BMT0619

FedEx driver Rachel Bothwell spends time off
hauling rodeo bulls; loves her career
Dorothy Cox
Growing up on a farm in west central Minnesota,
Rachel Bothwell was familiar with driving trucks,
and after graduating high school in 2001, this
Women In Trucking’s (WIT) March Member of the Month
got a job baling hay and trucking it to horse barns in the
Twin Cities area.
“I loved being out of doors,” the 36-year-old said.
“Trucking came to me very naturally and I loved not
having a boss looking over my shoulder, so it was
perfect.”
Then a good friend of hers heard that there were lots of
jobs in Gillette, Wyoming, because of the oil boom and
they decided to check it out.
“I had no attachments to Minnesota so away we went,”
she said. And while her friend got a job in construction,
Bothwell got a job hauling explosives.
It was in Wyoming that Bothwell met her husband
Thad, a professional bull rider who now has his own
construction company. When they met, he had just
retired from 20 years in bull riding.
She moved with Thad to his home town of Rapid City,
South Dakota, and eight years ago came across a job
with FedEx Freight that would get her home every night
and every weekend.
She goes to work quite early in the morning and
completes her paperwork before delivering freight
in and around Rapid City. “I drive around, deliver the
freight and do the rehooks,” she said. It’s a city job
where everything is in a 15-mile radius and she often
sees the same customers over and over, which she
likes.
“It’s a rural community. I’m definitely on a personal basis
as well as a business basis” with customers, she said.
“You get to know people … see their kids in the same
sporting events; it gives you something to talk about and
relate to outside of work.”
Neither of her parents were surprised that she went into
trucking. In fact, Bothwell said, her mom drove OTR in
the late seventies and early eighties and her dad, being
a farmer, was also pleased at her career choice.
“They’re both proud of where my CDL has taken me,”
she said, “proud of what I’ve accomplished.”
Her husband, on the other hand, was initially a little
surprised that she was a truck driver.
Now he’s glad, though, because he’s a “stock contractor”
and supplies bulls for professional rodeo events in the
region.
That means he’s glad to turn over the livestock truck
keys to Rachel. They haul the big animals to Nebraska,
Wyoming, Colorado and points in between up to 12
hours away from Rapid City. Once they’ve reached
their destination, they unload the bulls, sort them and
load them into the chutes. It’s her job to put the “flank
strap” on them, which is what makes them buck. If the
rodeo is far from home, they stay the night and bed
the bulls down in a pen. If they’re closer to home, they
load the animals and take them back home the same
evening.
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