In March 2021, a landmark $5 million dollar settlement was reached in a single sexual assault case against CRST Expedited, Inc. (Natalie Weatherford and John Taylor Secure a Record Setting $5 Million Settlement in Rape Case against CRST Trucking | Taylor & Ring (taylorring.com) by the law firm Taylor & Ring .
Anyone who has not been spending their days splitting hairs on Facebook over the minutiae of trucking topics and other non-issues would know I have specifically focused on rape in truck driver training since I entered trucking nearly 15 years ago. Why? because no one else would say anything, though it seemed to me that nearly everyone knew something about it.
Because of my writings on this subject over the years, I have been regularly contacted by law firms
for insight on a variety of cases. They have involved rape, sexual harassment, lease schemes, wage theft, gender discrimination, the arbitration act that was heard by The Supreme Court, pregnancy discrimination, even the Tracy Morgan Walmart crash. Many times, I have helped willingly for free but when a case requires many hours of reading and research on policies and practices, being compensated for time spent on a case designates you as an expert. If you were not aware of this, you were not paying attention.
Law firms contact me because I am the only one who has written about certain topics extensively even though others might be better situated to write about such things but have chosen to ignore them. Over the years, I have received hundreds of distress calls from drivers because there are few others to call for help. They should be able to get a response from those who are better funded and who claim they set up shop to help women overcome obstacles, like the women in trucking association for instance. Isn’t being raped in truck driver training an obstacle? It would seem to fit the WIT mission statement wouldn’t it?
I formed REAL Women in Trucking as a working driver when I didn’t even have a place to call home. The organization was informal in 2010 because I thought if I raised this issue, people in trucking would care to help. I thought I could go on in a year and fade into the background. After all, Why should a driver need to spend over a decade holding a mirror up to the face of trucking to expose them the their own enabling of rape and exploitation of truck drivers in this industry? I found there were few who had the courage to challenge the establishment and many who would sell their soul for 15 minutes of fame wearing a red shirt. The so-called “influencers” and “leaders” have a blind spot when it comes to rape happening in truck driver training.
Jane Doe was sexually assaulted at CRST in 2017 , nearly 10 years after my first post about this troubled training fleet on this very blog ( My 1st post about CRST from 2009 ). Silence, excuses and failed leadership is why sexual assault allegations have continued at multiple training fleets with the same business model. Pretending you are not aware may help you sleep better at night, but it doesn’t make the problem go away.
Perhaps the worst of the worst enablers are the women in trucking who “KNOW” but dig their heels in to lie to themselves and to others about how much they know. Insisting instead on keeping their head in the sand, their eyes and ears covered. Spoiler Alert: You nice ladies are part of the problem, you are a rapist’s best friend because they know they can count on you to look the other way, make excuses, and give them an out.
It has been nearly 2 months since the law firm published the landmark settlement, what some in trucking might call a “nuclear verdict” in Jane Doe v CRST Expedited, Inc. , some do not think the settlement was nearly enough. While we see trucking publications write about how they support women and diversity, we have yet to see any notable trucking trade publications like FreightWaves, HD Trucking, Fleet Owner, Transport Topics, Landline or others speak a word about this significant case.
All of these publications employ women writers who form the “Women in Trucking” association, most who do not drive. It’s interesting since Ellen Voie, President of Women in Trucking testified in this rape case for the perpetrator. Yes! The President of the Women in Trucking Association testified against the woman who was raped.
This is true, despite the censorship, pearl clutching and gaslighting taking place on the WIT page damage control team claiming Ellen Voie was hired to give best practices in this case.
For anyone who takes the time to read the public document deposition of Ellen Voie, you can read in her own words that she was hired to refute the expert witness testimony for the plaintiff. The expert witness for the plaintiff was ME and the plaintiff was a female truck driver student who was sexually assaulted. Ellen was hired at the conclusion of the case to refute me and she failed miserably.
Ellen Voie was absolutely NOT hired to present best practices. For one, she has none, and any she does have, she likely lifted the content from someone else. That has been pretty much documented here on this blog since 2009. Furthermore, if Ellen was indeed supposed to do such a thing as present best practices in Jane Doe v CRST Expedited, she sunk the ship with her testimony. You can download and read her entire deposition HERE .
I would need a month off just to highlight all the misleading answers she gave in her sworn deposition. I covered some of them in the post on the REAL Women in Trucking blog, Ellen Voie Testifies Against a Woman in a Sexual Assault Case – Real Women In Trucking
It’s difficult to pick the worst of the worst statements Ellen made in her deposition but one of the most glaring of her attempts to mislead under penalty of perjury was on how long she has known about the rape problem CRST.
She certainly remembered being called a pimp on this blog so she should certainly recall that this blog also holds a key timeline that contradicts her testimony. I only wish this case could have been heard by a jury trial. By the way Ellen, ( who claims she doesn’t read this blog but her friend “Dick” apparently does it for her) I was never terminated from any trucking job.
So anyway, I received some email inquiries following the 1st publication of Ellen’s damning deposition performance from women truck drivers from two camps, the majority who are already WOKE about Ellen and glad to see her show her true colors and then there is the minority who were “concerned” but mostly because they wanted to know how I could be considered an expert. They really did not care about the woman who was raped or knowing about the other cases pending right now by other women truck drivers who have yet to get justice.
These types of women in the minority I hope reflect what will be the past of trucking very soon since we finally learned in this deposition that the Women in Trucking Association has less than 600 individual women truck drivers who are members. Ellen also confirmed that WIT corporate support is making up the $1 million in revenue being generated by the association which pays her hefty salary. As I have said before on this blog, Ellen Voie is a woman who has never been a driver but has made a living off the backs of women WHO ARE drivers and she was eager to testify in a sexual assault case against a woman who hoped to be in trucking. Did her sponsors know? She testified that they didn’t.
Isn’t ironic that the Women in Trucking Association claims they are “bringing gender diversity to transportation” while calling mutual prospective sponsors to have them ignore the most diverse trucking groups that exist, S.H.E. Trucking Sisterhood, and trying to claim WIT supports LGBTQ truckers while ignoring the actual work of the LGBT Truckers group! These are examples why the Women in Trucking Association has less than 600 actual individual members who are women truck drivers. Ellen testifying against women in a class action gender discrimination case and now a sexual assault case is just the icing on the cake. Newsflash: You aren’t BRINGING Diversity to trucking, it’s already here, you’ve just been cherry picking who you want to see.
For those who want to see my deposition so they can “compare” what I said to what Ellen said without ever asking about the rape problem that has been going on for two decades in this industry, my first response is, the case is not sealed, all you need to do is order my deposition from the court. I will make it publicly available when I receive it but you can always put forth the effort and the .50 per page to obtain it yourself. But honestly, what the hell is wrong with you that the only thing that triggers you to have the inclination to write to me after 14 years upon hearing that Ellen Voie, President of Women in Trucking testified in a rape case against a woman truck driver is to ask me what makes me an expert?
Maybe you should ask yourself how you could be a better human being by becoming an expert yourself instead of selling out and brown-nosing the devil.
These words you cannot UNSEE , you are defending less than 600 individual women truck drivers in an industry with 3.5 million truck drivers in which 6.5% are women. Most who have never heard of WIT and those who have, know Ellen is no friend to women and never has been.
