The Trucker Newspaper - October 15, 2018

Women to Watch
21
WOMEN IN TRUCKING
WIT’s Sarah Johnson learned about trailer leasing at dad’s knee, now helping run business
Dorothy Cox
dlcox@thetrucker.com
ST. CHARLES, Mo. — Although she found
what her dad did fascinating and as a kid hung
around his office where he leased and rented
trailers, Sarah Johnson didn’t think she wanted
to join the family business.
But after getting an undergraduate degree
in film and video from Chicago’s Columbia
College and interning on movie sets in Los
Angeles, “I still found my way back to transportation,”
said Johnson, Women In Trucking’s
September Member of the Month.
It was bound to happen. Johnson found a paper
she wrote in the third grade about what her
dad did and describing particular types of trailers
he had donated to a charitable cause.
“Clearly,” she said, “I took the industry in
and what my dad was doing, at an early age.”
She was working in Chicago for various film
production companies in the early 2000s, when
she learned her dad was trying to grow his asset
base and needed help with the business. At
the time, many movie productions were being
outsourced so there was a lull in her career. “I
could move home and help with the business,”
she decided.
So she and her family (husband Matt, a
daughter, now 13, and a son, now 9), came
back home to St. Charles, Missouri.
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Matt is a graphic designer and can work
from home and help look after the children
“while I’m out running around and traveling,”
said Sarah, who is now executive vice president
of the business — Milestone Equipment
Holdings, LLC.
Milestone has both chassis and trailers, making
for combined total assets of 80,000, including
56,000 trailers, dry vans, flatbeds and reefers.
A trailer rental or lease “is a good way to
add to a fleet,” she said, “even on a short-term”
basis. “It’s a good alternative” because a carrier
can “flex up or flex down” in size with the
"Sign on bonus"
"Paid Orientation"
economy.
It’s Johnson’s job to understand customers’
needs and support them and give them whatever
they need to be successful.
Johnson is a people person and loves traveling
to the company’s 27 U.S. locations. “I’ve thoroughly
enjoyed seeing the country,” she said.
They have customers with one trailer and
customers with 4,000. Much like trucking, itself,
the trailer renting and leasing business is
“big and diverse,” she said.
There’s no “average” customer at Milestone.
They run the gamut from automotive businesses,
to national beverage companies to video
gaming machine businesses to retailers to drayage
companies and everything in between.
She learned early on that “time is of the essence
in transportation” and that it’s important
to keep a cool head, gather the facts, put together
a plan and then execute it. In case nobody picked
up on it, “I love problem-solving,” she said.
Johnson also loves connecting with people
and it was that wanting to connect with others
in trucking that led her finding out about Women
In Trucking, of which she’s been a member
for a little over a year.
“I’d been doing research, wanting to network
and connect with people in the industry in a different
way,” she said. “We had a sales lady who
was also interested and we both joined” WIT.
She attended WIT’s business conference last
year in Kansas City and walked away with “inspiration
to think about being a professional,
focusing on my career but not forgetting I’m a
"Sign on bonus"
"Paid Orientation"
mother and keeping a good work-life balance.”
Also, she said, WIT has “given me confidence
that I’m not alone” as a woman in the
trucking industry.
Johnson has the advantage of having her dad
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— now retired — to talk with about the business.
“Dad has been a mentor, for sure,” she
said. “We’ll always have that understanding of
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the business. He knows the challenges I have.”
She’s also had the privilege of being mentored
by her father’s mentor, the late Richard
Crowley, who helped her dad get started in his
own business.
She remembers as a child going to work
with her father on occasion. “I always enjoyed
listening to him talk about his work. … He’d
point out things to me and to see it up close was
really impactful.”
Many’s the time Johnson was the only woman
in company meetings and she’s hired more
women to work at Milestone.
Women “have a different approach to
things,” she said. Not better, but different, and
they have a different management style.
“I appreciate it when I’m respected for the
value I’m bringing.”
She would encourage women to look at a
career in the trucking sector because it’s “a tremendous
industry. It’s growing and there are
a lot of interesting opportunities. The industry
could use more female perspectives.” 8
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The Women In Trucking Association is a nonprofit organization
focused on the transportation and logistics industry. Our mission?
To encourage the employment of women in the trucking industry,
promote their accomplishments and minimize obstacles faced by
women working in the trucking industry. WIT is proudly headed up
by President and CEO Ellen Voie.
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