WINNIPEG – Imagine driving a truck around North America, recording your adventures on the road and making money while doing it.
That’s what Winnipegger Joshua Giesbrecht has done for the last four years, gaining more than 50,000 followers on YouTube.
“I just grabbed a camera one day and I wanted to share with people what I was going through,” Giesbrecht said. “Most people have no idea what a trucker does.”
Giesbrecht comes from a family of truckers in Manitoba. He started filming his work trips around Canada and America in April 2011 and uploading videos on his YouTube channel “Trucker Josh Vlogs“.
“There’s a lot of negative stereotypes out there and I hate that because I come from a family of truckers,” Giesbrecht said. “To hear people who don’t come from a family of truckers and what they think of them was kind of discouraging.”
Now he records everything he finds interesting on the road, often editing together positive messages along the way.
“I wanted to show people we’re normal people, we’re just doing our job out here on the road and we love what we do,” he said.
His first videos were focused on the trucking industry but they soon evolved into a journal-style vlog because that’s what his followers were interested in.
Giesbrecht now documents everything from strange traffic behaviors to aggressive driving habits in the various cities he passes through while driving.
“I’ll be in a different spot every day,” he said. “I’ll wake up in maybe Winnipeg… then I’ll end up in Wisconsin. Then the next day I might wake up in Wisconsin and I’ll end up in Tennessee.”
PHOTO GALLERY: Behind the scenes with Trucker Josh
Giesbrecht realized he gained more followers every time he posted a video online, so he started adding new vlogs every day, sharing scenic spots on his drives with fans.
“Some people think Canada is the same coast to coast but there’s little subcultures in every little province,” he said. “Almost every place you go to is different and I find that fascinating, I like seeing how they live, how they make it work.”
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Giesbrecht went from 1,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel in 2011 to more than 50,000 in 2015. He currently earns thousands of dollars online each year from his following.
Travel and trucking enthusiasts from around the world now look forward to his daily videos, connecting with “Trucker Josh” via social media.
“I have one follower she attributes her sobriety to me,” Giesbrecht said. “She says that she was struggling in life with depression and things like alcohol and since she started watching my videos shes been encouraged to live a better life herself.”
While Giesbrecht still needs to drive a truck for his main source of income, his goal is to make a living from vlogging around the globe.
After meeting travellers at international conferences who are making millions from their YouTube videos, he was inspired to follow in their footsteps.
“Driving my trucks, it’s about a 14 hour day, every day from the time I wake up to the time I park my truck,” he said. “It would be nice to spend all of my time doing this.”
Giesbrecht said it’s his thousands of loyal followers sharing their thoughts on the vlogs that drive him to keep going.
“When they say that I’m making a positive influence in their lives and really influencing their life for the better, that’s what I do it for,” Giesbrecht said.
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