Pictured above: Amber recalls when her son’s friend told him, “Girls can’t drive trucks,” so he stood up and said, “Yes they can! My mom does!” Now Amber’s daughter also works in the construction industry.

Amber has climbed up and up in the construction and trucking industry…and she’s still going!

“I was in tears sitting behind the wheel for the first time,” recalls Amber of her Climb Commercial Driving (CDL) training in 2005. “I was scared. It was just a big blur of truck parts in my mind as I drove down the road. I kept missing gears. When you are so broken in life that something as small as missing a gear breaks you, you know you need help.”

In addition, says Amber, “my house and car were being repossessed, my life was in shambles. I didn’t know what I was going to do, I just knew that I needed to feed my kids.”

“I love my life, and I owe it all to Climb. I was completely lost, and Climb reminded me that I CAN shift those hard truck gears in life. It shows you how strong you really are.”

-Amber, 2005 Graduate

That persistence got Amber through her first day driving a truck and has since led her to set and scale one career goal after the next. After Climb, Amber worked in positions driving, flagging, and working at the scale for Intermountain Construction. Then she got a call to be a salesperson at Drive Train Industries before returning back to work at Intermountain Construction and Materials as a receptionist. She was promoted to a job cost assistant and then again to a customer service/ marketing and promotion rep.

She’s now branch manager in Gillette for FleetPride, a national truck and trailer parts distribution company, earning a nice salary, a big jump from her pre-Climb wage of $2.80 an hour plus tips waiting tables.

“It’s okay to start at the bottom and work your way up because that’s how you learn,” Amber says of her determined career climb.

Amber remarried several years ago and owns a new custom-built home. Her daughter is also starting a career in the construction industry.