Men using the only female toilet at Nhill trailer exchange sparks a strong response
Celebrating International Womens’ Day this week, we at OwnerDriver thought it a was the perfect time to share a letter we received this week from female truckie, Tara McFayden who wanted to share her experience of the Nhill trailer exchange in Victoria.
In the spirit of IWD we have published Tara’s letter in full so she can have her say on an issue which affects all female truckies, in particular those who need to use the Nhill truck-trailer exchange but often cannot due to men occupying the ladies loo.
Tara’s letter is below.
I’m a linehaul driver that uses the Nhill trailer exchange most nights or days every week.
When this place first opened there was no ladies toilet. Well I got one, and I mean ONE. I advocated for privacy screens etc. so people couldn’t just perve from trucks.
Well every time one of us females go to use our ONE toilet there’s some lazy male using it and they’re in there for over 20min when there’s four or five cubicles in the mens. I myself have complained numerous times about this to no avail. Apparently we are back to ‘women don’t drive trucks’, well I have for 30 years.
So as we have no toilets we have to go to Lawloit parking bay and use drop toilets with no water or lights about 20 min away. We do have the option of peeing behind or under our trailers or wetting our pants, but it’s all a bit uncomfortable.
I have contacted Hindmarsh council on several occasions about this. The last time I was told that the female truck drivers were going to get a separate toilet of our own. That was last year. I’m still waiting. They can’t blame COVID as we all had to work through it.
I don’t ask for much but a damn toilet I can use and more that one so we females aren’t queued up out the front. Somewhere we can have a wash to freshen up but it seems that only applies to men down here and some of the ones down here need more than a basic wash to tidy up.
I really don’t know what to do about this at this time. There’s only a small group of us and we’re getting fed up with it. There’s only so many people you can yell at.
It’s also been an issue for a number of years especially since more women are driving doing east-west runs.
At the moment no one can use the ladies toilet as the door is locked so there are no toilets available for women at Nhill trailer exchange at all. So where am I supposed to go to the toilet??? I’ve just driven 4 1/2 hours to get here.
Getting pretty sick of how badly women are treated in the transport industry by the government. When this place first opened there were no ladies toilets at all.
Tara McFadyen
Really angry female truck driver