Santa Paula Trucking Exec to Lead Women in Construction

Mary Ellen Ledbetter, co-owner of DME Trucking of Santa Paula, has been voted president-elect of the National Assn. of Women in Construction. Currently vice president of NAWIC, Ledbetter will take over the top spot in 1997.

The organization has 6,200 members throughout the United States with a local chapter representing the Simi Valley-Conejo Valley area and another representing Ventura and Oxnard. Ledbetter is the director of the 32-member Ventura-Oxnard chapter.

Though Ledbetter has about a year to plan strategy for her upcoming stint as president, she said she has begun defining her main goals.

They include continuing the association’s efforts to educate the public and group members about the growing opportunities for women in construction-related professions.

“Being accepted in the industry--that’s what NAWIC is promoting. So it’s not so bizarre for people to see women on the construction site as operating engineers or foremen,” she said. “No longer are we just support staff. . . . Our group is so diverse. We have business owners, people in interior design, banking, bonding. That’s what we are trying to relate.”

NAWIC has established home study credentialing programs for women who are interested in various aspects of the construction field. The group, over the last few years, has also designed education programs for school-age children.

Ledbetter would like to continue pursuing these programs.

“We are working with the schools to try to get women to come into the industry, so it’s not so foreign,” Ledbetter said. “Women who have been in the construction industry for years went to college and were viewed as being so different. That’s what we are trying to avoid. Those are the hurdles.”

Ledbetter joined the 44-year-old construction association 17 years ago, when she and her husband, a truck driver, purchased the Owl Lowbed trucking operation. The couple began operating DME Trucking, a construction equipment hauling business, six years ago.

Like many women who joined the organization in the 1980s, Ledbetter said that for her, working in the construction industry hadn’t been the dream of a lifetime.

“I’ve always been infatuated with trucks. My dad has always driven trucks. But it wasn’t something I had thought about,” she said. “I was a legal secretary for the county of Ventura. Like most of the women who started in the ‘80s, it was by default that we ended up in it. Now, for women it’s a chosen field.”

During her time in NAWIC, Ledbetter said, the membership has undergone significant changes.

“The caliber of women is different,” she said. “I think now we have a higher caliber, a better caliber. We’re not just a women’s chat group. We are really in it for the long run and to be educated.”

Another part of Ledbetter’s plans for her term as association president will be to continue the group’s alliances with key organizations nationally and abroad.

Over the past couple of years, she said, NAWIC has established lines of communication with the U.S. Department of Labor and the Army Corps of Engineers, something she feels is important for the future of women in construction.

“They let us know of new regulations and they are a source of recruitment,” she said. “It shows that the U.S. government supports the advancement of women.”

Earlier this month, NAWIC signed an agreement with an affiliated women’s construction group in Australia. Ledbetter said alliances in China and England are also in the works.

Sandy Wepplo, who today will take over the position of vice president of the Ventura-Oxnard chapter, joined NAWIC in 1983, when she was affiliated with her husband’s electrical operation. She said NAWIC was a valuable resource when she was a newcomer to the industry.

“Whenever I had questions or problems, there was always someone in the organization to talk to,” she said. “Whether you had a business problem or needed a form or if you were out of a job.”

Wepplo is the office manager at Le Bradco Plumbing of Camarillo, which specializes in new commercial and residential construction projects. Wepplo said that from her vantage point, NAWIC will continue to be a valuable association as the construction business locally rebounds from the recessionary period of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

“From what I see with the building and projects this company is involved in, I feel strongly that the construction industry is improving in Ventura County,” she said.

Ledbetter, for the most part, agrees.

“It’s a crapshoot trying to call the industry. I think it’s doing better, others don’t,” she said. “But locally I see we are building a lot. Right now [DME Trucking] is moving a lot of construction equipment.”