How I Got Started in Trucking (Story Time)

what's up everybody i'm david mcgill now a question that i get asked all the time is how and also why did i get started in the trucking industry as an accountant and i just figured i'd shoot this video and explain this the situation to anybody else out there who you know may be wondering the same thing now in order to you know truly paint the picture i'm going to have to take y'all back to my childhood so that way i can explain to you you can see different things that have you know molded my thinking growing up to what ultimately shaped a lot of my you know thinking and thought processes today so i'm originally from new orleans louisiana and i have i come from a family of uh roofers like my daddy was a roofer um a lot of my uncles are roofers and i also i have an uncle one of my uncles he uh he's actually the owner of a commercial roofing business um his name is ronnie and you know fun fact about me and ronnie's relationship is he's actually my second cousin on my mother's side and he's my uncle on my daddy's side now if you can't figure out how that's legally possible and let me know in the comments section if you get it right uh you'll get a grand prize of nothing but i think it'll still be fun to you know just you know read some of the responses but anyway ronnie was the owner of the commercial roofing company and as a kid i would go out to the job sites and i would see he had so many people working for him and i was just always impressed by that because he really just kind of ran the whole show he was finding the jobs um and he was really just directing traffic you know on the job sites and as a kid i asked him one day like you know how did you get to the point where you know you own your own business and he told me that he wanted to take uh a vacation with my aunt and his kids and at his job at the time um like they didn't like they didn't approve his vacation and then they did they did something like funny with his check or something like that to where he just ended up quitting and starting his own company fast forward to you know by the time i'm in the picture you know and i'm old enough to understand what's going on i'm seeing everybody work for him and i'm also seeing on like thursday nights him splitting up you know uh everybody's paychecks so that they could you know get paid on friday and i just it was just always cool to me and i remember he would he would play this game with uh me and his son my my other cousin and where he would come in and he'd have like the biggest bankroll i've ever seen in my life i mean huge probably like a million dollars in his hand easily and uh he would say if y'all can guess he would give me and my cousin a guest he would say if y'all can guess how much is in this in my hand you can have it and so i might guess something like 2500 and my cousin might guess 3200 and he's staying there he counted and it might be like ten thousand dollars now um at the time you know in the mid 90s you know we 10 11 12 years old like that was that was a that was a lot of money that's a lot of money now but you know as a 12 year old seeing that kind of money it just i was just i was impressed by it and as we got older he told me the reason why he used to do that to us when we were kids was because he wanted us to see that you could have a lot of money and um you don't have to do anything illegal to get it so he was basically just trying to teach us you know teach us a lesson and instill in us that you know we didn't have to be impressed by you know a lot of the things that um you know like drug dealers and stuff like that in the neighborhood you know we could um we had something different you know to work towards so you know i always i always liked that about it and also during this time i was a big basketball fan i still am and i remember uh i don't know if it was like 97 96 97 kevin garnett he had signed like 126 million dollar contract with the minnesota timberwolves and i was watching this news with uh with my other uncle my godfather my parents now remember i told my parents he's a he's an air force guy you know he's retired from the air force so he's he's real serious he says what he means and you know we he gets his point across pretty well and uh i remember when that news came out i told my parents i was like i say dang pyramid i was like kevin garnett he just signed for 126 million dollars like he's rich can you believe that that's crazy he's rich and uh he looked at me straight face and said well if kevin garnett is getting paid 126 million dollars imagine how much money the person writing to check it uh how much money he has and when he said that i was just kind of like damn like i was i was in shock i didn't really know what to think i was just you know just threw me off so you coupled that conversation with the things that i saw you know from ronnie and being his own boss it really just kind of it really kind of molded my thinking that i needed to have my own business at some point in my life fast forward i moved to indianapolis um in the eighth grade and um the apartment complex we lived in you know i had a lot of friends one of them was uh with my boy stan shout out to stan burrell and we would always hang out at his next door neighbors house because they were like families they were like they were like family um him his family and the neighbors and so we were hanging out over there one day after school and uh one of the like one of the neighbors daughters walked in and she had just came home from school and she was she was a couple years older than us and she had a green book that had a gold dollar sign on it and like the book just caught my attention so before i left that