Built in the Midwest

Midwest Truck Driving School

There are careers that pay six figures, have massive demand, and take months to get into — not years. The reason most people never consider them has nothing to do with the work. It has to do with what they were never told. Built in the Midwest is where we have real conversations about careers in the skilled trades. From truck driving and electrical line work to heavy equipment and beyond. We bring in the people doing the work, the employers hiring for it, and the instructors training the next generation — because most people make career decisions with almost no real information. They pick a path based on what everyone else is doing, what sounds good on paper, or what their parents did. And then they spend the rest of their life wondering if they got it wrong. This show exists so you don't have to guess. You'll hear what the work actually looks like, what it pays, what employers want, and what nobody tells you before you get started. Hosted from Escanaba, Michigan by Midwest Truck Driving School, where we train CDL drivers, linemen, and heavy equipment operators. But the conversations here go well beyond our own programs — because the trades are bigger than any one school, and the decision you're making deserves the full picture. Whether you're an employer who wants to share your perspective, a tradesperson with a story, or someone trying to figure out their next move — pull up a chair and tune in. Got a question about a specific trade or career? Send us a message. We'll get into it on a future episode. New episodes every Friday.

  1. 4d ago

    The Trucking Career Questions That Nobody's Asking

    This is a Q&A episode about the questions people getting into trucking don't think to ask. Not what it pays or how long training takes, but the ones that actually decide whether this works out over a full career: what automation is really doing, which kinds of trucking are most exposed, and who to trust when everyone talking to you has something to gain. Josh has held a CDL for about sixteen years and now teaches CDL students. RJ works in marketing for the school and spent time in the AI industry before this. Neither of them thinks you should take their word for it — the whole point of this one is to give you better questions to go research on your own. ABOUT THE SHOW Built in the Midwest features conversations with the people who build, move, and power this region — truck drivers, linemen, heavy equipment operators, and the employers and recruiters who hire them. New episodes every Friday. Hosted from Escanaba, Michigan by Midwest Truck Driving School. 🔗 LINKS Listen wherever your get your podcasts: https://built-in-the-midwest.captivate.fm/listen Midwest Truck Driving School: midwesttruckdrivingschool.com North Country Heavy Equipment & Electrical Line School: https://ncheschool.com/ Submit your Questions: https://webforms.pipedrive.com/f/6WfGT9X1zlYC6WvssJqfWxOOkvVa1AjzqgnAIIHOq70WWiNo5czEWXpBMqxVTW7UST 💬 CONNECT Email: marketing@midwesttruckdrivingschool.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CDLMidwest Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/midwesttruckdrivingschool/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@midwesttruckdrivingskool

    The Trucking Career Questions That Nobody's Asking
  2. Jul 24

    The Only Woman in Her CDL Class. Now She Teaches It.

    Penny had vacation days to burn and a husband who drove truck, so she climbed into the passenger seat for a week just to see what it was like. Eleven states later she was doing math she did not like the answer to — she was wearing herself out as a CNA while he was getting paid to watch the country go by. She came home and started looking up schools. WHAT WE GET INTOThe moment on a ride-along that made her question the job she already had, and what she did about it the week she got homeWhat it's actually like being the only woman in a CDL class — and why she came back years later to make sure the next one isn'tForty-seven states in eleven months, the three still on her bucket list, and the vacation program that let them park the truck and rent a car for a weekThe freight nobody warns you about, including million-dollar loads, security escorts that follow you, and a dock built inside a mountainHer safety habits for running solo as a woman ABOUT PENNYPenny spent years as a CNA before she ever sat in a truck, and she'll tell you the work was brutal on the body and good for the soul. She and her husband ran team over the road for years hauling pharmaceuticals and high-security freight coast to coast, until a dog they weren't allowed to keep in the truck brought them home for good. She's a certified instructor at Midwest Truck Driving School now, teaching the course she once took — which is exactly the job she came back and asked for. 🔗 LINKSListen wherever your get your podcasts: https://built-in-the-midwest.captivate.fm/listen Midwest Truck Driving School: midwesttruckdrivingschool.com North Country Heavy Equipment & Electrical Line School: https://ncheschool.com/ Submit your Questions: https://webforms.pipedrive.com/f/6WfGT9X1zlYC6WvssJqfWxOOkvVa1AjzqgnAIIHOq70WWiNo5czEWXpBMqxVTW7UST 💬 CONNECT Email: marketing@midwesttruckdrivingschool.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CDLMidwest Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/midwesttruckdrivingschool/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@midwesttruckdrivingskool

