Inside her new $11.5 million apartment on a top floor of the Plaza Hotel, Trudy Jacobson is ready to party.

“When I play the piano, I’m usually nude,” she said.

But on a recent Saturday evening, she’s wearing a Missoni jumpsuit with a plunging neckline, awaiting the fabulous guests — among them, a former Miss Universe contestant and White House correspondent Lucian Wintrich — for her housewarming party.

It’s a coming-out soirée of sorts for the former trucker from Kansas City, Mo., who now lives in a 3,000-square-foot pad overlooking Central Park.

Trudy and her husband of more than 30 years, John, founded TransAm, a major American trucking fleet, in 1987. But she decamped from the Midwest to New York about a year ago to “find” herself. (Trudy’s still married to John, who remains in their 5,000-square-foot manse in Kansas City.)

She’s marked her new chapter with a huge tattoo on her bicep depicting the female Buddhist diety, Tara, known as “the mother of liberation.”

“Moving here has been my personal liberation,” she said while showing off her home’s “zen room,” which features a series of erotic paintings by New York artist Sugar Titties.

Trudy, who declines to reveal her age, is not your usual Upper East Side doyenne. Back in the ’80s, she would drive her fleet’s 18-wheelers from Missouri to the Meatpacking District, hauling up to 45,000 pounds of bone meal with a “rotting” smell that still haunts her.

But, she’s also not your usual trucker. The Jacobsons’ company, Trudy said, boasts an annual revenue of some $250 million. She heads the Jacobson Family Foundation, which focuses on curing juvenile diabetes and veterans’ causes, and is ready to be part of Manhattan’s gala scene. She’s already attended benefits for the 92nd Street Y, the Susan G. Komen Foundation, Jean Shafiroff’s Southampton Animal Shelter and Citizens’ Committee for Children at MoMA.

“Established NYC society might scoff at her, but she doesn’t care,” said her friend, journalist George Wayne. “So many socialites are born into wealth. She’s inventing the mold of what it means to be a modern socialite.”

For Trudy, fitting in was never the end goal. “I don’t have to prove myself to anyone,” she said. “If I want to be associated with the Met, I have the means to do that.”

Born in Springfield, Mo., to a nurse mother and father who worked in manufacturing, the self-proclaimed “wild child” always had stars in her eyes.

She wanted to move to New York City ever since her first trip here, at age 21, with an older, “experienced” man who took her to the New York Stock Exchange. Trudy recalled standing on the balcony, clad in a crop top and skirt, and seeing the traders looking up at her and bursting into applause.

But her wild side got lost when, in her 20s, she met John, whose family owned a Fortune 200 company, Idle Wild Foods. Together, the young couple founded TransAm, growing it from a fleet of 170 tractors and trailers to 3,600. They have one son, Joe, 29, who is married and lives in Kansas City.

In the “intimidating” boys’ club that is the cargo industry, “I had to prove that I could do the work.” That meant getting her commercial license — she’d previously never driven anything bigger than a four-door BMW — and getting behind the wheel of a semi.

“[Trucking] is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” she said. Nonetheless, it also gave her a new sense of power and accomplishment: “It’s the hugest thing in the whole world.”

When not on the road, she was living the tame life of a dutiful wife, serving on the local chamber of commerce and as a community leader in the Jewish Federation.

But going out on long-haul drives opened her eyes to the possibility of escape.

“Trucking is a totally wild environment. There’s a camaraderie of people of the night and [those] who have wanderlust,” she said. “You can be anyone you want.”

“[Back home] I could not express myself. I was limited — by society, by family values, by upbringing.”

As TransAm — and the Jacobsons’ coffers — grew, Trudy and John began collecting art by Chagall and Picasso, which they proudly displayed at their Kansas City estate. Fifteen years ago, while on vacation in St. Petersburg, Russia, Trudy branched out and purchased a series of paintings by artist Gregori Maiofis, depicting nude women in sexual positions.

But once home, Trudy chickened out from hanging them on her walls. “I wouldn’t embarrass my housekeeper,” she said.

She lived that way for a long time. But a couple years ago, she’d had enough.

“I raised my kid, I [did] the volunteer work, and now it was time for me to have an adventure and [gain] a sense of purpose that would make me feel good about living,” said Trudy, who is TransAm’s chairman of the board.

So she bought the Plaza apartment earlier this year, and all bets were off. Now, she lives among erotica, including the Maiofis works and 1950s-era Japanese netsuke figurines tangled in Kama Sutra-like poses. Soon, she will hang a nude portrait of herself as painted by Sugar Titties.

‘Trucking is a totally wild environment. There’s a camaraderie of people of the night and [those] who have wanderlust.’

“My dream is to be happy through expression,” Trudy said. “It’s about being an individual — not being the wife of someone anymore. Grandchildren . . . are a dream for a lot of people, but my dream is to be happy through individual expression.”

Life in Kansas City didn’t demand high fashion for Trudy, nor did life behind the wheel. (She’d usually drive in shorts and sneakers,)

Once she arrived in Manhattan, Trudy hired image consultant Mona Sharaf, who bluntly admits: “She didn’t know how to dress.” When Trudy scored tickets to this year’s Grammys, Sharaf procured two $5,000 custom dresses — one for the pre-party, another for the awards — by the Eshel Collection atelier. For the party circuit, Trudy now wears looks from Alice and Olivia and Tiziano Zorzan. In the past, “I always downplayed the sexy part [of my personality,] but I’ve been wearing things that are much more revealing,” she said.

Trudy also has a new circle of friends, including plenty of young guys who enjoy her company. (“We’ve respected each other’s independence since I moved,” is all Trudy will say of her relationship status with her husband.)

“I’ll show her around the city — Lavo, Marquee. She inflates my ego,” said 29-year-old Andrew Pagliara, a VIP host/promoter for TAO Group, who first met Jacobson at the now-defunct hot spot Beautique. “She’s always fun and full of surprises. I make sure she has a good time.”

Trudy said that one “nosy neighbor asked one of my friends if he was my son.”

“I’m sure the staff downstairs is scratching their heads over the new gal shaking up the Plaza, where the lobby feels like a funeral parlor,” Wayne said. He’s serving as a bit of a Henry Higgins for Trudy — showing her art galleries and helping her find the “perfect” butler and hairdresser.

This summer, she’ll visit the Hamptons for the first time. But she also wants to check out Fire Island and the Jersey Shore, adding, “There’s not a mold I fit.”

Since moving, “I’m doing a lot of things I’ve never done,” Trudy said. “Trucking teaches you never to be stagnant. If you stay in one place, you wither and die. If I can survive an empty tank at the base of Mount St. Helens after a volcano eruption” — which, yes, actually happened to her — “I can survive Fifth Avenue.”