Skilled truck driver Clarissa Rankin brings in $144K a 12 months

Clarissa Rankin is difficult stereotypes.

The 36-year-old, Charlotte, North Carolina, resident is knowledgeable truck driver hauling an array of products from diapers to TVs to canned items throughout the East Coast.

“Folks at all times have this picture of their thoughts of a truck driver being a person with a giant previous abdomen, massive previous beard and carrying overalls,” she says, including that, “I like to get that expression on folks’s faces like, ‘Can you actually drive that?’ And I am like, ‘Sure, I acquired this honey.'”

Rankin loves her job, and her trucking firm introduced in $144,208 final 12 months. However getting there wasn’t simple. This is how she constructed her profitable profession, and the way she’s altering folks’s minds about what trucking can actually be.

Rankin, who’s married with two youngsters, went to high school for prison justice however could not discover work within the subject. As a substitute, she took a job as an alternative trainer making $1,900 monthly. That wasn’t sufficient to assist help her household.

Rankin’s husband had labored within the trucking business himself and inspired her to make the pivot. She discovered she beloved driving a truck instantly. The job was outdoor, far preferable to an workplace job that might preserve her indoors all day.

Throughout the take a look at to get her truck driving license, “I confirmed him how I can maneuver that massive previous factor,” she says concerning the teacher, “and I acquired the license the very first time.”

Regardless of her quick love of the job, it was arduous for Rankin to search out work. “I am not, like, your on a regular basis truck driver,” she says. “I am so girly. So I acquired turned down so many instances.”

She lastly acquired employed after her sixth interview, however was making lower than $50,000 per 12 months, and felt that, too, wasn’t sufficient.

As a substitute, she determined to begin her personal trucking enterprise: JC Rankins Transport.

Rankin’s firm has now been in enterprise for 4 years.

She works sporadically all through the week, relying on the frequency with which she finds jobs on apps like TruckLoads, which exhibits pickup and drop off jobs all through the nation that varied firms want executed. She’s pushed as far north as Massachusetts and as far south as Florida. “Having your individual truck comes with loads of freedom,” she says.

There are prices, although: In 2021, her truck lease was $49,200. Upkeep was $2,665. Gas was $19,336. However, in the end, her take dwelling pay was $73,007, significantly greater than she’s made on different jobs.

Plus, Rankin now makes cash documenting her trucker life on social media. She has practically 2 million followers on TikTok and was capable of make an extra $36,000 in 2021 from promotional movies and promoting.

Whilst she’s discovered a profession she loves, Rankin nonetheless encounters challenges. Girls make up lower than 8% {of professional} drivers, in line with the American Trucking Associations. Truck stops, roadside service stations for truck drivers together with eating places, fueling stations and generally showers, do not cater to ladies, and do not essentially present gadgets like tampons or pads. Male drivers additionally criticize her for what she’s carrying, like shorts over the summer season. And other people decide her life decisions.