Philosophy is the major determining factor of how your life works out. To form a philosophy you have to think, you have to use your mind, you have to process ideas. It all starts from when we were little, from the time that we began to crawl, that we started to form our philosophy but we were too little to understand, to little to comprehend the ideas that were being imprinted in us by our parents, by our family and friends, by our teachers, by the culture, by the government . I used to think that the reason I am where I’m at was because of circumstances. If somebody would’ve asked me when I was 30 years old, why was I not doing well as an owner operator, that I was young, that I was healthy, making more money than ever before, getting to dictate how hard and how I run my routes, work by my own rules, that why was my bank account always so low, why was i always asking to borrow money from family and friends. That is how it is possible to be living in America, land of the free and abundance of opportunities. that my life was not going well for me. What is going on here? What was I doing wrong? I would have never said it was because of my philosophy.
I found it much easier to blame my circumstances.I used to blame the president, i used to blame the market, i used to blame the brokers, i used to blame my carrier and i even blamed the diesel prices. I used to think like that. One day I had enough and decided to throw all that out the window, but it seems a few drivers have found my piece of paper that i had written in, where i blamed the weather, i blamed my dispatchers, i blamed the traffic, i blamed the cities that i was in, i blamed the shippers and receivers, i blamed everything and everybody. So if somebody would’ve asked me why I was failing as an owner operator, why I was constantly running out of money, why I was not succeeding in this great country, land of opportunities and tons of money to be made from, It would not have occurred to me to blame my philosophy. I blamed my job, I blamed the owner of the company I’m with, if I didn’t know any better, I would have blamed my dog for eating my BOL! That’s why I couldn’t find it when I was trying to deliver my load cuz my dog ate it!
I used to say if this is all the market is paying, how do they expect me to do well as an owner operator? How do they expect me to feed my family during an economic crisis? To get ahead in life? I can’t even see the road leading into next week. I thought all owner operators were in the same truck as me. That everybody was struggling to make ends meet. Deprived owner operator taking the scraps that these brokers were offering. That everything costs too much and loads paying too little money. That was my explanation for doing so bad, not my philosophy. It wasn’t until I started working on myself, nourishing my brain, feeding into new ideas, trying to solve problems as opposed to brushing them under the truck. That’s when I realized where the problem is.
You want to know what’s amazing about personal philosophy. That’s what separates O/O from company drivers. It’s what makes us different. We have the ability to use our mind, to think, to process ideas and not just operate by orders and instructions. In the winter, company drivers have to go through any weather, through any road condition, and what if the roads are really bad? What if it’s too windy? What if you have to throw some tire chains on and you have never done it before? What if the weather is disastrous and your dispatchers tell you you have to keep driving? Well tough luck, as a company driver you have to oblige no matter what,or you can be black listed, and we all know what happens when companies put drivers on the black list. O/O are not like Company drivers that have someone on their shoulder telling them what to do, where to stop, how to think, where to fuel and probably where you’re allowed to take your 30 minute break. We can turn around and go north, south, west or east. We do that by the way we think, by the way we exercise our mind, different thoughts spreading in our brain, new concepts like how to create a business, how to work for myself and become an O/O.
How can we truckers come up with a better philosophy, a better strategy, how do we set goals for our future, create plans to thrive and achieve our goals. We can do that by developing our philosophy, by processing what we have available. Let me make it simple.We all start out with a seed in our hand that we have to go out and plant, then we have to go out and deal with different types of soil, the rain, sunshine, seasons and the miracle of life springs out from the ground. Now what do we do with all this information? How do we make what’s available into equity, future, lifestyle, possibilities and values. It starts with what? Your philosophy. With philosophy we can turn things into value, nourishment, food, currency, business. Something spectacular that no other life form can do. There’s no animals, no cows, dogs, lot lizards that have the ability and capability to think and process ideas like we do. Of course you can do it and it starts with changing your philosophy. You have to Think, use your mind, absorb information and put it to use.
Strengthen your philosophy. Your philosophy will determine what you will do with your seed that was given to you by God. The sunshine, and soil, the rain, change in seasons. All those are the economy, banks, brokers and everything else that is available for you to be able to succeed in the trucking world. Process it and turn it into equity and value. That is one of the major challenges in this industry. So what will you do with what’s available and given to you. You need a better philosophy. You don’t need a better economy, you don’t need a better seed or soil, you don’t need better brokers. You don’t need 3$/mile loads, you don’t need cheap fuel. Because when it comes to running a trucking company, that is all you have to work with. If you blame all that stuff then you are blaming all you got to work with! If you blame the economy, if you blame the government and their policies, if you blame the shipper, if you blame the truck stops, pretty soon you will run out of things to put blame on. But that’s all there is, that is all you got.
When you blame everything you got to work with, that is called crashing your truck into your dreams. You can’t change the seed or the soil, you can’t change when it rains, you can’t change the seasons, and when you try to change that, that is when you start to crash into your dreams. So what can you change? Well you can start with your philosophy. With your trucking philosophy. That’s what I had to do at the age of 30. I had to change my mind, the way I thought, the information I consumed, my philosophy. I made a huge mistake on what I thought was causing all my problems. I had to get a hold of the steering wheel again. I used to blame the politicians, the government, inflation, the market, my carrier. Once I got rid of that and went after the actual problem, me, my life completely changed. My whole trucking career got on a new road immediately. The way I saw everything around me changed. This new highway I was on felt really good, fresh new paved roads. It was like putting on brand new shocks on my truck.. The results I got from changing a few things as an O/O were so good that I have never looked at my rearview mirror
Your whole life can change just by changing your philosophy. Making a few minor adjustments to your thinking will completely change you as a trucker. You don’t have to wait til tomorrow, till next month, next season or the end of the year. You can start this process immediately. Some truck drivers do so little thinking that they don’t know which way they’re going. They think they are going west but in reality they are going east. You can imagine the road they are on where they are going to end up at the end of the week, in a month or where they will be next year. They will be in the same spot they are in today, working for somebody they hate, that gives them as little home time as possible, the pay is crap and spending the rest of their careers complaining on social media about their job. Today is the day to change. To grow as a truck driver. To become and think better than you did yesterday, and the road ahead of you, will bring pride and joy to your life.