“I don’t usually give interviews, so take me well, please. I am in your hands…”, Susana Hernando (Burgos, 1980) fearfully settles in front of Àlex Garcia’s camera.
This transport businesswoman – from the company Transportes Frigoríficos Alberto Herrero –, lover of trucks and racing, always behind the scenes in management tasks, can boast of being the only woman who acts as team leader in the rally caravan, the TH Trucks: 45 vehicles and 110 people depend on it, and it manages a budget of more than 3 million euros, one of the largest structures in the Dakar rally, in which it has been in 15 editions.
Fascination
“The trucks are the greatest spectacle, I know what it costs to transport them with their 10 tons”
–I have always managed the team. At first there were four of us and I was the one who did the management functions, the registrations… As the team grew, the management became more complicated. From 2010, the first year, to this Dakar 2025 the team has gone from a truck to a structure with 25 vehicles in the race (14 classic cars, 7 trucks and 4 SSVs) and 20 in assistance (9 trucks, 4 spare parts trailers, 2 motorhomes and 7 logistics and press service cars); in total, 110 people. We are one of the largest teams in the bivouac, we are in the T1, T4, truck and Classic categories – explains Hernando, emerging from his role of anonymity.
Passport to Dakar
Susana Hernando
· Burgos
· 44 years
· Married, two children
· Transport businesswoman
· Director of the TH Trucks team
· 15th Dakar (4th in-person)
Like many, like most, Susana fell in love with the Dakar watching it on TV. But not because of Carles Mas, Jordi Arcarons, Juan Porcar and Óscar Gallardo… but because blame of the plastic images of the trucks plowing through the dunes.
–My passion for the Dakar comes from trucks. For me they are the greatest spectacle there is in rally-raids. I know what a truck is, I dedicate myself to it, and I know what it costs to take it through those terrains, with its 10,000 kilos of weight, with its height, its volume… It is not easy to drive it like a car. They have always impressed me. In fact, our team was founded and began to compete with trucks, and to pay for the first editions we offered assistance services to other teams – recalls Hernando, who before the Dakar had started in rallies and races as a member of the Pineda Automobile Club. of Burgos, as organizer and sports commissioner.
In the Dakar, her path began in the 2010 edition, the second in South America, when her husband, Alberto Herrero, decided to try the adventure. Susana did not participate in the field until 2019 in Peru. And then he would get into the cockpit as co-pilot in 2023 and 2024.
Photographer Àlex García portrays Susana Hernando at the W Hotel in Barcelona where the interview took place
–To manage such a large team I have to stop doing what I like, which was co-piloting, to start managing. This year I think I’m going to enjoy it because I’m going with a more focused role. You don’t handle as many people or as many vehicles if you’re in a truck.
Her role, now as head of the TH Trucks structure, is less intrepid, but more vital: a lot of work in the shadows, essential for the gears of a team to work.
–Before traveling, here, what concerns me most is the administrative work, making sure everything is ready: registrations, licenses, flights… In Arabia I have to monitor the race, know at all times where each vehicle is, schedules start, sports strategy, I coordinate on-track assistance to clients (such as Polaris, Century or Ford)… Not only do we compete, our on-track trucks (7) carry spare parts for 16 vehicles in the race from four different teams.
And, as a company administrator, Susana Hernando can do two things. rivals : non-compliance with deadlines and unforeseen events. They kill her…
–I am very methodical, unforeseen events are what upset me the most. Torrential rain, a sandstorm… I don’t like it. I like to keep everything under control, I hate improvising – confesses the woman from Burgos, who with this firm character, and her desire to care for her people, has earned two nicknames.
–Everyone on the team affectionately calls me the boss. But Ricky [Ricker, su socio italiano] “He calls me mom,” Hernando discovers, delighted with her almost maternal role.
–I always like to get up with the pilots and accompany them to the start, go to breakfast and see what awaits us that day. And at night I stay with the mechanics to see how everything is, if there have been problems, how the car is coming… We are a big family.
in the suitcase
With children in the heart
Telephones cannot be missing from Susana Hernando’s suitcase. In plural. “I’m a maniac with phones, I take two spares just in case, two iPhones. I have not had the experience of breaking or losing it, but I prefer not to encounter it,” comments the director of TH Trucks. Nor can he miss a heart-shaped pendant in his belongings that his children Alejandra and Alberto gave him, and that he only wears during the Dakar. They will not find books. “I don’t have time to read.”
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