Iwona Blecharczyk (born 24 September 1987) is a lorry driver and YouTuber, a native of

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

. In 2013, she established the channel " Trucking Girl" on the

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

website and then, in 2019, was awarded with the title of Barbie Shero as a role model for girls.

Biography

She comes from Subcarpathian Voivodeship. In 2007 she took part in the

Miss Polonia Miss Polonia is a national beauty pageant in Poland to select the official ambassador of Poland at the Miss World, Miss Grand International, Miss Intercontinental and Miss Charm pageants. This pageant is the oldest beauty pageant in Poland. Hi ...

beauty contest and ended up in the finals of Miss Polonia of Podkarpacie in Mielec. In 2010, when she graduated from university, Iwona Blecharczyk became a qualified teacher of English as a foreign language. She worked as a minibus driver on the routes from Poland to England, then she worked in the clothing industry. In 2011, she started working as a professional lorry driver. In 2013, she founded the channel "Trucking Girl" as part of the

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google Search, Google, Facebook, Amaz ...

: she presents videos taken from her lorry cabin and talks on transport-related topics. The channel is run in two languages – Polish and English. The viewers from Poland account for about half of the audience Outside of Poland, the recordings are statistically most frequently watched in Germany, the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. She runs fan pages on

Instagram Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...

and

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, too. In 2017 she was the face of euroShell (the card was later replaced by Shell card in 2018). In the period 2017–2018, Blecharczyk travelled to North America (Canada, the United States), were she was working as a driver of specialized lorries, riding along, among others, the Ice Trail and the oil fields. In 2019,

Mattel Mattel, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational toy manufacturing and entertainment company founded in January 1945 and headquartered in El Segundo, California. The company has presence in 35 countries and territories and sells products in more ...

awarded her (as the second Polish woman after

Martyna Wojciechowska Martyna Wojciechowska (Polish pronunciation: ; born 28 September 1974 in Warsaw as Marta Eliza Wojciechowska) is a Polish TV presenter, mountaineer, traveller, journalist, sportswoman and writer. In 2010, she completed the Seven Summits. She pres ...

) the title of Barbie Shero. She has become the ambassador for the company

Volvo Trucks Volvo Trucks ( sv, Volvo Lastvagnar) is a truck manufacturing division of Volvo based in Gothenburg, Sweden. Volvo Trucks was a separate company within Volvo. The Volvo Group was reorganised on 1 January 2012 and as a part of the process, Vol ...

. She was invited to participate as a speaker in a

TEDx TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sau ...

conference and worked as a volunteer. In Poland

Discovery Channel Discovery Channel (known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery) is an American cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. , Discovery Channe ...

has chosen Blecharczyk to run the TV series ''Przygody truckerki'' (''Trucker woman's adventures''). Around the world, the media wrote about Iwona Blecharczyk; they were, among others, (in German) weekly

Die Zeit ''Die Zeit'' (, "The Time") is a German national weekly newspaper published in Hamburg in Germany. The newspaper is generally considered to be among the German newspapers of record and is known for its long and extensive articles. History The ...

Der Spiegel ''Der Spiegel'' (, lit. ''"The Mirror"'') is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 695,100 copies, it was the largest such publication in Europe in 2011. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...

Panorama, (in French) Canadian daily La Presse from Montreal, the website metropolitaine.fr from

Bordeaux Bordeaux ( , ; Gascon oc, Bordèu ; eu, Bordele; it, Bordò; es, Burdeos) is a port city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, Southwestern France. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefectur ...

, (in Hungarian) the website on transport (vezess.hu) In 2020, the Muza S.A. publishing house published a 320-page book by Iwona Blecharczyk ''Trucking girl. 70-metrową ciężarówką przez świat'' (en: ''Trucking girl. With a 70-meter truck through the world'') (), on topics similar to her internet activities.

References

External links

Official Iwona Blecharczyk's YouTube channel
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blecharczyk, Iwona 1987 births Living people Polish YouTubers People from Podkarpackie Voivodeship Polish women writers Writers from Kraków