The Fleet Force: Leading her Career with Vision for Innovation and Inclusion in Ready–Mix

Meet Jackie Philpott

Six years in concrete. 23 years in construction. Data-driven leader. Using insights to drive growth and industry innovation.Vision-maker. Transforming the future and creating game-changing opportunities. Collaborator and Talent developer. Fostering synergy. Empowering individuals to become future leaders. Soon-to-be-mom. Embracing the joys and challenges of motherhood with excitement and pride. Proud aunt. Investing in her nieces and nephews. Cherishing family moments. Passionate athlete. Avid diverse-culture traveler. Balanced-living enthusiast.

Q: How did you come to work in the ready-mixed concrete industry? How did you come to work in fleet management?

I spent more than half of my career in the natural gas industry and wanted a change. Lafarge and Innocon are well-known, reputable companies. It was that reputation, as well as the nature of the ready-mixed concrete industry that drew me in. I felt the draw and appeal of concrete’s fast pace and unique equipment and plants. However, what sparked me to pursue fleet as a career? If you can believe it, I need to take you back to when I was a kid to answer that one.

My family was really into snowmobiling. I was lucky to have my own sled. I liked to ride hard and much to Dad’s chagrin, I just kept blowing up the engine. So, at some point, he decided if I broke it, I better learn how to rebuild it. So, I learned how to work on my sled. Then when I got my first car, it was just natural to start doing my oil changes, my tire changes, and more.

I just seemed to have a talent with engines and a mechanical mindset. I don’t know if I would have naturally transferred that to a career interest. But I had the most wonderful open-minded Auto-Tech teacher in high school. He noticed the guys trying unsuccessfully to give me a hard time in our classes, and then I kept getting perfect on our written and hands-on exams. So, he pulled me in front of the class to recognize my results and to give the guys in the class a hard time back. With his encouragement, I started my Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program (OYAP) at Toyota in high school. At the same time, behind the scenes he encouraged me to dream big and aim to manage the fleet.

So that is what I did. I worked my way up in natural gas from digging holes in the field to overseeing 2000 pieces of equipment, from unique rigs to trailers to heavy yellow iron. Then came the excitement of ready-mix concrete and the complex and unique mixers that build our communities. Switching from natural gas to construction did not disappoint. The world of construction is a great place to be when you’re an equipment enthusiast and specialist.

Q: What do you enjoy most about your career as a Fleet Manager in the ready-mix industry?

Where do I start? No joke. The list is quite long for what I enjoy. There is never a dull moment. Every day brings new challenges and pushes you to grow as a person and a manager. The industry allows for change and growth and is thirsty for technological initiatives which opens up many opportunities for individuals to take a project and run with it.

I thrive in environments that allow me to grow personally and to introduce change into our business processes for the positive. Ready-mixed concrete is going through a digital transformation. For me, being a leader taking fleet management off the spreadsheet into a digital platform where we can leverage data to make better decisions is super exciting.

Can you imagine as a company having the power to evaluate and leverage trends at scale to gain a better understanding of the true cost of ownership and to make better maintenance plans, asset buy/sell choices, purchasing and other fleet and equipment-related decisions? With this kind of data power, we could look at fleet as a profit center and save the company money with early identification of problem areas by types of truck / equipment / make and model, potentially even looking at trends from other industries to see what we can do better comparably within ready-mix. Data is power and the potential impact is significant.

Q: What do you find the most challenging, day-to-day?

Love this question. What I find the most challenging every day also is what I find most stimulating about my work.

There are tons of moving parts, pun intended, in a fleet of ~300 trucks delivering quality concrete safely around the GTA. So, keeping tabs on everything that is happening is a challenge every single day. A complex and fast-paced environment means you need to be on the ball at all times.

I have a friend who is a teacher that compares her brain to a web browser. She says she’s between her roles as teacher / mother / wife / family-manager there are always a million tabs open in her brain.

I pride myself in my superpower of effective and efficient multi-tasking to solve problems, develop opportunities, and create value. All of this data and info is coming at you all the time. It is hard to explain it. If you can picture chats are coming in from Work team communication system asking for decisions related to truck maintenance/breakdowns or other issues and I have to collect information quickly – is the truck loaded / not loaded / do we have that part / have mechanics been dispatched, and more – and then make the right decision at the right time to ensure everything will be successful to deal with the challenges and ensure we meet all our customers’ expectations and needs.

