Julian with Trucker Job USA and today I wanna talk to you about maximizing your earning potential as a truck driver. The best way to maximize your earning potential, and I think it’s obvious but… - to maximize your earning potential in the trucking industry you need to keep your driving record clean, keep your criminal history clean, and I know this probably sounds very simple but you would not believe how many drivers out there just start having these crazy little incidents. You know, Ticket points incidents and accidents. That’s what I say to a driver when I’m on the phone with them. You wouldn’t believe the incidents like, for example, if a driver is backing up a load and they, y’know, they hit something. They hit the dock or something like that happens to the trailer, that’s an incident. If the company chooses to write that up, that is an incident. I’ve seen that disqualify drivers from, y’know, getting a job.

Some of the things are obvious. I remember talking to a driver that drove under a new bridge… - I’m sorry; drove under a low bridge. He was a new driver and he drove under a low bridge, and I said “how did it happen?” Well, he used Google Maps instead of using the standard-issue GPS system through the trucking company, he took the top of the trailer off and caused a massive amount of damage, right? So again, he was terminated and probably might not be able to get back into the trucking industry till much, much later
I remember a driver who was a veteran that made a U-turn at an intersection. No accidents, no nothing, but when he went back to the corporate office distribution center, they fired him because they had a zero-tolerance on U-turns. The truck’s camera had some kind of sensor in it and it could tell if the driver is making a U-turn.

So listen, when you’re a driver and you’re looking for a job and you have good experience; and you have no tickets, points, incidents, or accidents, and your criminal history is clean; you could pass any type of drug test - you are like Lebron James doing free agency. Everybody is going to want you to drive for them. Everybody.

There’s no company out there that doesn’t want a clean driver; clean background, driving record, drug test - there’s no company that would not want you. So, over time, what happens is the driver is the one that limits their opportunities, and not to say that people that are failing these can’t blossom, because they can. I’ve seen a lot of people failing these get in companies.

The trick I’ve seen people with felonies do? They drove for a major carrier, OTR, for like a year or something, or two years. Like I knew a guy that had a gun charge. He was from Baltimore and he had a gun charge, and he drove for a major carrier for about two years over the road. He was able to secure a job with another major carrier because you know what? They have an algorithm that they go by. They’ll never tell you this, but they do because the simple fact was he had a gun charge but the OTR experience with a major carrier - they said “Hey, enough time has passed, we’ll hire him”, but if he were to try and do it at three month’s experience… - No. They would have not brought him on.

So again, keeping your record clean - these are the keys. I had a brother who's been in the industry for over fifteen years now and he drives for a company, he’s definitely, y’know, moving six figures. So how did he get in that position? Well, how he got in that position was he kept his driving record clean, he kept his criminal history clean, and he had built up enough

Julian Dean, 00:00:01: Hey, this is Julian with Trucker Job USA. And what we're going to talk about today is the application rates of people trying to enter truck driving school, to obtain their CDL class a and due to the pandemic, people are realizing that, "Hey, if I want to maximize my earning potential and have a short school certification turnaround time, then the trucking industry is the industry to go into."
And I've been preaching this for years because, you know, there are not that many places in America's industries where you can attain a license, a CDL class, a license in this case, and earn a decent amount of money, you know? Cause when you look at the cost of tuition with college, I mean it's outpaced the cost.
The cost of college tuition has outpaced the inflation. I think it's up 200% increase in college tuition and they're teaching college the exact same way that they taught it, you know, 50, a hundred years ago.

Julian Dean, 00:01:13: So you know what? The trucking industry is a very unique industry because it crosses so many markets from retailers to frag sanding. I mean that the markets are endless that are inside of the trucking industry. It's a recession-proof industry as well. You know, not to say that the industry can not be impacted because it can be.

But what I'm saying is that America runs on trucking.
America runs on trucking.
If everything that you have in your home comes in on a truck, essentially everything. Amazon would not be the company that it is now if it was not for CDL class A tractor-trailer company trucks. The same thing with Walmart. Walmart, Target, I mean, you name all these big companies, Apple, all of these companies will not be who they presently are if it was not for the trucking industry, shipping everything around. Logistics.

Julian Dean, 00:02:16: So now, you know, back to the point. It's a very smart move for people to go into the trucking industry because demand is only going to keep going up because more people are ordering from the internet.
And what does that mean? That means more truck deliveries. That's exactly what it means. So, the trucking industry is changing. You know, you hear the talks of people say, "we're going to have robots controlling the truck" and it's, yeah. And I'm looking at it like, hey, it doesn't matter if they have a robot controlling a truck or driving a truck, there's always going to be a human inside of that truck. Cause, cause you can only imagine that would expose a company to, if, let's say this computer is malfunctioning and you know, causes a lot of damage to somebody or property.

Julian Dean, 00:03:13: I mean the liability would be, uh, these companies would expose themselves to so much liability that it wouldn't even be funny. So when you hear about the industry changing to that point, it's, I think there's a lot of unfounded fear that people are experiencing. Um, the other thing too, when you look at the application rates that people are in, the schools can't even take the demand. Like it's just too many applications coming in right now because people are saying, hey, I need a skill and I need to make a decent amount of money because hey, I have a family. Definitely understood.

