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Thinking About Becoming a Truck Driver? Watch This First — Transcript · YTtoTranscript

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Thinking About Becoming a Truck Driver? Watch This First

Trucking Truth with James · 2,226 words · 11 min read · EN-ORIG

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Below is the complete, readable transcript of Thinking About Becoming a Truck Driver? Watch This First by Trucking Truth with James on YouTube. Read the full text, copy any part you need, or generate a transcript for any video with our free tool.

Most people think truck drivers get into trucking because they just love trucks. And sure, some do. But after 30 years of driving, I have noticed that's really not the real reason most of the time. Most people get into trucking because they're looking for something. They're looking for more money, they're looking for a career, they want a change

in life, more independence, whatever it may be. Maybe they're tired of doing the same job every day. Maybe they're just want a skill that they can take anywhere. And you can take this skill, driving skill, anywhere. Whatever the reason, very few people actually wake up one day and say, "Hey, I just want to be a truck driver."

It's just not it just doesn't happen most of the time. They don't just wake up thinking they're loving it. So, today I'm going to talk about why people really get into trucking and why knowing those reasons matter more than you think. So, let's start with the obvious one. The obvious one is money.

A lot of people get into trucking because they expect to make a lot of money because they hear from other people that oh, truck drivers can make good money. And you can make good money depending on the job that you do, the experience you have, the company you're with. All of that can be true. You can make

lots of money in this industry, but it's not going to happen right off. And a lot of people think it's going to happen just right out the gate, and it just doesn't happen. They come in here focused on the paycheck. If you come into trucking just focus just entirely on the paycheck, you're probably not going to last long.

Because if you're just focused on that, you don't understand there's trip planning, there's parking issues, there's weather you have to deal with, there's traffic you have to deal with, customers you have to deal with, paperwork, the hours of service, there's all kind of stuff in trucking that you have to deal with throughout the day,

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every day. And all of this is not on the recruiting ads. All of this is not in the stuff that the schools send you saying that oh, this is the greatest thing you can ever do, just get into trucking and you'll be fine. This stuff that I'm going to talk about in this video is not in that.

One of the biggest responses I got from my poll that I did, that's where I got this video from on my channel. If you haven't responded that poll, please go down and look in the post and respond to it. I'm going to look at it see if you know, hopefully it grows and

I can get a better idea from what I've already seen and what that poll has shown me. I really would appreciate that. But people are not just looking for job. They're looking for a career. They're looking for something they can build on. One thing that this industry has always offered is opportunity. You can build a

career in this industry. If you get into something, say you get into driving and you don't like it, it's not working for you. You can pull refrigerated, you can pull a flatbed, you can pull a oversized loads. There's all kind of stuff that you can do in this career. If you want to be your own boss,

you want to be an owner-operator, you can do that if you want to do that. There's a lot of work in it, but you can do it in this in this industry and it's a lot easier to do in this industry than it is a lot of other places. A lot of people are

also chasing stability. That's why they get into trucking. Trucking is a stable industry. A lot of people are worried about the AI trucking taking jobs away from drivers. Uh I don't see it happening anytime soon. It may take a few, maybe regional or what have you, but I wouldn't worry about that too much right now. We just

have to deal with that or as it comes along. Another one that was huge in the poll that I did was people just want a change in their life. Not necessarily because something's wrong. Sometimes people just get tired of doing the same thing over and over. They get tired of going into a warehouse. They

get tired of construction all of the time. They get tired of whatever they're doing. They get tired of being in the office all of the time. Uh maybe they worked in retail for most of their adult life and they're just sick of it and they want something different. You will have a different uh job with

this. A different lifestyle even if you get into trucking. It's going to be something different every day. You're going to be seeing different places every day. You're going to wake up in a new area every day. I've seen most of them because I've been doing it for 30 years. You've not seen them all. You're going to see a lot of

the country. I've been to 49 out of 50 states. I did not drive to Hawaii. I flew there, but I've still been to 49 out of the 50 states. So, I've seen a lot of a lot of this country and it's it's freaking awesome. And for some people, that's what they're exactly looking for. They just want change in

their life. And this is going to be change in your life. It's going to be a different situation. Like I said, no two days are going to be exactly the same even if you drive local job. Even if you drive a local job, no two days are going to be the same. You're going to have different

situations to deal with every day. And that's a lot to some people. They don't You don't get bored in this job. Another reason people coming into trucking is because it's you're pretty independent. I'm going to be real with you. You still have dispatch. You still have appointments. You still have customers. You're not completely free.

