I THE EMPLOYED DRIVER: VANESSA ARMSTRONG, TIMAX EXHAUST SYSTEMS, HEMEL
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HEMPSTEAD, HERTS Many people would say that Vanessa Armstrong is too angry about the prejudice she encounters. Others would say her irritation with the transport world is justified—how else is she supposed to hold her own against the barrage of chauvinism she encounters while carrying out her job of truck driver?
Her anger extends from some drivers and customers to sections of her own management too. Her employer, Timax Exhaust Systems, incurred her wrath recently when she discovered that the company had issued a press release on her appointment as its first woman driver. Armstrong dismisses the idea that the company is trying to highlight its equal opportunities policy and believes it has used her as an excuse to advertise itself cheaply. That anger is compounded by the press release's introduction of her as "pretty Vanessa Armstrong". Armstrong fumes: "What does it matter if I'm pretty, ugly or otherwise? So what if I'm the first woman driver? Big deal. Everyone had better get used to it," she says," because soon there will be a whole lot more out there."
But if the ranks of women drivers are to swell, Armstrong says they will have to be a tough bunch. She believes the hardest part of being a woman driver is sticking up for yourself, and grinning and bearing lesser degrees of chauvinism the rest of the time.
It would be difficult to disagree that those hardest parts aren't tough. "The other day I drove into a customers yard and got out of the cab and one of the lads said to another 'Oh, she's got tits'. I said 'Yeah, well what do you expect. Haven't you ever seen a woman before?"
Armstrong says she found resistonce as soon as she mentioned last year that she wanted to move out of Timax's offices at Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire into the cab of a 7.5-tanner: "Before I started some men tried to put me off, mentioning the long hours and heavy lifting," she recalls. "One older bloke even told me that I'd find it tough 'at that time of the month'. I asked him if he'd ever had a period and told him to shut up. Are they really trying to say that a 27-year-old woman can't do the job that a 50-year-old man is doing? The job can be tough but you get used to it." But Armstrong is far from complaining about all mankind. She praises the other 26 drivers of 7.5-tonners at Hemel for supporting her enthusiastically when she applied for the driver's post. And she says that with most of her regular customers there are no problems: she is "treated like a person instead of a bird".
She also praises the company's newly appointed female transport and services manager for trying to encourage women into driving. But is the hassle really worth it? According to Armstrong the answer is a resounding 'yes': "You're your own boss and it's great seeing different places and meeting different people." For the moment Armstrong has no worries about the unsocial hours of 07:00hrs to 16:00hrs, five days a week. She believes customer demand for early deliveries mean the hours would be difficult to alter. She also thinks they discriminate against women, or men, holding the main responsibility for rearing children. But Armstrong wants more work, not less:. I want to get my HGV Class 1 and try international work. I want to see a bit more of the world and meet more people." Our Continental brothers had better watch out.
I by Karen Miles