And the trucking industry is one of those time battle-tested industries that is not going anywhere. You cannot outsource truckers to China. You can outsource truckers with robots. The other thing is when

This is Julian with Trucker Job USA. And today we're going to discuss how the pandemic COVID-19 has affected the trucking industry.

The biggest thing that I personally have seen is the food industry, restaurant deliveries. Restaurant deliveries, I've talked to drivers and drivers are saying, "Hey, they laid off 80% of the staff." And I'm like, that is insane, the amount of people that are being laid off. And the other thing that I've seen that has had a huge uptick is dollar business. Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Family Dollar, any business that is in the dollar business freight has been through the roof, because typically when people are out of work, they are going to try to save money. I mean, that's just what people are going to do. They're going to try to save money, which is a smart thing to do. So the volume for these businesses has skyrocketed through the roof.

And in turn, driver demand has really skyrocketed also for needing drivers for those types of positions. So if I'm somebody that's out unemployed, then I'm going to look at jobs in the dollar industry, Walmart, Target. Those companies right there, they really are thriving during this pandemic. But companies that are delivering to restaurants, like chains like Outback or Chili's, these companies are laying people off left and right. And it's really unfortunate, because I'm talking to drivers who have 15, 20 years experience, and they're just getting caught up in the mix. So those are the biggest differences. Also, the DMV has been impacted. We're talking about DMVs that are or MBA if you're in the DMV area, but the DMVs are closed down. A lot of them were closed down and some of them have very limited hours.

So what's going on is that drivers are unable to renew their licenses. Drivers are unable to test for a new CDL Class A license. So this is causing a bubble in the industry where you have drivers with their permit that can't even qualify for their CDL Class A license because the DMVs are closed. They're closed because of the pandemic. So now this bubble is just swelling now with drivers who were saying, "Hey, I want to drive. I need to get to work." Or they're graduating from school and they can not actually go test for their license. And some drivers can not actually renew their licenses. So I'm seeing some states, some counties are actually extending the renewal time duration for people with driver's license, because they're just saying, "Hey, we understand there's no way." And truck drivers are essential to America.

So everything comes in on the truck. And Amazon is another company, of course, I forgot to mention them. They are another company that is thriving through this economy quite well. So loads are picking up for them. There are companies that are hiring on their behalf that is picking up. And of course, they're hiring as well. So Amazon, dollar businesses, Walmart, Target, these companies are thriving. So if I'm a driver and I'm out of work and I'm looking at everything like, hey, I need to get back to work, I'm definitely going to look for those types of companies, because these companies are on a hiring spree. They need people badly.

So I guess when you really look at the whole scenario, what has happened is that America has shut down essentially. So the essential businesses like grocery stores, dollar stores, Walmart's, and Amazon that are perfect for this type of environment, because you're getting everything delivered to your home, these

This is Julian with Truck Driver Job USA. And I wanted to go over the three biggest mistakes that I see drivers make when they're trying to obtain employment.

One of the biggest mistakes I see drivers do is that they drive for companies that are now reporting to the DAC. And as you know, this will cause many problems because you don't have a history. The DAC is recording everything as far as where you have driven and your record. But if the company, let's say, if you've been driving for a company for two or three years, and they didn't record anything, man, you're talking about trouble. Now you're taking a driver who may have two, three years of experience down to six months or zero. I've seen all types of ridiculous scenarios where the driver is a vet. But you know their driving history is not there.

I've seen that happen. So, you know, don't be a victim of that when you're trying to get that next CDL Class A Driving job.

The second thing I've seen people do is driving Non-CDL class A driving positions. But the company says hey we're only hiring people with CDL Class A.  Hey, now I don't know why the company's are doing it. I don't know if it's a weak market and they can say, well, you know, we feel like we can get a stronger or better candidate.

If we get to Class A,  well guess what, who ends up getting hurt? If the driver tries to go back into driving a Class A tractor-trailer, it depends on how much time that he had previously in the Class A experience and how long the driver has been out of the truck. Because I've seen it hurt drivers more times and then it has helped them. So that's the second mistake driving for companies like box trucks or something that does not need a CDL Class A. If you're not going back to the CDL Class A industry, then you know, it's not going to hurt you, but you never know what might happen. I mean, we're in a pandemic right now. So you never know what skill you're going to have to use to maximize your earning potential.

And the last mistake that I've seen, and this is a heartbreaker, is where I've seen drivers do operating equipment that is not up to par. And the company said, "Hey, don't worry about it. You know, we'll take care of any tickets you get," which, to me, is one of the most foolish things that a driver can do, unfortunately. And the company never pays for the ticket and the driver ends up paying the price.

So again, these are the three biggest mistakes that I've seen CDL Class A Drivers make and these are great drivers. You know, they didn't have bad intentions or anything. They weren't trying to game the system. And they just ended up in some bad scenarios. They just don't have the credentials that were hurt because of not having that knowledge about what's going to happen to their CDL class. It's just like everything else in life. Boxing is one of my favorite sports. The reason being is that you have to protect yourself at all times. And that's the same thing with any industry out there.