    The Only Woman in Her CDL Class. Now She Teaches It.
  3. Jul 17

    Taking A Huge Pay Cut To Become A Lineman

    If you're trying to get into a trade right now, you've probably gotten the same advice everyone gets. Be patient. Take what you can get. Get some adjacent experience first, stay close to home, wait for the right opening. It sounds like the responsible thing to do. Cole Martinsen took that advice for four years. He finished line school in nine months and then spent four more doing everything except line work — telecom, gas, a desk job doing electric design — and every one of those jobs paid him well to stay put. He'll tell you it's the thing he'd take back. When the opening finally came, getting in meant dropping ten dollars an hour and standing next to guys who were miles ahead of him. He's topped out now. This one is for anybody sitting in front of the same choice he was: the answer to "should I wait until I'm ready" turns out to be expensive, and he can tell you exactly how expensive. DISCLAIMER: all discussions regarding earnings and earning potential are demonstrative. Individual earnings are dependent on experience, region, employer, as well as market conditions. WHAT WE GET INTO Whether taking a safer job to "get experience first" actually gets you in — or just moves the start line.What to do when the only opening available is a step down in pay, and how fast it comes back.How long the path really takes, start to finish, from somebody who isn't selling you anything.What happens to your paycheck every six months once you're inside an apprenticeship.Where a journeyman tops out — the actual number, not a range someone rounded off.Whether you can count on the overtime, and why he doesn't count on his.The trap your first big paycheck sets for you, and what it looks like from the inside.What to do when you don't know something on a job site and everybody's watching.Who this trade isn't for. He's specific, and it comes down to a tape measure. ABOUT COLE MARTINSEN Cole is a journeyman distribution lineman in the Twin Cities metro who came up the long way and is the first to say so. He also built US Trade Route, a free site that answers the question he kept getting from friends' little brothers and cousins: how do I actually get into this? It's how-to guides and pay information by trade and by state — aimed squarely at the gap nobody filled for him when he was seventeen. 🔗 LINKSCheck out US Trade Route: https://ustraderoute.com/ Listen wherever your get your podcasts: https://built-in-the-midwest.captivate.fm/listen Midwest Truck Driving School: midwesttruckdrivingschool.com North Country Heavy Equipment & Electrical Line School: https://ncheschool.com/ Submit your Questions: https://webforms.pipedrive.com/f/6WfGT9X1zlYC6WvssJqfWxOOkvVa1AjzqgnAIIHOq70WWiNo5czEWXpBMqxVTW7UST 💬 CONNECT Email: marketing@midwesttruckdrivingschool.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CDLMidwest Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/midwesttruckdrivingschool/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@midwesttruckdrivingskool

