Truck Parking Club: The Clubhouse

Bad Reputation is a third generation driver with more than 30 years in, following his grandfather and father onto open deck work. He talks about leaving a loom fixer job at a cotton mill, walking into a Georgia driving school and testing out of everything but a two week refresher because his father had already taught him to back and pre-trip, and holding only five driving jobs across three decades. He explains why he stays put, including the two carriers that went under from under him, and why the one he is with now is where he plans to retire.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIZMDCaAbrk

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Trucker Matt left the military in 1989 and was working as a trailer mechanic in Chicago when he started asking the drivers coming through what they got paid, which ended his mechanic career. He describes getting a CDL in about five days back when that was possible, six months learning the job on container runs between Chicago rail yards under low bridges, and buying his own truck almost immediately after. He is 28 years into pulling reefer, and calls in from Nashville after his reefer unit quit and cost him a load over a part that takes ten minutes to install.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24IRxDUKPLI

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Rob Finch, who runs the Trucking Resources channel, grew up in the passenger seat of his father's truck and figures he had a million miles in before he turned 18. He traces his own 24 years from dry van and reefer, through a year pulling a walking floor for a bulk carrier, to the switch to flatbed three years ago when he admitted he was bored. He also explains how he actually learned to drive, trained quietly on the side by a friend at a Pennsylvania carrier, and why the Mid-America Trucking Show is a convention to him more than a truck show.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLUXyZh0kNo

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Marko runs box trucks out of Chicago, a business he first got into in 2020 when his brother needed help covering the fallout of a failed partnership, and he had a commercial license within two weeks. He explains stepping away after an accident in 2021 and coming back in late 2024, and how much harder re-entry was the second time around, when broker portals auto-reject any carrier without twelve months of active authority. Crossing that mark in January opened up his access to freight, and he is looking at adding a second truck.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfTwsRYT0cw

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Steve is one half of the Real Truckers Couple, and he is clear the whole thing was his wife's idea, back when they were in Maryland with nothing and moved south to look after her deployed sister's house and kids. They have run team for 20 years, all of it expedite and mostly in box trucks, from Express One through FedEx Custom Critical to Panther, including a two and a half year stretch out of the truck dispatching from home when the economy turned. He also gets into the custom sleeper with a kitchen, bathroom, and shower that lets them park almost anywhere, and the stranger loads, like airplane parts to a Walking Dead spinoff set and a run to the plant building the reintroduced Camaro.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlrWpPQHtVA

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Rusty Cross worked factory jobs until a local Pepsi route paid for his CDL, and has since run food delivery for Performance Food Group, hauled cotton seed, and spent three and a half years over the road, homeschooling his son from the passenger seat as a single dad. He explains how chasing money turned into two, three, and four week stretches away from home, and how a stranger on TikTok sending him Dollar General pay stubs ended that. He now runs for Dollar General and calls in from their North Little Rock distribution center.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcEiVe6oxE8

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Sara Dame grew up riding in an old Mack cabover with her uncle, who drove for Campbell 66, and found her own way back to trucking through recovery, using vocational rehabilitation to pay for a third party CDL school in South Florida. She got her license on March 5, 2020, watched her office job close on March 16, and was in a truck by March 25 with the carrier she still drives for, buying her own truck about two years later. She also explains why she locks in a parking spot before she ever reaches the receiver, having had her truck hit three separate times at truck stops.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppDJuxnjjBY

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Certified Redneck is a fourth generation trucker who grew up on a cattle ranch and picked up the handle from his grandfather during a hay season, when his neck was burned red. He talks about joining the Army out of high school in 2018 and being medically discharged a year later, then working as a mechanic before deciding he would rather drive than watch shops half do a job and bill for all of it. He is five years into running solo, calling in from Neosho, Missouri while waiting out Winter Storm Fern.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG-c7SqFK9I

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Chad Keegan walks through the 1978 International TransStar cabover he tracked down on Facebook Marketplace in Muncie, Indiana, days after offhandedly saying he could find one. He traces the truck from the Fort Wayne International Harvester plant to a gravel pit and then twenty years with a farmer, which is how it still shows only 133,000 original miles. He gets into the work since: steer tires dated 2015 and drives from 2002, swapping the Dayton split rims for tubeless 22s, and a 530 mile trip made at 58 miles an hour because anything faster shook it apart.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f92px1hlxkI

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GrindNGears was a DJ running a music lessons business with his wife until COVID killed a 50 city tour and most of their clientele, so he fell back on the only other trade he knew from his father, a 30 year driver. He traces the road from non-CDL hot shot work for Carvana and DriveTime, through a Landstar lease purchase that went nowhere, to finally owning trucks outright. The way it happened is the story: one YouTube subscriber sold him a 2000 Freightliner FLD, another sold him a Prostar at half its worth, and a third, retiring, handed him the keys to a Freightliner Classic like his late father's.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMRWismOxBI

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