What 31 Years on the Road Looked Like: Remembering Linda Kowalski

Linda Sue Kowalski got her CDL on a Tuesday in March of 1993. She had been trying for two years — not because the test was difficult, but because the schools she applied to kept suggesting she might be more comfortable in a different program. She was 24 years old. She drove for a regional carrier in eastern Ohio for two years, then went independent. She never went back to company driving.

When Linda died on January 27, 2024, at 55 years old, she had logged more than 3.4 million miles as an owner-operator. She had driven every major freight corridor in the continental United States. She had been on every stretch of I-80 that exists. She was one of fewer than 7% of female OTR drivers in the country at the time of her death — a figure that was actually higher than it had been when she started.

What the Industry Was Like in 1993

Linda entered the industry during a period when women in long-haul trucking were rare enough that other drivers often radioed dispatch to ask if there had been a mistake. She kept a logbook for her first three years of every comment she heard on the CB radio that was directed at her, intending to stop when the comments became ordinary. The logbook filled two notebooks. She stopped keeping it not because the comments stopped, but because she decided they weren't worth the paper.

Her CB handle was "Steel Magnolia." She did not pick it — another driver gave it to her in 1997 after she pulled a jackknifed rig off a median on I-70 in Kansas during a January ice storm and sat with the driver for two hours until help arrived. The name spread. By 2005, drivers who had never met her knew the handle.

The Six She Mentored

Between 2004 and 2022, Linda Kowalski personally mentored six women into professional trucking careers. She is survived by all six of them still driving. Their first names are Carol, Maria, Dana, Priscilla, June, and Tasha. Each of them has a different story of how they met Linda — a fuel stop conversation, a trucking school referral, a message through an online forum for women in trucking — but the common thread is that Linda was the first person in the industry who told them, without qualification, that they belonged there.

Carol has been driving for 19 years and now mentors women herself out of a regional carrier in Indiana. Maria drives refrigerated freight in the Southwest. Dana retired in 2022 but still volunteers at a women-in-trucking advocacy group in Columbus. Priscilla, June, and Tasha were all present at Linda's memorial in Youngstown, Ohio.

Her Home Life

Linda owned a house in Youngstown that she had bought in 2001 with 11 years of savings. She had a garden in the backyard that her neighbor maintained when she was on the road — which was most of the time — and a shed where she kept her own tools, organized with the same precision she kept her maintenance logs. Her family says she slept better in the truck than she did in the house, and that she said so openly, without apology.

The CB radio on her wall at home was a Cobra 29 Classic, signed in permanent marker by six retired truckers she had driven with over the years. She had it mounted next to her CDL renewal certificates, which she kept framed in a row going back to 1993. All 31 years of them.

What the Six Said at the Memorial

Priscilla spoke first. She said Linda had told her in 2009, at a Flying J in Laramie, Wyoming, that the road doesn't care what you look like as long as you respect it. She said Linda meant that seriously — not as encouragement, but as a fact she had spent years verifying.

"She never once said 'you can do this.' She said 'this is how you do this.' There's a difference. She treated us like we were already there." — Tasha, at Linda Kowalski's memorial, February 2024

The Memorial Wall

Linda Kowalski's tribute was submitted to the NFTDRF Memorial Wall by her family in February 2024. Her sister, who handled the submission, said the Wall was the right place for her because Linda had spent 31 years being present in a space — the American freight system — where her presence was still being questioned. The Wall names her without qualifier. Her family says that's what she would have wanted. Her tribute can be found at nftdf.org/memorial-wall/linda-kowalski.