It is an incredible exercise in balance when you’re in middle management in a fast-paced industry like ready-mixed concrete. You need to manage the day to day, be in tune with what’s going on in order to support your people and the business each day in the right way. Then you’re balancing that with stepping out of the day to day – identifying over-arching opportunities for improvement and driving your ideas and concepts where your department needs to go to operate better for the company and for our customers.

Q: What skills are critical for you to succeed in your role? How did you develop these?

There are many skills needed to succeed in this role. A unique one I love to highlight is the ability to make quick decisions, usually with limited information. I’ve found there’s a few ways to accelerate developing this skill.

Leaning on the skills of those around you and learning in the process helps. Watching for problems and successful quick response patterns is a great source of quick information for consideration as well.

I often also suggest people change their relationship with making mistakes.

My philosophy: It’s fine to make a mistake. Be honest with your team about it. Take it on the chin and move forward. Absolutely learn how to not make that mistake again.

If you’re surrounded by teammates who follow this same philosophy, you get the opportunity to learn from their mistakes as well. (It’s an interesting side thought to think about the value of leaders developing a culture where your team has permission to admit their mistakes!)

Through using that network of knowledge that you build through these techniques and others, you hone instincts to answer your own questions, if you will, so you’re able to make these important decisions quickly.

Q: What is the best safety advice you’d pass on to a new woman in concrete?

First, I’d like them to know that in this company and in this industry, I do feel safe. From the very first interview I had I was impressed with the deep commitment this company and its people have for safety. When you get here and experience it – you can feel it. We’re to the point and so safe in our own yards and own plants, that we’re inspiring and collaborating with our customers to re-look at certain practices on site, especially those involving ready-mix trucks.

Do NOT be afraid to say something. If you see something that makes you pause or say to yourself that seems a little dangerous, SAY SOMETHING!

I was lucky to develop my safety spidey senses playing lacrosse, which is a sport I’ve enjoyed since a young age. We don’t wear a lot of equipment and there are all sorts of different rules. A wise lady ref told me when she first started refereeing in the sport that she found herself blowing her whistle when something made her brain go “eewwww;” she called it a brain cringe. Her instincts said that was too risky, so she blew the whistle.

Now I think about bringing those instincts to work, developing my safety knowledge and at the same time honing my safety spidey senses / my personal “brain cringe.” You learn to trust those signs, to trust your instincts and immediately call attention to risks, stopping – reassessing – looking at what’s happening and then ensuring there’s a safe process that’s well understood by all involved before continuing.

I think it is also absolutely critical for every new employee, every team member, every manager to truly and deeply encourage and reward people for finding their own safety voice. This gives everyone the courage to say something before something happens. I believe that all types of diversity on our teams will truly make our jobs safer. Everyone looks at things from a different lens, including how women view things. This is an advantage that we have to help make the workplace safer. See something, say something.

Q: Has your plant / team / manager made any changes to equipment / practices / policies that have helped you be more successful that you’d like to share with other RMX companies to better support women in concrete?

I can think of three great examples here that might be helpful perspectives for other RMX companies looking to support greater diversity of all kinds in their workforce:

First: Innocon is such a diverse and supportive community that it comes naturally to them to just support anyone and everyone who is also willing to do the same. We have so many different cultures, religions, backgrounds in our team that being a female doesn’t seem so different here.

Second: The hiring process. We now have a female in the hiring role. She can relate to the women we are trying to hire, as well as be a solid contact for any of their issues or concerns. We are going into our hiring season, and I believe having her in that role will encourage more women to join the company.

Many women feel more comfortable initially to bounce things off another woman. When and where possible – we are trying to match women for training. This creates a positive experience and confidence building right from the start and creates some nice dynamics of empowering each other and encouraging each other, creating confidence and positivity in carrying out their roles every day.

