As student debt mounts, Americans are looking for lucrative alternatives to a four-year college degree and trucking is proving to be a promising path for many. A 24-year-old social media sensation, who goes by "Alex the Trucking Guy" on social media, has built a large following detailing his life on the road as a trucker for Variant in America.
In 2021, "as I was packing my bags to go to CDL school, the trucking school, to learn how to drive a semi truck, I wrote down on my goal board with my marker, three different goals for YouTube," he said. "One was to get at least a 5% click-through rate on each video, get at least a thousand views for a video and make $10,000 in ad sales by 2022 … and it's far surpassed anything that I even set for myself.