Why do Russian women go to truck drivers?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Teacher Natalya Dolzhikova decided to change her profession after 30 years of work in a rural school - now she drives a huge KamAZ and travels around the country. And she's not alone.

“Once I caught myself thinking - it's time! If not now, then never! And in my old age, sitting on a bench, I will look at young people longingly, tormenting myself with thoughts of what I could have done, but I was afraid, - this is how Natalya Dolzhikova, a 49-year-old teacher of a rural school in the village of Turovka, Oryol region, explained her decision to become a truck driver.

Natalia dreamed about the profession of a truck driver since childhood, when she first saw a man driving a large truck. In 2018, Dolzhikova quit her job at school and went to study at a driving school in the city of Livny, where she received a driving license of category E. These rights allow you to drive passenger buses, as well as attach loads weighing more than 750 kg. Natalya turned out to be the only woman in the Oryol region with such a category of rights.

Natalia Dolzhikova - "Verkhovye" newspaper

Then Natalya got a job as a truck driver in a Moscow transport company and began to drive a KamAZ with a carrying capacity of 20 tons and a length of 13.5 meters, she named the car Lyalya, writes Orel Times.

The publication specifies that since then she has visited many Russian cities, and has also received an international driver's license and can transport dangerous goods. She travels from 700 to 750 km per day.

Crimean trucker Yulia Lazareva - Sergey Malgavko / TASS

“Curb your fears and move forward! Don't be afraid that it won't work. Be afraid that you will not try to turn your river of life into a different channel,”advises the woman from Orlov.

According to Natalia (quoted by Esquire), she also began to communicate with other truckers - so far she only knows about 33 Russian women who have mastered this profession.

“For the first time I noticed a woman driving a truck in Astrakhan. Now I am a member of a group in a free application for mobile devices. There are still 33 trucker girls from all over the country. Do you know which ones there are? They are only 25 years old, and they "gag the man in the belt," says Natalya

Contrary to prohibitions

Until 2019, the trucker profession was on the list of prohibited professions for women. In August 2019, the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Russian Federation excluded this profession from the list, and now everyone will be able to drive cars with a carrying capacity of more than 2.5 tons from January 1, 2021.

Crimean trucker Yulia Lazareva - Sergey Malgavko / TASS

Despite the ban still in effect, several trucker girl blogs can be found on Instagram. One of them is led by Ekaterina Kuznetsova - according to her, she has traveled 77 out of 85 regions of Russia. She dreamed of becoming a truck driver from school, but her parents did not allow her. As a result, the girl got a job in a truck car service to pick up spare parts, and then unlearned her driving license in secret from her family.

“When I called to get a job, people thought it was a joke, they were sure that I had the wrong number. Six months later, I realized that I had to go from another entrance and buy my own truck,”Kuznetsova said in her blog.

According to her, when people see a woman driving a car, they immediately imagine her as a feminist.

“They think that this is such an unbreakable feminist, fights for women's rights, wants to prove something to everyone. This is not so, I don’t advocate anything like that”, - sums up the trucker.

Yulia Lazareva, a truck driver who has been delivering horses since 2013, says on her Instagram that laziness led her to this profession.

“This is not work, this is the easiest occupation of all that I know. And they can even pay some pennies for it, which is also a plus,”Lazareva answers to subscribers' questions.

Another 26-year-old trucker Yekaterina Gromova from the Khabarovsk Territory has been driving trucks since 2018.

“On the way, I just feel an unreal calmness, relaxation, I rest in my soul. Now I am like a fish in water. I'm happy, - writes Ekaterina in one of her posts.