    Taking A Huge Pay Cut To Become A Lineman
  4. Jul 10

    Why Most Tradespeople Stay Broke Despite Earning Big

    WHY THIS ONE MATTERSSomething happens when the paycheck gets bigger. A lineman finishes his apprenticeship. A driver moves up to a better lane. A operator finally hits the top of the scale. And for the first time in their life, there's money left over at the end of the month. Most people know exactly what to do with it. They go buy the truck. Or the four-wheeler, the side-by-side, the skid steer, the boat that sits under a tarp eleven months a year. Nobody in that person's life is telling them not to, because everybody they know did the same thing. What almost nobody explains is that the money you keep behaves completely differently than the money you spend, and that the years right after your income jumps are the ones that decide whether you're still trading your body for a paycheck at sixty. The trades pay well. That's the whole point. But pay is not the same thing as security, and a good week on the job does nothing for you during a bad month off it. This episode doesn't cover trucking or line work. It covers what happens to the money afterward, told by somebody who started at eighteen with no degree, spent almost two decades learning the numbers side of construction, and then walked away from a steady paycheck to build something of her own. If you're earning more than you used to and you've never once been shown what the other options are, this one is for you. THE STORYTrish spent fourteen years inside a general contractor, learning the money from the inside while the men around her ran the jobs. Then she left the paycheck behind entirely. What she's built since is the part nobody warned her she could do — and the part somebody once told her she couldn't. ABOUT TRISHTrish started in construction at eighteen, in a company where her mother was CFO and her aunt ran estimating — three women in a business that was otherwise entirely men. She spent fourteen years there, most of it in the numbers. Today she runs Red Line Redesign, holds a real estate license, manages a rental portfolio she built slowly while still working full-time, and flips houses in Escanaba and Gladstone with a crew she trusts enough to leave alone. Mostly. A NOTE ON WHAT YOU'LL HEARTrish shares her own strategies, her own numbers, and her own read on risk. Some of it is settled practice and some of it is genuinely debated among people who do this for a living. She isn't a CPA, we aren't financial advisors, and none of this is advice for your situation. Take it as one person's honest account of how she built what she built — then go talk to somebody who knows your books. LINKSRed Line Redesign: https://redlineredesign.com/home-1Retire Before Mom & Dad, Rob Berger, mentioned around 12:47: https://a.co/d/0bEygGLnBRRRR method, David Greene — mentioned around 16:24: https://a.co/d/00XOytSNWho Not How, Dan Sullivan & Benjamin Hardy — mentioned around 41:59: https://a.co/d/0cZMCf9d 🔗 LINKSListen wherever your get your podcasts: https://built-in-the-midwest.captivate.fm/listen Midwest Truck Driving School: midwesttruckdrivingschool.com North Country Heavy Equipment & Electrical Line School: https://ncheschool.com/ Submit your Questions: https://webforms.pipedrive.com/f/6WfGT9X1zlYC6WvssJqfWxOOkvVa1AjzqgnAIIHOq70WWiNo5czEWXpBMqxVTW7UST 💬 CONNECT Email: marketing@midwesttruckdrivingschool.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CDLMidwest Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/midwesttruckdrivingschool/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@midwesttruckdrivingskool Takeaways: It's essential to focus on how much money you keep rather than just how much you make, because keeping money is often the trickiest part of financial success.Understanding that money should work for you, not the other way around, is a fundamental mindset shift in personal finance and investing.The 80/20 rule applies to finances too, meaning you should concentrate on the 20% of actions that generate 80% of your income to maximize efficiency.Being in a position to stop working at any moment and enjoy life, like sitting on a beach, defines true wealth far better than simply accumulating cash.Investing in real estate wisely, such as leveraging funds to buy multiple properties, can significantly enhance your return on investment compared to cash purchases.Building a network and learning from experienced investors can provide valuable insights that help you navigate the complex world of real estate successfully.

