Working as a truck driver is a profession marked by demand, loneliness, changing schedules and a capacity for adaptation that not everyone can handle, such as going abroad. But for those who feel it is theirs, the road becomes a way of life.
Marc has been riding a truck for 23 years and is known online as the “Traginer de la Tona” where he tells what real life on the road is like. In a talk on the YouTube channel Success Routesthis Catalan truck driver, who started “with maps and without GPS”, reviews how the job has changed, what can be charged internationally and to what extent a lifetime away from home is worth it.
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“You either like this job or you like it. If you do it just for money, don’t do it,” he summarizes. And from there he goes on to reel off figures, sacrifices, nights away from home and that strange mix between freedom and loneliness that only someone who has spent half their life sleeping in a truck bunk understands.
How much does a truck driver really earn in Spain?
Marc doesn’t like to talk about salaries. He says it several times. But in the end, when they push him, he leaves a clear figure for anyone thinking about getting on an international bus. On international routes, he assures, that right now you can earn “between 3,000 and 4,000 euros” per month. He does not speak of exact figures, but of ranges such as 3,200, 3,500, 3,700… and specific cases that reach those 4,000 euros that many see as a goal.
Of course, he insists on the same thing several times: “It’s not money.” Not in the sense that it is little, but because nobody gives you anything. To be in that range you have to do real international work, that is, it takes weeks away from home, nights shooting discs, sharing a lot, going out on Saturdays or Sundays and extending days when the tachograph allows it. “No one gives you anything,” he repeats.
It also points to something that is rarely discussed outside the sector and that is that internationally you earn well, but at the cost of not having a “normal” schedule, accepting waits at docks and adapting your entire life to the truck.
“It doesn’t make you a millionaire”
This trucker’s message to anyone who wants to get into transportation is very direct, which is, if you do it for money, at least it is with a plan. He recommends that anyone who enters due to economic necessity does so with a very cold mind, since you have to set a period of 3, 6 months, a year or two to “tighten your ass”, save as much as possible for a flat, a car or a clear objective… and then get off the bus.
He says this, because as he points out, he has seen everything, from people who come in saying “I can last five years and make money” and end up leaving much earlier, burned out by the hours, the waits and the pressure from clients and shippers. Marc himself remembers that this is a job “in which you have to know what you are getting into,” just like a waiter who knows that he will work Saturdays and Sundays. If you complain that they don’t charge you one day, the answer is simple, “it’ll be your turn tomorrow, that’s how this job is.”
In this sense, he explained that the hard part of being a truck driver is not the fact of driving, but rather wasting entire afternoons waiting to be unloaded, seeing how others load before you without explanation, putting up with bad manners at docks and offices and learning not to live permanently angry with things that do not depend on you. “What do I gain by getting angry?” he asks.