Female truck driver earns $ 6,000 a month on YouTube
- Angelica Larsson is one of the world’s foremost “trucking influencers” with over 300,000 YouTube subscribers.
- She told Insider that her vlogs earn her around $ 6,000 a month – more than twice as much as she earns from driving.
- The 31-year-old Swedish truck driver wants to inspire women around the world to become truck drivers.
Swedish truck driver Angelica Larsson is one of the world’s foremost “trucking influencers” on social media and earns $ 6,000 per month on YouTube.
That is more than double what she does with pulling freight up Sweden’s snowy mountain sides, the 31-year-old said in an interview with Insider. And yet, she has not spent any of the income she has earned on creating content, she said.
Instead, she saves money to travel and mentors young women who want to break into the truck industry.
“In Europe as a whole, as in Bulgaria or Russia, not many girls drive,” she said. “I have many followers outside Sweden … it is important for them to see that girls can drive trucks as well.”
Larsson started posting fitness content on Instagram in 2014 until she quickly realized that people were more interested in her job as a truck driver. Today, she has 334,000 Instagram followers and 319,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel, which she launched three years ago.
Larsson said that at first she got her successor because it was a little strange for a 5 foot tall woman to use heavy equipment in dangerous weather conditions.
“I’m a little girl driving big trucks,” she told Insider. “Ten years ago it was not so common.”
While many users comment on Larsson’s appearance – some go so far as to crown her the world’s most beautiful truck driver “- she is equally known for her technical skills. Videos show how Larsson takes off a water bottle watch with a forklift, maneuvers icy mountain roads backwards and drives everything from bulldozers and caterpillars to snow plows.
“I want to show the world that a girl can do the same thing that guys can,” she told Insider. “I feel that is part of my purpose.”
As Larsson’s digital presence has grown, so has the wider truck community on social media. A new industry overview of top 25 highest paid truck drivers on YouTube, TikTok, Twitter and Instagram estimate payments of up to $ 4,000 per post. Truck drivers Adryana Oltean and Alex Nino both have over 1 million followers on TikTok.
Larsson told Insider that her income was reported incorrectly and added that she does not make any money on Instagram. When it comes to TikTok, she said she is too busy managing her other accounts to create a new one.
Uploading a YouTube video a week takes about 20 hours, said Larsson, while she herself records, edits and distributes the vlogs. She recently started a new driving position and asked for one day off a week to focus on creating content. Currently, her YouTube channel covers about 50% of her work week, she added.
Although the channel is her personal passion, internet fame has also attracted unwanted attention.
In a video, Larsson told viewers that since personal information is publicly searchable in Sweden, several pursuers have appeared at her home, her parents’ house, and even followed her to work.
“I think it’s a little scary and … I do not feel very comfortable,” she said in a video from September 2020. “You should not come home to a person that way. It’s not okay.”
This eventually caused Larsson to move and create a “false identity” to avoid future confrontations. In addition to safety issues, she told Insider that she fears that her dual career paths as a truck driver and influencer could get in the way of starting a family.
“I really want to finish this big project I’m working on,” she said, referring to her travel and mentorship plans that have been postponed due to the pandemic.
“I really hope … that it will not be too late for me to start a family and become a mother. That’s what stresses me the most.”