The other thing – whether it is a woman or man doing the hiring or a woman or man doing the training, we make a point of reinforcing to women joining the team that their voices will be heard, and we make sure they know where to get assistance. As an industry, we are finally growing in paying attention to mental health and safety, as well as physical health and safety for all employees, no matter their gender or other elements of diversity. We understand that all team members may experience personal or professional anxiety at times, and our culture is growing significantly to offer more support and sensitivity in this regard. Investing in improving this dynamic benefits absolutely everyone on your team and I promise other ready-mixed concrete suppliers that they will feel a positive shift in the engagement of your people as you invest in change in this space.

Third: This would be the work we are doing on the safety front. We have an industry-leading safety culture, yet complacency is not an option in this regard for us.

There is room to grow for facilitating or making the industry a little more woman friendly when it comes to ergonomics and some other elements.

We are benefiting from viewing things from a smaller stature in some cases, viewing process / how to complete a task, etc. from a woman’s standpoint and looking at opportunities with different tools or different ergonomics.

Equipment-wise, as an example, we are constantly looking at opportunities to improve ergonomics for our driver workforce. Evolutions like aluminum chutes and the Hydras-hydraulic chute system benefit all makes and models of our Concrete Delivery Professionals.

Q: Have you had any colleagues be a Mentor? Champion? Ally? Who has been supportive of your success in the industry? Anyone you’d like to recognize and why? What have they done to support you that might be helpful for others?

There are many people who have supported me, my managers, colleagues, as well as the mechanics that work with me. However, I believe that support starts with yourself.

Working hard in your job, supporting the people around you the best you can, and in return some of those individuals will naturally want to support you in whatever your goals or achievements are.

It’s a full circle event, not one side, that requires all the support. We need to support each other – as team members.

There are 1000 people that support me, and there are 1000 people who I support every day. That’s part of what I love about the industry and my career.

Q: Have you had any moments where you wanted to leave this profession? Is there something the industry can/should be doing to reduce the root causes of those moments for women?

Blatant inequality has been the only reason I have wanted to leave the construction industry. I have been in the construction industry for 23 years, six of which are with RMX. I love my job and am rarely unhappy; however, in the few scenarios that I have wanted to leave, it was due to an obvious and usually public form of blatant inequality.

The industry, individual companies, individuals at any level of the company need to publicly stand up and fight for that one person’s inequality to show that this is unacceptable. Everyone across the industry needs to be clear and confident in communicating persistently that we will NOT tolerate this behaviour anymore.

Let’s be clear. This is not a construction industry issue. This is a today culture issue. We are living in 2025. We are all proud Canadians, and we all know there is no room for discrimination in our culture. I’m proud to work for a company that supports and backs up employees and management in communicating firmly and respectfully that harassment, bullying, discrimination of any kind is not tolerated.

My personal experiences have allowed me to turn these situations into constructive and productive conversations from which we are able to grow and make changes for the future women coming into the industry. I’m proud to have male colleagues that are committed to drive these discussions and be catalysts for change when needed as well.

To finish off our rich discussion with Jackie, we decided to get some lighter insights from her with a quick hit round of five questions in five minutes!

Q: What’s been the most pleasant surprise about working in this industry?

How small knit the RMX industry really is. You can really immerse yourself into the industry and get to know tons of individuals who are so knowledgeable and wonderful people to work with in the industry. Learning from other people’s perspectives has been genuinely a great experience.

Q: What does working in the ready-mixed concrete industry mean to you?

An industry that is changing and learning to grow with the times. Technology, green initiatives, and so many more areas. If you want to make a difference in the industry, definitely join us because that exciting time is now.

Q: What advice would you give to new women considering entering the concrete industry?

Do it! The industry will surprise you on how accepting they are to women. Be confident and proud to be a woman in the industry and know your worth and that you belong to be there just as much as your male counterpart.

Q: What advice would you give to men hoping to be more supportive of women in the industry?

Have their backs the same as you would anyone else. If you do not know how to support them do not be afraid to ask them how they would like to be supported by you. Every woman wants and needs different things, just like all your male team members want and need different things.

Q: What advice would you give to companies hoping to be more supportive of women in the industry?

Listen to them. Help where you can. Stand up for them in instances of discrimination. Most of all, treat them as equals.