    Why Most Tradespeople Stay Broke Despite Earning Big
  5. Jul 3

    First Year Trucking and the "Driver Shortage"

    Thinking about a truck driving career? This is part two of our Q&A with Josh Barron, director at Midwest Truck Driving School. We cover what your first year on the road is like, how to choose a CDL school, and whether the driver shortage is real. RJ asks the questions. Josh answers. We cover three things. First, how to evaluate a CDL school. Josh explains what separates a solid truck driving program from a weak one. Second, what the first year is really like at a mega carrier. We talk about turnover, training pay, and what most new drivers run into early on. Third, the driver shortage. We get into whether it's real, and what the nuance means for your career. Josh also compares life on the road (OTR) with regional and local driving, and how to figure out which one fits. He's honest about who this career isn't right for. RJ put together a free playbook of questions to work through before you decide on a CDL career. It's linked below. https://www.midwesttruckdrivingschool.com/before-the-wheel-future-drivers-playbook-opt-in/ 🔗 LINKSListen wherever your get your podcasts: https://built-in-the-midwest.captivate.fm/listen Midwest Truck Driving School: midwesttruckdrivingschool.com North Country Heavy Equipment & Electrical Line School: https://ncheschool.com/ Submit your Questions: https://webforms.pipedrive.com/f/6WfGT9X1zlYC6WvssJqfWxOOkvVa1AjzqgnAIIHOq70WWiNo5czEWXpBMqxVTW7UST 💬 CONNECT Email: marketing@midwesttruckdrivingschool.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CDLMidwest Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/midwesttruckdrivingschool/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@midwesttruckdrivingskool

    First Year Trucking and the "Driver Shortage"
  6. Jun 26

    Your Truck Driving School May Be Setting You Up to Fail

    A guy with twenty years on the road climbs into the cab for a road test, asks if he can float the gears, and proceeds to grind metal on metal the whole way down the block. That moment is the whole point of this episode. Experience isn't the same as doing it right, and a lot of what gets argued about online falls apart the second someone who teaches this for a living walks you through it. RJ pulled the questions people actually ask — from the comments and from threads across Reddit — and put them to Josh, straight. WHAT WE GET INTO Why double clutching gets taught, what floating actually is, and the line between the two that most people online get wrongThe reason a thirty-year veteran might struggle with today's CDL testWhat happened to a big chunk of the country's CDL schools — and how to make sure you don't end up at the wrong oneThe weight mistakes that quietly cost new drivers thousandsThree pre-trips that caught a problem before it caught fireThe honest answer to "is CDL school even worth it"Why the trucks with all the nice tools can make you a worse driver ABOUT THE EPISODE This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation, focused on the truck and the training itself. Part 2 picks up the career and decision side. Everything here comes with a regional-context disclaimer — these are Midwest answers, and your experience somewhere else may look different. Questions were kept anonymous on purpose. 🔗 LINKSListen wherever your get your podcasts: https://built-in-the-midwest.captivate.fm/listen Midwest Truck Driving School: midwesttruckdrivingschool.com North Country Heavy Equipment & Electrical Line School: https://ncheschool.com/ Submit your Questions: https://webforms.pipedrive.com/f/6WfGT9X1zlYC6WvssJqfWxOOkvVa1AjzqgnAIIHOq70WWiNo5czEWXpBMqxVTW7UST 💬 CONNECT Email: marketing@midwesttruckdrivingschool.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CDLMidwest Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/midwesttruckdrivingschool/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@midwesttruckdrivingskool

    Your Truck Driving School May Be Setting You Up to Fail
  7. Jun 19

    Four Questions That Beat 'What Do You Want to Do When You Grow Up?'