But compared to a lot of jobs, you're trusted to manage yourself most of the time. You have to plan your day. You have to make decisions. You have to figure things out. You have to work problems out throughout the day. And a lot of people enjoy that responsibility. A lot of people don't enjoy that

responsibility. So, if that's something you don't enjoy, you may not be wanting to get into trucking as bad now as what you were, because there's a lot of that. A lot of people want to be treated like an adult. And trucking gives you a lot more of that than many jobs do. You're a lot more free to make

your own decisions and to figure things out as you go out throughout the day and the week, months, year, whatever. It's up to you to figure all of this stuff out. So, the expectations that you have in trucking versus what you actually get, can This is where it can get interesting, folks. A lot of people

expect to be able to just jump in the truck and drive, and you're all good. And a lot of people like the idea of just driving a truck. But the reality is you're going to imagine open road, but you don't imagine sitting in traffic 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 hours. I've sat in traffic

for 10 hours, just when I had to pull over side of road and took my break right there in the middle of the freaking road, because it was just shut down, you know. People run through storms. You have to do what you have to do. You don't imagine spending 45 minutes trying to find a

parking spot for the night, so you can be done for the day. You don't imagine sitting at a shipper or a receiver for half the day, but it's going to happen. Every driver goes through periods of adjustment. And those are huge periods of adjustment that you have to get used to. You have to learn that, you know,

everything is not a a bed of roses in trucking. It's a it's a lot of figuring things out and adjusting to the situation as it comes to you. The people that usually do best in trucking is the ones that accept trucking for the way it is and don't try to change it. The ones that struggle are

the ones that are trying to make trucking what they had expected it to be from the get-go before they got into it from whatever poster they looked at and they're still trying to make it be that way. It's not going to be that way. Trucking is what it is. You get good days and you get good bad days.

Some days you go in and out of shippers. Some days you go into shippers and you sit for hours. Some days you travel right through city. Other days you sit in the city for a while in traffic because of, you know, someone may have a wreck. There may be construction. May be whatever. But you have to

accept trucking for what it is to be successful at it and be patient with things in trucking. Patience is huge. I've noticed over the years is most people don't quit, you know, because they can't drive. The the the driving you can learn it. You can learn how to maneuver the truck around. Um

the backing, you can learn how to back. Practice, practice, practice. Trip planning, you can learn that. You just do it over and over and over and you figured out. What usually gets a lot of people is the lifestyle. And being away from home, managing your time gets a lot of people. Handling stress

cuz there is or can be a lot of stress in this. Anymore, I'm just I just kind of let it go. Once you've done it for years, it's just whatever, move on. Learning patience. As I just said, patience is huge in this industry. You have to learn to be extremely patient, and that's a huge part of this.

Is patience and adjusting to the lifestyle. A lot of people don't want to adjust to lifestyle. If someone asked me the best reason for getting into trucking, I'd probably say opportunity. Not because trucking's perfect, it's not it's not easy every day. But trucking gives you opportunity. You have opportunities to earn money. Depending on how willing you are to

work. You have opportunities to learn different things all of the time. Like I said, if you can get with a company that has different types of trailers, you know, uh van, refrigerated, RGN, flatbed, curtain side, you know, just whatever. If you can get with a company that's got a lot of different trailers, so if you

can bounce around between the different trailers in the same company, that would be huge. Because you're learning all the time, you know, maybe they have tankers, maybe they have pneumatic tanker, you know, just there's all kinds of stuff you can pull. Try to get with a company that has a lot of um

opportunity for different equipment. That will be huge. I like to learn stuff all of the time. And I've driven different trucks, pulled different trailers, and I'll hook to whatever I have to hook to and go with it. It doesn't bother me at all. Whatever it is, just grab it and go. And once you get into trucking and you

start learning more and more about it, don't be afraid to bounce from one to another. It's just you you're learning. It doesn't take long. At the end of the day, having said all of this, most people don't get into trucking because they love trucks and they've been wanting to drive a truck since they were 5 years

old because their great granddaddy from whenever whenever drove a truck and they want to drive a truck. Most people going to get into trucking because of money, a career, they just want a change in their life, they want independence or opportunity. And honestly, every one of those is a good reason to get into trucking. Why not?

The important thing is understanding why you're getting into trucking and making sure your expectations match reality. Because when they do, you're more likely to succeed. I'm curious, what reason are you getting into trucking or did you get into trucking for? Was it the money? Was it the career? Was it freedom? Was opportunity? What was

it? I mean, it you know, if you're already driving, that goes for you, too. Just drop your comments down below. I really would appreciate them. I read them all and I respond to as many as I possibly can. I really appreciate you watching this. If you would, subscribe, share, like this, and I'll see you in the next video.