I learned a very important lesson when I was 24 years old. What I learned was that we get paid for the value that we bring to the marketplace. It doesn’t matter who you are as a person, if you are able to bring a useful skill set to the marketplace, you will be compensated. That’s how the marketplace works in any industry. The reason that I was able to double my income at the age of 24, the reason that I was able to go from making 30k as a warehouse worker to making 60k as a truck driver in the oilfield, was because I was able to obtain my CDL, my commercial driver license. What you have to understand is the marketplace is not a mysterious place that works on its own accord, governed by entities hiding in the shadows. No, the marketplace is made up of people, just like you and me. 2 important things I have learned from reflecting and looking back is, Number One that you get paid by the value you bring to the marketplace and number 2, you get paid for what you become. If you become a truck driver, a driver trainer, car hauler or even an owner operator, you will get paid very differently.

So you get paid for what you bring to the table and you get paid for what you become. Trucking Companies will look at your resume and see exactly what it is that you bring to the industry. Are they just a driver with zero endorsements? Okay you’ll get paid the lowest wage possible that a truck driver makes, especially if you’re just starting out. Do you have all your endorsements, several years of experience and be able to run specialty loads? You will be rewarded for your set of skills. Even though both of those drivers have a CDL, each of them will get paid according to what they bring to the trucking industry.

Truck manufacturers, trucking software engineers, mega carriers are always looking to see how they can improve their product they provide to the marketplace. I would highly recommend for you to start doing the same. Just in case you didn’t know, You are a product to these carriers, and the carriers are only looking to buy the best product available, which is you, for a premium price. If you are not getting paid a premium price, that is because you are not a premium product. You get paid for what you bring to the marketplace. I want you to burn that inside your brain. I know many truck drivers that are getting paid a premium price, and they didn’t get there just by having a naked CDL fresh out of school. There is tons of money flowing around in the trucking industry. Doesn’t matter if the market is good or bad, money will never be stopped from spreading around and truck drivers will get paid accordingly to what they bring.

Once I came to the realization of how the economic ladder works in the trucking industry, I could no longer find myself wasting time being asleep. From that point on I understood the following: a formal education will get you money, but self education could get you financial freedom. Having to pick up a book on your own accord is extremely important if you want to find success in this industry. So I devoted as much time as I could, I made it a priority every single day for 2 years to develop myself as a truck driver. Not only develop my mind, but also my body. A strong body is a strong mind. A strong mind is a healthy body. How you look is how you feel, and how you feel is who you become. 

The importance of developing yourself and getting self educated is something that nobody is going to teach you. There is not a single person in this world that cares more about your problems than yourself. Not your parents, not the schools, not the company you work for and especially not the government. It is up to you to become a better version of yourself, it is up to you to accomplish the goals and aspirations that you have. It is up to you to read a book, learn about money and start making wise investments. Your brain is the biggest investment that you could ever make, the type of returns that you’ll get in the future could be life changing. But we don’t want to invest in ourselves, why? Because it is not something that we can touch, feel or smell. But the type of returns that it will yield? Unimaginable. If i was you, i would start to get worried about what type of food you’re feeding your brain. Your brain is the most powerful tool and asset that you have, and you have decided to let it go to waste? To let it rot inside your skull? Unbelievable. The audacity and the nerve that some of you truck drivers have.

I dropped out of college at the age of 20, thinking that I had it all figured out. That I didn’t need school in order to become successful in life. That school was for suckers and people that needed the extra help navigating this world. I was completely wrong. From the time that I graduated high school to the age of 24, I kept jumping from job to job. Thinking that the next job will be better and will solve all my financial issues. After living paycheck to paycheck for so long, not knowing if I was going to be able to afford the rent payment, I knew something had to change. I began looking and searching for a mentor that could hopefully help me fix my life. Not only to fix it but to help build the necessary skills that I needed to provide the marketplace in order for me to start making more money from my newly found skillset.

