National Truck Driver Appreciation Week 2026 runs September 13 through 19, and for the 38th consecutive year, the American Trucking Associations is inviting the country to pause and recognize the people who keep goods moving across every corner of the nation. More than 80% of U.S. communities rely exclusively on trucks to meet their freight transportation needs — and behind every one of those routes is a driver who showed up, did the job, and did it safely. One week a year to say thank you is the floor, not the ceiling.
What This Week Actually Represents
Throughout NTDAW, Americans come together to acknowledge and show gratitude for the tireless efforts of the 3.6 million professional truck drivers who work to deliver essential goods and resources to communities across the nation. That’s a number worth sitting with. Millions of people, operating under demanding conditions, often invisible until something goes wrong. Appreciation Week exists to make them visible. What it doesn’t always do well enough is make the women among them specifically visible — and that’s a gap worth naming.
The Women the Industry Doesn’t Always See
Female drivers represent just 9.5% of CDL holders nationwide, a number that has actually declined in recent years even as women make gains in leadership and supervisory roles across the industry. That gap doesn’t mean women aren’t doing the work. It means the pathways in and the recognition once inside aren’t keeping pace with what women are actually contributing. During a week designed to honor drivers, their stories deserve to be part of the conversation — not as a footnote, but as a feature.
What Real Recognition Looks Like, According to Lisa Steed
Lisa Steed knows what driver recognition looks like when it’s genuine and what it looks like when it’s going through the motions. As the founder of Linked Again Inc. and a hands-on leader who built her safety culture from the ground up, she developed training programs, mentored drivers, and ran an operation where people stayed because they felt valued year-round, not just during one designated week in September. Her approach was straightforward: recognize the behavior you want to see, name it specifically, and do it consistently enough that people believe you mean it.
The most effective driver recognition highlights outstanding performance and achievements that set drivers apart, and personalizing that recognition makes it more meaningful and memorable. That’s not a corporate insight. That’s what Lisa Steed built her retention rates on.
Seven Days to Start, Fifty-Two Weeks to Follow Through
National Truck Driver Appreciation Week is worth celebrating. Use it to recognize your drivers publicly, thank the women in your fleet by name, and take stock of whether your day-to-day culture reflects the same gratitude. Drivers notice when the gesture that costs nothing means about that much. The week is a prompt, not a substitute for the real thing. The women behind the wheel have always deserved better than a thank-you email and a pizza party. This year is a good time to deliver on that.