Jenelle Richard­son-We­st­on makes his­to­ry by be­com­ing NP's first fe­male Road Tank Wag­on (RTW) dri­ver: an in­spi­ra­tion to all women across the na­tion. De­tails fol­low in this press re­lease from NP:

“When I start­ed this jour­ney, I had no idea that I would be­come a role mod­el to oth­er women.” These are the sen­ti­ments of Jenelle Richard­son-We­st­on, who on No­vem­ber 29, 2021, be­came the Trinidad & To­ba­go Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed’s (NP) lone fe­male Road Tank Wag­on (RTW) Dri­ver. For women, find­ing suc­cess in a male-dom­i­nat­ed field can be chal­leng­ing but NP as an or­gan­i­sa­tion is com­mit­ted to pro­mot­ing di­ver­si­ty, equal­i­ty and in­clu­sion in the work­place and con­tin­ues to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties in sup­port of those ideals.

Start­ing off in 2013 as a Woman Es­tate Con­sta­ble in the Se­cu­ri­ty De­part­ment, Jenelle’s love for dri­ving pro­pelled her to ob­tain her Class 3 dri­ver’s per­mit and once at­tained, it af­ford­ed her the op­por­tu­ni­ty to dri­ve the De­part­ment’s 4x4 pick­up on a dai­ly ba­sis. In her words, this fu­elled her ro­mance with dri­ving ve­hi­cles not tra­di­tion­al­ly dri­ven by women which even­tu­al­ly led to her pur­su­ing the Class 4 (Heavy T) and Class 5 (Ex­tra Heavy) per­mits.

Jenelle’s jour­ney to be­com­ing an RTW dri­ver has not been an easy one with ma­jor ob­sta­cles be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced along the way. Nev­er­the­less, un­daunt­ed by tem­po­rary set­backs, she re­mained fo­cused on her goal and ul­ti­mate­ly suc­ceed­ed in be­com­ing an RTW Dri­ver. Janelle cred­its her suc­cess to the sup­port of her close-knit fam­i­ly who hasal­ways, as she puts it, “pro­vid­ed the foun­da­tion need­ed to al­low her to bal­ance her work and fam­i­ly life” and she is al­so grate­ful to her col­leagues at NP for their un­wa­ver­ing sup­port over the years.

Through­out this ex­pe­ri­ence, Jenelle has been hum­bled by the words of en­cour­age­ment re­ceived from oth­er women who are proud to see a fe­male “man­han­dle” a big truck and trail­er. For those wish­ing to fol­low in her foot­steps she ad­vis­es “nev­er give up on your dreams and should there be dis­ap­point­ments, em­brace them as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn, rather than as a re­jec­tion.” NP con­grat­u­lates Jenelle Richard­son-We­st­on on this phe­nom­e­nal achieve­ment.