When I finally found someone to help me, to aid me and consult me, he simply said to. “You need to stop doing whatever it is that you’re doing. It is not working and you’re only hurting yourself by repeating the same mistakes over and over. You will also need to get rid of all the excuses that you have like ‘cost of living is too high, everyone is against me, little poor me just can’t get ahead’ ” he wanted me to list all the excuses that i had on a piece of paper and throw it away. Then get a new piece of paper and write a single word on it, “me”. The answer to all my problems could be found within myself. He told me the answer to solving all my problems wasnt to list out all the challenges that I have been facing. The answer lies with what I was doing when an obstacle appeared before me. How was I handling the situation besides complaining and whining. Sometimes we just need a different perspective in order to see where we are failing. When a problem presents itself, what is your reaction? You will either become a victim or a problem solver.

One of the lessons that I learned from him is that one’s personal income is determined by his personal mindset. If you change your mindset of how you view difficulties, then everything around will change as well, this also includes your income. As fairytale as it might sound, this strategy works on everybody. 

There is a good reason why people want to become truck drivers, and of those reasons is the amount of income one can make. But how can you go from making 60k a year to making a few hundred thousand? That’s the million dollar question, and the answer is mindset. You could wait for the government to step in and increase the rates, adopting the government intervention mindset. However, you’ll never become a top earner if you’re waiting for the government to come rescue you. You could also beg the company you work for to give you a major raise but that will never happen either. That’s the mindset of a beggar, pleading for more money that you’re currently making from a carrier that doesn’t care about you. They don’t even know your name. They know you by your truck number. Like humanoid robots that operate their equipment. Even if you joined a group of truckers that went on strike to raise the wages, that’s the mindset of collective confrontation. Like union workers that band together to go on strike. That will never work and you have only put a red target on yourself from these greedy carriers. None of those mindsets will help you achieve your goals of financial freedom, so you will need to think outside the box, a new perspective. 

It is quite possible to become a successful truck driver in America despite all the obstacles that are going to appear, but that starts with your mindset. So what is it that you can do? What can you change inside your head in order to start seeing results? The asner is the last mindset. The mindset of self development. With this mindset, you will do what is necessary to improve yourself and your capabilities. You will learn to do more and become someone who does more. If you use the mindset of personal development, the economic ladder of a truck driver belongs to you. You have opened new possibilities for yourself. Even if you are working for a company, if you become more valuable to them by acquiring more skills than just driving a truck, you will earn more. That’s how you climb up the ladder. Learn more, do more, make more. Not everyone that is a truck driver makes the same, and not everyone that is making the same is doing the same job. Those who have the most options are more free to move as they see fit. It is much easier to come down the ladder than trying to climb it.

If you think you have it hard in America, think again. Try becoming a truck driver in any other country and see how well that goes for you. Wouldn’t even last a few weeks driving elsewhere. whining all day saying that this current market is too hard to make it. Rates are low and nobody wants to help. Wrong. No. What you need to do is to change your mindset into a better thinking one.

Another misconception truck drivers have is that they can’t dramatically increase what they are earning. Completely wrong. In America truck drivers earn a minimum of 50k per year, however you don’t have to search for very long before you find that some truck drivers make 100k per year, or even more! And that’s whether the market is good or bad. We are currently experiencing possibly the worst trucking economic crisis in over a decade, but I can guarantee there are still truckers making six figures. It’s all about what type of skills you are bringing into the industry. The trucking economic ladder doesn’t end there, in fact it just keeps going up. Part of self educating yourself is that there are endless possibilities in the trucking industry and they are all around you.

Remember this, your income is determined by your skills, education and a mindset that keeps evolving as the current climate changes. The trucking economic ladder doesn’t restrict anyone from climbing it. Anyone can start the process of going up one step at a time, even those fresh out of trucking school.

 In trucking there are so many avenues of making income, that you can’t even start to comprehend the different sources that money flows through. You can buy trucks, you  can become a broker, you can rent out trailers, you can even start your own dispatching services. That’s just a few, the list goes on and on. The barrier to entry to any of those is extremely low. You don’t even need a cdl on the majority of business in trucking. 

All you need is a different mindset. If your life is not going the way you want it to go, you better start to change the way you are doing things. If you work hard on your job, you make a living, if you work hard on yourself, you can make a fortune. Success is not something you chase after, success is something you attract by becoming an attractive person. The way you can gain financial freedom is not by hoping it was easier, but rather by becoming better.