Kanika Robinson has serious goals. She recently started her own trucking company, Blessed Wheels Trucking, and while she’s starting with one truck, she plans to have 20.
Kanika started driving in 2003, but after a few years, she came off the road to spend time with her first child. “Every time I came home, my baby would cry when I’d pick her up,” she says. “Being a first-time mom, that was heartbreaking. It was like she didn’t know me. It was either sacrifice and stay out there on the road, or just say, ‘You know what? I have to come back to this later, because my child needs me.’”
I’m going to sacrifice and start my company off right, and then make sure I just take my time to find the right drivers. As I find these drivers, I add a truck. If that takes me a while, so be it, but I’m going to reach my goal.”
“I was doing this little job and that little job and doing the back office, and it just was not doing it for me,” Kanika says. “So I said, ‘Let me go back out here and give it another shot.’ I went back out, took a refresher course with KLLM Transport Services and got back out on the road. I realized how much I missed it. Now my older daughter says: ‘Mama, it’s OK. You can do it. Go back out there, and do what you’ve got to do.’”
With two daughters firmly in her corner now, Kanika is determined to be an owner-operator: “I’m going to get out there myself to make sure everything starts off smoothly. I’m going to sacrifice and start my company off right, and then make sure I just take my time to find the right drivers. As I find these drivers, I add a truck. If that takes me a while, so be it, but I’m going to reach my goal.”
“Once I get my business up and running, I want to help people, especially mothers that are going through abuse. I want to be able to help women any way I can. If I can do that — if I can give financially, emotionally, anything I could do to help — that’s what I want to do. I just want to give.”
Twenty trucks is not Kanika’s only goal. While building her company, she is looking for ways to make a difference in the lives of others. To that end, she became a founding member of National Minority Women Association in Transportation (NMWAIT), “is a membership-based, minority women-owned advocacy organization whose objective is to increase the visibility, capacity, and profitability of professional minority women and men in the transportation industry.”
“I want to help people — that’s another part of my success,” Kanika says. “Once I get my business up and running, I want to help people, especially mothers that are going through abuse. I want to be able to help women any way I can. If I can do that — if I can give financially, emotionally, anything I could do to help — that’s what I want to do. I just want to give.”
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