Pint-sized Power Behind the Wheel

November 14, 2016

Jonajah Abdussabuur is turning a lot of heads these days – that is when the petite female driver jumps out of the driver’s seat of the big rig she’s driving for Bennett International Group’s DriveAway division. And Abdussabuur said she loves some of the looks she tends to get…The “You’re driving that” look.

Abdussabuur, of Wilmington, Del., said at the age of 20, she wasn’t focused and not sure of what she wanted to do. With her mother a driver of a school bus and her brother a driver for the state, she was encouraged to try her hand at the wheel, and on her 21st birthday, she got her commercial driver’s license and hit the road. She’s been driving now for more than nine years.

After some prompting from a coworker who had started driving for Bennett, Abdussabuur applied and began driving for Bennett too. That was a little more than three years ago.

“I tell people all the time I love the job, and I love the company,” she said. “It was the best fit for me.”

Abdussabuur said that DriveAway has more than enough work so she drives exclusively for Bennett, and she can work as much or as little as she wants to. With her love of travelling, she can use driving to her advantage by looking for the areas she wants to visit and then she plans her runs accordingly using Bennett’s load boards.

One of the things she likes best about driving for Bennett is the dispatchers.

“I enjoy dealing with the people,” she said. “They (the dispatchers) are very pleasant to talk to.”

And after speaking with them on the phone, she said it’s nice to meet them in person and put a face with a name. She said that anytime she has been on the road and had a personal issue, her dispatchers have been more than helpful and have gone above and beyond their job to show they care.

In Abdussabuur’s case, driving for Bennett has been a good thing when it comes to her family life. Being single, driving for Bennett has allowed her to move back home to Delaware where she can be closer to her mother, her brother, and other family members.

Driving, Abdussabuur said, is a big boost to her self –confidence and after taking a load she said she feels a sense of accomplishment. She added that it’s a lot of fun, too.

And the fact that everything at Bennett is online, is a plus. From picking her loads to getting the breakout of her pay, she said it keeps things simple.

“The people are amazing,” she said. “The technology is amazing. It makes it easy to do my job.”

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