Kristy Oglesby (Image Courtesy of Kristy Oglesby)Truck driver Kristy Oglesby is used to working in male-dominated fields. Before she joined the trucking industry, she was a barber.
“Being that the careers that I’ve been in are mostly things that men do, what I like most about it is that it’s a challenge. It challenges me on the regular,” Oglesby said.
Oglesby, who is from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, has had her CDL for four years now. She drivers for Unimark doing what many truckers know as piggyback driving, or hauling other trucks. Outside of actual driving, a large part of her job involves undecking the trucks. Sometimes someone else will operate the wrecker, but usually, she’s the one also operating the wrecker and doing all of the technical work to get the trucks undecked.
As a mother of five, though, Oglesby has learned how to work well under pressure.
Oglesby does piggyback hauling for Unimark. (Image Courtesy of Kristy Oglesby)“It’s almost like if you gave me a simple task, that might be hard for me. It’s easier for me to handle harder tasks because it exercises my mind a whole lot more than something plain or simple,” Oglesby said. “To me, you learn more and you make yourself more valuable. It’s always good to be up for a challenge.”
While she says not many women work with the same sort of freight that she does, she’d encourage other women to try it. She advises anyone interested in piggyback hauling to be open-minded and always up for a challenge.
“It’s not something that women do on the regular. You have to be able to hold your own as a woman and be around a lot of men and doing a manly job,” Oglesby said. “To me, that’s a challenge within itself, and to do the work and get it done. Me, I’m extremely proud of myself. It’s been something that I’ve been able to master and excel in it.”
