Alaska woman keeps on truckin’

Despite challenges, unconventional career appeals to outdoorsy professional

BY ROSE RAGSDALE FOR GREENING OF OIL

If you happen to pass a big rig hauling heavy equipment to the North Slope oil fields on Alaska’s only highway north to the Arctic, don’t be surprised if you spot a young woman behind the steering wheel.

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The trucker you see might be Leah Marie Thiele, a sassy 26-year-old who has taken to working in the male-dominated commercial transportation industry of the Last Frontier with enthusiasm and growing skill.

Thiele is employed by Anchorage, Alaska-based Carlile Transportation Systems of “Ice Road Truckers” fame. She is a certified heavy haul trucker, meaning she is trained to handle rigs transporting wide and/or heavy loads, ones so slow and tricky to maneuver that pilot cars have to accompany them to help with navigation. 

Two years of commercial driving school

Born in West Virginia, Thiele finished high school in Eagle River, a bedroom community near Anchorage, after her family moved to Alaska from Ohio when she was 15.

Though she favored her English and art courses in high school, Thiele chose to attend commercial driving school for two years before earning certifications for driving heavy equipment and commercial trucks.

“I went to school to operate heavy equipment. They offered to provide me with CDL training and a CDL license for another thousand dollars,” Thiele told Greening of Oil in a recent interview. 

A monster challenge

By chance, she finished the training course in the middle of winter and discov

ered she could not find work as a heavy equipment operator at that time of year. The CDL-A license that she had earned enabled her to find work driving commercial trucks.

Thiele then discovered that she loved driving the big trucks. And that’s a wonder, considering the terrain she must traverse every other week to do her job.

Roughly half of the route to the oil fields is the James Dalton Highway, a 414-mile gravel road notorious for deep potholes in summer and thick sheets of ice in winter. It directly parallels the trans-Alaska oil pipeline and is one of the most isolated roads in the United States.

Despite its remoteness, the Dalton Highway carries a good amount of truck traffic: about 160 big rigs daily in the summer months and 250 trucks daily in the winter. All vehicles must take extreme precaution when driving on the road, and drive with headlights on at all times.

Quite a few steep grades (up to 12 percent) also mark the route.

Windshields and headlights are easy targets of flying rocks as the big semis speed along the slippery track, kicking up thick clouds of dust or mud much of the year and reducing visibility to absolute zero. Along the way, there are only two spots to buy gas or supplies—the Yukon River crossing and Coldfoot.

Truckers on the Dalton have given their own names to its various features, including: The Taps, The Shelf, The Bluffs, Oil Spill, Beaver Slide, Two and a Half Mile and the Roller Coaster. The road reaches its highest altitude as it crosses the Brooks Range at Atigun Pass.

The highway is the featured road on the third season of the History Channel’s reality television series, “Ice Road Truckers,” which aired May 31-Aug. 23. 

A serendipitous career

Part of the charm for Thiele of commercial trucking to and from Alaska’s remote oil fields is the ability to spend most of her time in the outdoors. An avid fly fisher, snowmobiler and four-wheeler, Thiele said she appreciates the opportunity to see caribou, moose and bears in the wild.

Driving a lot on deserted stretches, however, gets “boring unless you’re on the radio,” she said.

“That’s what I like about heavy haulers. You have your pilot cars and you can carry on a conversation. And you can talk to other drivers out there,” she explained.

The trucker also listens to music on the radio. “But not too loud, especially heavy hauling because you have to listen to your pilot cars,” she cautioned.

Thiele said she typically works a 50- to 70-hour week and then gets a week off.

“You need to be ready to go at 7 a.m. and you’re done when the work’s done. Sometimes that’s 5 p.m. or sometimes it’s 10 or 11 p.m. at night. I get most weekends off, but sometimes I work Saturdays.” 

Hard work, good pay

Getting started in the field has been tough, Thiele said, especially because she is a woman. She and other female truckers have had to prove their mettle to male peers.

“I have to deal with a lot of criticism. And it’s a tough job. You’ve got to really want to do it. You have to love it,” she said. “We have to prove that we can do it.”

Thiele said she deals with the criticism by “working harder than the men” and by maintaining a positive attitude and good humor, as evidenced by the pink antennas she sports on her truck.

The young trucker also attracts her share of good-natured ribbing and has earned nicknames such as “Lowboy Leah” and “Push Button Princess.”

In addition to challenges and outdoors adventure, Thiele enjoys the $5,000 or so per month gross salary she earns. As she gains additional skill, she can expect her income to increase to roughly $8,000 per month, or $100,000 a year. 

A star in training

Thiele said she had one near mishap early in her career.

“I almost tipped a trailer on its side in the (Carlile) yard and it was full,” she recalled. “I was jackknifing it, trying to turn around in the yard. They had to get the forklifts out there and lift (the trailer) back up.”

The incident was especially embarrassing because the company president witnessed it, she added.

On the road, Thiele has had no accidents or mishaps. Her brakes did lock up once, but “that was an easy fix,” she said.

Moreover, she prevented accidents by spotting moose and other wildlife crossing the road and alerting other truckers to their presence.

If she encounters weather severe enough to obscure the road ahead, Thiele said she just pulls over and watches a movie until the way is clear again.

Overall, the young trucker has taken to her job with considerable success. During the past four years, she has typically driven pilot cars the 800 or so miles to Prudhoe Bay, and taken the wheel to steer the empty heavy haulers as they head south to Anchorage.

Carlile considers Thiele one of its rising young stars, especially after she took first place at a statewide truck-driving contest in 2009, competing in the five-axle flatbed category and represented Alaska in the national competition in California.

For Thiele, the job is just plain “fun.”

After winning the commercial trucking competition, Thiele said she had to leave the event early to serve as a bridesmaid in her friend’s wedding. It wasn’t until she attended the national contest in California that she learned of and befriended the winner of the Alaska competition in the five-axle van category, a woman trucker who works for Lynden Inc.  

Links of interest

Carlile Transportation Systems

Ice Road Truckers