Imagine having a successful career. Perhaps you’re a physical therapist. Maybe you’re a public relations specialist.
Then you decide to shift gears and run a trucking and logistics company.
That’s exactly what Lisa Andrade Gonima and Andrea Andrade-Ahumada did when they stopped their day jobs to take over their father’s business — Del Rey Express — in 2014.
They’ve spent the last decade growing the company and trying to become the state’s best and safest company for drivers.
Andrade Gonima and Andrade-Ahumada’s parents, Rey and Silvia Andrade, started the company 40 years ago with a single truck.
Rey Andrade was a long-haul truck driver and the sisters remember his long trips away on the road. As they grew up, so did the company, and they recall acting as dispatchers in their family home, recording truckers’ information on a notepad near their landline.
“Our parents built this business with one truck. That one driver was our dad,” Andrade Gonima said. “We have a lens of respect and admiration for the men and women who drive the trucks.”
When their parents were ready to retire, the sisters took over the company in 2014. Andrade Gonima left her work in public relations to be Del Rey Express’s CEO and Andrade-Ahumada moved from a physical therapist position at a hospital to the company’s president.
The family has worked on the business together and grown it from a 12-truck operation in 2014 to a thriving business with more than 40 trucks and 45 drivers now. During the pandemic, Del Rey Express began working with H-E-B on local runs.
It’s been a meaningful partnership that has allowed the company to learn and grow. Now, they’re receiving national recognition as a place for women to work in the transportation industry.
The San Antonio Report sat down with Andrade Gonima and Andrade-Ahumada to discuss their experiences and their work in transportation and logistics.
The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
What’s it like working in the trucking industry?
Andrade Gonima: Number one, as we started to get into the industry, we realized not a lot of people, especially leadership, look like us. We can go to conferences and we definitely don’t look like the rest of the room, right? For us, it’s exciting, as we look at our company having just been recognized for women in transportation, it’s about what confidence can do.
Andrade-Ahumada: Seeing that some of the drivers that were employed by us are now having their own equipment and being able to provide the opportunity for them and their family, it’s fulfilling. Something that I worked for, like physical therapy, is always serving others, like my patients, and so part of leaving was missing out on the connection with the families that I built.
Because now we are a physical therapist and a PR professional sitting in a meeting with logistics experts. It’s due to competence and our ability. What we are really proud of is our driver-first culture, how we grew up and realized all the skills, all our experiences have brought us to this moment.
But here, we’re just one huge family.
What was it like transitioning from your previous jobs into your work leading a trucking company?
Andrade Gonima: I think to me, the fear was why are you working in trucking? I wasn’t sure how our drivers were going to react to me, a much younger female.
The biggest surprise was once we started connecting with them, they realized how seriously we took this. They saw the changes we were making. I remember having a safety meeting, and we ended up talking about mental health. It has been so rewarding.
We knew we were continuing a legacy that our parents started. Was I excited about the smell of diesel and getting in trucks? No, but my parents started something, and I want to continue this.
Andrade-Ahumada: My sister is more of the risk taker. So I was just thinking, ‘What do I need to learn? What do I need to do?’
So I started researching. I got involved with a program through the Texas Trucking Association called Emerging Leaders, I went there to learn.
It was kind of intimidating to be the only female, only Hispanic female, there in that setting.
I was always just a therapist, and never in a management position, but H-E-B has been a great partner. I’m able to reach out to anyone on their team and they can explain things to me.
It’s been rewarding because our drivers see us as mentors for their children. To see their education and how much they value that for their children. That’s been amazing.
What are the challenges you’ve run into along the way?
Andrade-Ahumada: Being a manager, with the way we’ve grown, we still want to keep that close knit family feel, but we also know that we are business. We are trying to set those boundaries. We have to think about that now, as we grow, how to be a sustainable business.
Andrade Gonima: I’ll be completely vulnerable and transparent on this one. It’s hiring the right people for an administrative [role] and learning what it’s like to have to deal with [Human Resources]. A lot of small businesses, you tell them, ‘You’ve got to be prepared to do everything.’
We do have consultants, but I think the challenge is just putting that team together and, because we’re smaller, making sure that we’re setting up everyone for success.
It’s about managing people and personalities.
When we realized the challenges that we were having and they were just growing pains, we hired an operations manager, and that was a game changer for us. That was an exciting day when our [Certified Professional Accountant] said, ‘You all are ready to hire an operations manager.’ I felt like overcoming that challenge and getting to that point was worth it.
What is it like working as women in this industry that is traditionally male dominated? Do you have any advice for other women who are interested in getting involved?
Andrade-Ahumada: I have a daughter that’s a first-year in college right now, and she is such a planner, and trying to figure out what courses, what degree she wants to get. I’m telling her, ‘Look at my plans.’
My plans were to go into physical therapy. I never thought that I was going to be in trucking. Being a woman, especially being a mother, trying to balance both things, I just want you to know you do find the right team and the right company. It’s possible to be successful at both. So I think it’s important for us to offer that to our staff and our team.
Andrade Gonima: It’s also things like this [article] for people to see what that looks like. If we’re shy or don’t want to really celebrate these kinds of recognition, I think we are just doing a disservice to the young women coming behind us.
It’s about recognizing that women bring so much to any company. I can go on and on about the changes that we made that I think, because we’re primarily a woman-run team.
We’re making Texas roads safer, because, as mothers, as women, we want to run the safest trucking company possible. That is absolutely one of our goals. That doesn’t just benefit our drivers, that benefits the community and the people who are riding along our trucks.
It’s not one of the traditional careers you hear, you know, medicine, law school, those kinds of things. But supply chain and logistics, it literally moves the world and with technology and all the changes, it is an exciting industry. So we want more women to see themselves in it.
What trends do you see in the trucking industry right now?
Andrade Gonima: People are always asking me about the driverless trucks and how scary that is. And so we’re keeping an eye, of course, on technology, but we already have adapted so much technology.
Nothing would be possible if a truck didn’t get it to its destination. In the future, a lot of what we’re talking about, a lot of what we’re hearing about is that safety component, how to move things more efficiently and quicker.
We’ve already seen how technology can sometimes change the look of it. When electronic logging devices, when they went from paper now to paperless, tracking hours of service, that was a big moment for trucking.
Then it was the cameras. We have cameras in our trucks for safety. We are using AI, I don’t know if people realize it. The trucking does use a lot of AI with the cameras, because we’re not sitting there looking at all that footage.
I’d say the tech part is a big part of our future.
Andrade-Ahumada: The drivers are younger, they’re wanting to spend more time with families. Being cognizant of that, that’s a big change.
