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