good morning everyone we wanted this is not our normal type of video but I
thought it's something that a lot of people asked me about so I thought hey
I'll do a little little snippet together here right and this is about the pros
and cons of becoming a truck driver for people that are thinking about it and we
just got it done a few things the average entry-level pay for a new
driver is thirty five thousand dollars a year now if you lived in the kind of
part of the country that we live in that's a big plus because minimum was
minimum wage and $8 750 something like that where we live now if you live in
some somewhere like Jersey you know your average your minimum wage is a lot more
and you can look at living right but you're still gonna live no matter where
you where you come from maybe you don't want to live there though so this is a
long-range plan for everyone but if you can make $20 an hour live in Jersey
that's 41 thousand dollars a year but is that enough to live on long range or you
know I wouldn't think so affair but in our neck of the woods thirty five
thousand dollars a year you can live like comfortably very comfortably right
yeah you can raise a family and have one person working on that where we live
yeah now what one person sees as a as a plus other people might see that as a
negative depending on your background and everything along those lines where
you come from what your dreams are your ambitions so it's kind of up to each
person to assess these to their selves
so we already said the truck driving does have a high initial entry-level pay
compared to most industries across the board across the nation that average
college grad does a lot better initially out of college but because of the amount
of credit card debt that goes with their student debt there's in the hole really
far and take so much 30 years to pay off for a lot of people there's also
currently more people going to college then there are job openings that require
a college degree so just because you go to college doesn't mean you're going to
get a degree especially in your field I mean I'm sure we all know people that
have degrees they don't use them they don't work in it they all know yeah back
in the day they call them Technical College's and you could go and learn
something quick and get to work and now they dragged it out for another reason
who knows why okay so a pro is you can get trained in a truck and rolling in a
very fast period of time and start making money now a con that goes with
that is a lot of times you've got you don't have the three or $7000 to go to
school but on the pro side these companies will pick up the tab for you
and if you're selective in the company you go with you can still get a good pay
schedule and work for them for X amount of years to pay it back which is
perfectly fair in my opinion some of those companies cut your rates down
which is a negative so I would avoid those types of companies tuition
reimbursement is always a wonderful thing you get paid to see the country
now on a negative side do you really get to see the country you get to see the
highway you get to see the mountain ranges different cities right depends if
you're willing to pay for an uber to go somewhere
well that's trying to day off I mean how many years ago uber wasn't there and
taxis are crazy prices but now Zuber you can go somewhere for fairly
cheap so it's actually a lot more accessible than it used to be if you're
sitting in this mirror City here I didn't even think about that as an old
person because taxis were so expensive that you didn't go anywhere yeah but now
uber aren't everywhere but compared to before places if you're in anywhere near
Seattle or any big city you can get an uber somebody will take you for a ride
okay now you on the negative side you have
the commitment and a lot of younger people don't everyone has to learn about
commitment it's not just something you're born with but you do have to make
a commitment to do a job like this and the commitment from being gone for weeks
at a time and missing people but now we have social networking and Facebook and
all these other things which makes home so much closer than it used to be when
you had to carry around on the way FaceTime where you can see each other to
know that and it is lonely as hell on the road that's another con my Shero
ladies I'm not lonely but you know what I mean you get you're by yourself you
will be lonely so a good support network will always help another con is the food
out here you know there are plenty of good food out here there really is but
the negative is that bad food is so much more easily accessible and if you switch
over in the middle of the night like your team unfortunately a lot of
restaurants are even in the trick stops are closed at two or three o'clock in
the morning so you have what's available in the gas station which is generally
junk or a piece of cheese so you really have to pre-plan your food options in my
opinion okay now another pro is independence oh your if you're a young
person and you're coming out here you've never been independent of your parents
probably not in a real sort of way or someone telling you what to do or how to
do it and of course your dispatchers are still telling you all that stuff but you
still are independent in a lot of ways to grow as a person into
make decisions and after you leave the mega carriers you become more
independent as a young person coming into the industry you might come in and
get a license and have to go on a training trip and spend a little time as
a company driver but there's always opportunities to grow you just have to
do you want to buy a truck do you want to do other things or do you are you
happy where you're at the negatives that it's not a job where some places you get
in and that's it you can't go no higher a lot of the
negatives that I believe we hear in our industry is that we are short-sighted or
have we have tunnel vision and with and you go into the industry you say this is
what I'm doing and then you forget the game plan or you didn't originally
formulate a game plan because you didn't know have enough information to
formulate such plans but after you get into the industry if you start
formulating those kind of plans from the beginning and plan your path as long as
you have those goals and you're always moving forward then you'll get to where
you want to go another big negative which is a plot a plus is that these
companies will give you advances because so many of people come out here and
they're definitely broke when they start out after going to school and everything
so they start taking advances and I've run into this many times along the years
that people they said we'll only made 300 dollars and then I would ask them
how much have you taking advances and they're like well I took 500 dollars
then I have to tell them I'm you know you made $800 then didn't you
but you already sit pretty spent what your earnings and a lot of times that
makes drivers so unhappy to hear that but it's just a fact once you've fallen
to that advanced trap it's something that can hurt you mentally so it's if
you just everyone has to take an advance sometimes so that's cool but as soon as
you can wean yourself off of it you've been but you gonna be better and you'll
be happier for it too you'll have the of a larger paycheck right anything else
you'd like to add little dog wants to add something alright thank you very
much for your time and we'll talk to you later