    Trent Bellinger grew up being told the same thing a lot of kids hear — that college was the only road that led anywhere good. He went and got the degree. But somewhere along the way he figured out that the thing setting him apart wasn't the diploma, it was the 4,000 hours he'd already put in at his dad's shop. Now he runs career and technical education for two counties, and he's spending his days making sure kids see every door, not just the one everybody points at. WHAT WE GET INTO Why a 2.0 student and a 4.0 student can land in exactly the same spot — and what actually decides itThe four-question test Trent walks students through when "what do you want to be?" isn't getting them anywhere"Kids can't be what they can't see," and what schools are doing to fix it before ninth gradeThe high schoolers who poured footings and hung drywall on a real house, with real contractors standing next to themWhy the skills you pick up at a summer job nobody can ever take back from youThe pallet story that turned into a rule Trent keeps on his office wall ABOUT TRENT Trent Bellinger is the CTE director for the Delta-Schoolcraft ISD. He started as a welding instructor, taught for eight years, and moved into administration because he liked building things — programs, pathways, a way through for kids who didn't fit the one-size mold. He and his wife are raising two kids in the U.P. and aren't going anywhere. Discover your Ikigai here: https://ikigaitest.com/ 🔗 LINKSListen wherever your get your podcasts: https://built-in-the-midwest.captivate.fm/listen Midwest Truck Driving School: midwesttruckdrivingschool.com North Country Heavy Equipment & Electrical Line School: https://ncheschool.com/ Submit your Questions: https://webforms.pipedrive.com/f/6WfGT9X1zlYC6WvssJqfWxOOkvVa1AjzqgnAIIHOq70WWiNo5czEWXpBMqxVTW7UST 💬 CONNECT Email: marketing@midwesttruckdrivingschool.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CDLMidwest Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/midwesttruckdrivingschool/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@midwesttruckdrivingskool

    Four Questions That Beat 'What Do You Want to Do When You Grow Up?'
  8. Jun 12

    Why This Former Marine Leader Started Over as an Apprentice

    You want a stable career that pays well with room to grow — but with all the noise out there, it's hard to even know where to start. Johnny Rogers didn't have a map either. He left the Marine Corps at 28 and started over in the trades at the bottom. In this one we talk about the decision he made in a parking lot that set the next decade in motion, why he chose eight years in the Marines instead of four or twenty, and what it really feels like to go from being in charge to being the new guy who knows nothing. We get into the CDL he treated as a backup plan, the apprenticeship boot camp he showed up to with no training, and the advice he'd give his 18-year-old self about chasing goals too fast.Johnny Rogers is a Marine veteran, journeyman lineman, head wrestling coach in Escanaba, and a member of the National Guard. He started his trade career through Midwest Truck Driving School and a direct-entry line apprenticeship. 🔗 LINKSListen wherever your get your podcasts: https://built-in-the-midwest.captivate.fm/listen Midwest Truck Driving School: midwesttruckdrivingschool.com North Country Heavy Equipment & Electrical Line School: https://ncheschool.com/ Submit your Questions: https://webforms.pipedrive.com/f/6WfGT9X1zlYC6WvssJqfWxOOkvVa1AjzqgnAIIHOq70WWiNo5czEWXpBMqxVTW7UST 💬 CONNECT Email: marketing@midwesttruckdrivingschool.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CDLMidwest Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/midwesttruckdrivingschool/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@midwesttruckdrivingskool

    Why This Former Marine Leader Started Over as an Apprentice

About

There are careers that pay six figures, have massive demand, and take months to get into — not years. The reason most people never consider them has nothing to do with the work. It has to do with what they were never told. Built in the Midwest is where we have real conversations about careers in the skilled trades. From truck driving and electrical line work to heavy equipment and beyond. We bring in the people doing the work, the employers hiring for it, and the instructors training the next generation — because most people make career decisions with almost no real information. They pick a path based on what everyone else is doing, what sounds good on paper, or what their parents did. And then they spend the rest of their life wondering if they got it wrong. This show exists so you don't have to guess. You'll hear what the work actually looks like, what it pays, what employers want, and what nobody tells you before you get started. Hosted from Escanaba, Michigan by Midwest Truck Driving School, where we train CDL drivers, linemen, and heavy equipment operators. But the conversations here go well beyond our own programs — because the trades are bigger than any one school, and the decision you're making deserves the full picture. Whether you're an employer who wants to share your perspective, a tradesperson with a story, or someone trying to figure out their next move — pull up a chair and tune in. Got a question about a specific trade or career? Send us a message. We'll get into it on a future episode. New episodes every Friday.

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