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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Nominees for Distinguished Woman in Logistics Award announced by WIT

Nominees for Distinguished Woman in Logistics Award announced by WIT

Women In Trucking Association has announced the three finalists for the 3rd Annual Distinguished Woman in Logistics award, established to promote the achievements of women employed in the North American transportation industry.

Finalists for the award are Andra Rush, Karen Duff, and Lacy Starling. The winner will be announced by the DWLA program sponsor, Truckstop.com, on Friday, April 7, during the Transportation Intermediaries Association 2017 “Capital Ideas” Conference and Exhibition in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The award highlights the vital roles of leading women in the dynamic and increasingly influential field of commercial transportation and logistics, which encompasses both logistics service providers as well as motor carriers.

The finalists for the 2017 DWLA award lead businesses or operating units that have achieved significant regional, national and/or global scale and which serve many of the industry’s premier shippers as transportation service providers. Each has demonstrated superior leadership within their company as well as with other professional, educational or philanthropic organizations.

Andra Rush is chair and CEO of Rush Trucking Corporation, CEO and president of Dakkota Integrated Systems, and chair, CEO and president of Detroit Manufacturing Systems. As founder, chair, CEO and president of Rush Group, which owns and operates Rush Trucking, Dakkota and DMS, she leads the largest woman-owned business in Michigan, and one of the largest Native American-owned enterprises in the U.S. Her mission from the very beginning has been to create sustainable job opportunities in underserved communities. In 1984, she borrowed $5,000 from her parents and used her credit cards to launch Rush Trucking Corporation with one van and two pickups. Today, Rush Trucking transports goods for Fortune 100 companies across the U.S. and Canada with 1,100 trucks and 700 drivers.

Karen Duff is the founder, president and CEO of International Express Trucking, Inc., and its family of businesses – IXT, LLC; IXT Leasing, LLC; and National Permit Services, Inc. Her global transportation experience and expertise position her for success encompassing all facets of the transportation business – import, export, and domestic drayage, brokerage, leasing, permitting and drive away. Today, IXT is the largest woman-owned intermodal drayage business within the six-state Midwest region and has twice been honoured with the Kansas Woman-Owned Business of the Year – Distribution in 2015 and 2016. In 2017, IXT received regional recognition as a Top 25 under 25® small business within the Kansas City area.

The daughter of a truck driver and a part-time librarian, Lacy Starling grew up seeing first-hand how the logistics industry affects working-class Americans. When the opportunity came along to open Legion Logistics, it felt like the right move. Lacy was able to combine her knowledge of freight, gleaned from years of watching her dad earn a living driving tanker trucks, with her beliefs about how company culture should be formed and nurtured. Legion is now a $26 million company with 51 employees. Lacy also finds time to teach sales at the University of Cincinnati and has started the Fast Growth Roundtable, a group of business owners who are focused on the same kind of rocket-ship growth Lacy has fostered at Legion.

Finalists were selected from an extensive field of high-performing women representing warehousing, traffic and shipping, third-party logistics, supply chain management, and related functional disciplines.