The Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association celebrated Mira Ehrl as its professional truck driver of the month this June.
The 26-year-old driver likes to keep a low profile and go about her business. The award put her in the spotlight and she’s taking it in stride as her picture appeared in gas stations in Atlantic Canada.
The SFX Transport driver based in Charlottetown, P.E.I., said that her employers told her she deserved the nomination. She seemed surprised with the honor. “I just do my job. Everybody should do their job,” she said.
Part of doing her job includes performing thorough pre-trip and post-trip inspections of her tractor and trailer, reporting defects and communicating with dispatch. She tries to make it on time to her appointments and uses her drive time optimally. “I try to be careful and professional, I don’t know what makes it special,” she said with a laugh.
Ehrl said a good driver keeps things professional, always checks their load and is polite to customers. The key is not to argue even when you are frustrated or upset.
“If you don’t like what you are doing, find something else that makes you happy.”
Mira Ehrl, truck driver
She is passionate about trucking. “If you don’t like what you are doing, find something else that makes you happy.”
Ehrl, who was born and raised in Germany, comes from a family of truck drivers. Her father and grandfather were both truckers. “Every time I was off from school, I would go with them on a trip,” she recalled. Her husband Ivan is also a driver and works for SFX Transport.
Her grandparents raised her from the age of 14 and she has been working since she was a teenager. Her first job was at a salon, working as a hairdresser for a couple of years. She also mucked horse stalls and milked cows at a farm. A horse kicked her, breaking her leg, and she couldn’t work for almost 18 months.
She then began working as a forklift driver, and that’s where she met her future husband. “The company I worked for had many warehouses and on that day, I was working where Ivan was delivering freight,” she said.
Hauling containers in Germany
Keen to get her commercial driver’s licence, Ehrl approached the government to fund her training which cost 8,000 euros (about $12,750) at the time but was not successful. Her grandparents took a loan, and she got her licence at the age of 20.
She began working at a trucking company hauling containers and repaid her grandparents within a year. Her job included driving container B-trains all over Germany and into Austria.
Erhl and Ivan moved to Canada in January 2023, and began driving for SFX Transport the following month.
The young truck driver loves to be on the road, enjoying the quiet time and peace as she drives. Her traveling companion is Kira, a nine-year-old Australian shepherd and border collie mix. Her work trips sometimes last five to six days as she transports cargo into the U.S. and sometimes parts of Canada.
Challenges
It’s not all roses in trucking and she said it is sometimes hard to be patient when a customer keeps you waiting for hours, yet fines you when you are half an hour late for an appointment. Traffic and distracted drivers are also a problem. She noted there are way too many distracted drivers using their phones on the road.
Ehrl said sometimes male drivers get bossy and try to push her around. “They think that they can toy with you, but you need to show them that’s not the case. I speak my mind,” she said with a laugh.
But she added these issues should not stop women from joining the industry. They should join trucking for the right reasons and if they are passionate about it, not because their partner is a driver and is urging her to join them, she added.
