WOMEN IN ACCESS
30
ACCESS, LIFT & HANDLERS
JULY-AUGUST 2013
Boyd, who has been at the helm of HERC
since April 2011, jokes about her early career
days at the bottom of the ladder.
“I couldn’t even spell ‘hydraulics’ when I
started,” she laughs. “I had to converse with
customers on the phone and I had to know
what their needs were, so in order to do that, I
had to go to school and understand and learn
about hydraulics. That knowledge led me from
customer service to technical trouble-shooting.”
Boyd quickly learned hydraulics applications
range far and wide. One day she'd find herself
on the phone with a SpaghettiOs mechanic
whose hydraulic motor had gone awry, leaving
a vat of O-shaped pasta in danger of hardening
and going to waste, to a farmer whose tractor
had broken down. As a result, Boyd became
more involved with the engineering and
manufacturing side of hydraulics in order to
fully understand the product line, and she
eventually talked her superiors into providing
her with further education.
“The company I was with had started a
college graduate program for people to go
into sales, and I asked, ‘What about me?’
Sometimes I think they did it to punish me,” she
laughs, “but they put me in the program and I
went into sales, going into all of the automotive
plants [in Detroit.]”
Boyd’s clients included Chrysler and American
Motors, where she found herself having to
traverse through automotive manufacturing
plants, which at the time were not very female-
friendly, she says.
“In those kinds of environments you have
to be courageous,” she says. “You can’t be
As the access industry
matures, more women are
impacting business – if not
leading it.
Lindsey Anderson
spoke with HERC’s president,
an internal consultant with
Terex, the head of a rental
company near Seattle and
a construction elevator
company GM about
being women in a
male-dominated field.
Industry matriarchs
Century Elevators, pictured here, is one of
many women-fronted businesses today.
A
ccording to Forbes, there are 20
female CEOs running America’s largest
companies. While that number – 4
percent – is trifling in the grand scheme, it’s a
record. Yes, women in our industry have come
a long way and continue to march forward.
I spoke with four who have held a myriad of
positions to get where they are now and who
run some of America’s most successful and
growing access-related companies. Here are
their stories.
Ms. Rental President
For 14 years, Lois Boyd worked during the
day and then would attend night classes for
her undergraduate degree. The now-Hertz-
Equipment-Rental-president originally wanted
to go to school to become a teacher, but, as she
puts it, colleges didn’t have the most diverse
night class offerings “back then.”
“I could only take business classes at night,”
Boyd recalls. “So, I put myself through school
and started in the hydraulics arena.”
“For women in general, I think the opportunities are pretty
much endless if you’re willing to put yourself out there, but
you have to be willing to take chances to do that.”
LOIS BOYD, president of Hertz Equipment Rental Corporation