that uh that evening i asked her i was like what's that what book is that and she said oh this is for my accounting class i'm like all right what's okay what's the counting what's that about and she said in the class we talk about uh we talk about you know how to keep track of money and counting money and stuff like that so you know instantly i was like oh and i need to i need to take that class so by the time i got to high school you know i took those classes and then i went on to college to major in accounting and the reason why i majored in accounting was um i had learned that accounting is considered the language of business um so basically you can't you can't have a business in-depth business conversation without using accounting terms so even though i didn't know what kind of business i wanted to start eventually i knew that i ultimately wanted to have my own business i couldn't be a roofer because it was hot um and plus i'm scared of heights so i knew i wasn't gonna start a roofing company but i didn't know what i wanted to do uh so my thought process was i'll go and i'll learn accounting so then when i start my own company i don't need to hire an accountant and i understand the numbers myself and in the meantime while i'm trying to figure out what business i want to start i could just go work as an accountant i can just get a job since every company has an accounting department so you know fast forward 2007 you know i graduated from from college and i started working as an accountant in 2012 or 13 i think it was 12. a friend of mine started a construction company and he wanted me to you know do his do his bookkeeping and taxes so outside of my 9-5 was my first uh accounting client a few years later i think it's probably 2016 2016 or so he uh he reached out to me he let me know that he had a referral that uh some guys he knew had started a trucking company and they needed an accountant so um they were going to reach out to me so we ended up i ended up meeting them we hit it off things went things went well they explained to me what they were trying to do and what they needed help with so you know i agreed that i would i would come on board you know as their account not help them out you know get you know getting a lot of their accounting and taxes and things like that together um and because they were new to trucking i also had to um get familiar with a lot of the you know the regulations d.o.t compliance a lot of things like that so i got pretty well versed um in the whole um you know the federal regulations and things like that now what a lot of people don't know is when you work in corporate accounting um you have a pretty good sense on you know how how how the operations and the sales how that impacts the bottom line because you are you know you're working with the numbers every day so you understand like how a change here or a change there impacts the bottom line so um just throughout my career i you know i became pretty good at processes and operations so being able to apply that to the trucking company that i was helping out with um i was able to you know really get some things in place to help them grow pretty quickly and you know one day we were we were having lunch and one of them had jokingly said oh man you should uh you should start your own trucking company like you pretty much helped us you know get this far like you should go ahead you know everything about it already just go ahead and uh and start your own i think anything of it and a part of the reason why i didn't is because a few months prior to that conversation i had bought a daycare so um so i was working my job i had you know accounting clients on the side and then i also owned the daycare that was you know staffed so the thought of you know i thought you know starting a trucking company that'd be crazy and then one day i was like you know what because they said it again and the more i got to thinking about it i was like well i don't know what exactly i want to do like long term and i do know a lot about what's going on with trucking industry so why not so i went ahead and you know and started the trucking company and i was i was working you know i was working my job and running those other businesses and also you know launching the trucking company so basically i was it was never in my you know in my plans to start a trucking company it's just from a series of different relationships it just led me into the direction to where i was working with a trucking company and i got pretty good at it so then it just naturally made sense for for me to start my own company now in the you know in a future video um i talk a little bit more on you know how i was able to you know manage all of that stuff at one time hopefully that you know that answers the question on you know how and why i got started um in the trucking industry as an accountant so hopefully this video answers the question and if you like this video go ahead and give me a thumbs up and let me know in the comments section

Channel: Trucking From Scratch [David McGill]

Views: 15,101

Rating: 4.9673471 out of 5

Keywords: trucking, trucking business, how to start a trucking business, semi trucking, hotshot trucking, dump trucking, owner operator, company driver, independent contractor, employee, operating authority, self employment, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, david mcgill, maxxforce, international prostar, freightliner, volvo, kenworth, peterbilt, prime inc, swift transportation, jb hunt, us xpress, roehl transportation, fmcsa, dot, success, keeptruckin, eld, business, ch robinson, amazon

Id: Bcvf5fTRmVU

Length: 12min 28sec (748 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 10 2020