faucett, Mo., pulling a reefer with a leased 2017 Freightliner Cascadia.
Greg and Shannon Royce team drive for Barlow Truck Lines.Royce says she would recommend truck driving to any interested woman. She’s not had any negative experiences in being a woman driver, though she’s never driven solo.
“I’ve been treated pretty fairly out here,” she says. “My husband tells me about what a bad rap truck drivers get,” such as excessive restrictions on where they can park. “I just consider us like normal people. I love it out here.”
