Michelle Salikie, a driver with Walmart since the 2000s, drives a 53-foot truck through Alaska, in August.
Photographer: Ash Adams/Bloomberg
Walmart’s $115,000 Starting Pay and Better Rigs Draw Women to Trucking
As trucking faces a demographic crisis, Walmart has managed to grow its drivers by making the job more attractive to people who might otherwise eschew the field.
The bright blue and yellow Walmart logo pops against the rugged Chugach Mountains as one of the retailer’s 53-foot trucks winds along Alaska’s curving route 1. The rig is nearing the end of Walmart’s longest, most beautiful trucking route — and its most dangerous. It takes about five days to complete the 5,000 mile round-trip drive from Washington to Alaska, with two drivers trading off shifts at the wheel around the clock.
On a recent run, those drivers are Leslie Scott, 58, and Michelle Salikie, 69 — an unlikely duo in a country where fewer than one in 10 commercial truck drivers are women. People, Scott says, “are shocked when they see women up here. Especially at our age.”