Episode 119: Let It Go: Don't Let Yesterday's Baggage Steer Your Future

In this episode of the Keep Trucking Personal podcast, Tyler Kivi reflects on Father's Day, the importance of staying connected with the people who matter most, and a challenge many drivers face both on and off the road: carrying old baggage into new opportunities. Whether it's a broken promise from a previous employer, a bad experience with a dispatcher, or feeling unappreciated for your hard work, those frustrations can follow you from company to company if you let them.

Tyler shares why holding onto past disappointments can become more damaging than the original experience itself, and how approaching new opportunities with suspicion and resentment can prevent you from finding the success, relationships, and career growth you're looking for. He encourages drivers to learn from past lessons without carrying the weight of them forever, reminding listeners that not every company, manager, dispatcher, or opportunity is the same. If you're constantly expecting disappointment, you'll likely find it - but if you're willing to start fresh, you may discover something better than you imagined.

This episode is a great reminder to stop letting yesterday's wounds dictate tomorrow's possibilities. Learn the lesson, keep the wisdom, and leave the baggage behind. Your future deserves more attention than your past deserves your anger.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Keep Trucking Personal. I'm Tyler Keevey, a third generation trucker. My purpose is simple. Make sure the definition of trucking doesn't get lost in the culture this industry is drifted toward. This podcast is about real stories, the hard lessons, and the standards that built this business long before apps and algorithms. If you believe trucking is more than freight and it's responsibility, you're in the right place. Let's get into it. Hey everyone, how are you doing? Welcome back to Keep Trucking Personal. My name is Tyler, and I am your host. Before we get started, I hope everyone had a great Father's Day weekend. And I know for many of us in trucking, holidays don't always happen the way we want them to. Some of you are fortunate enough to spend time with your kids, your dad, your family, your grandfather, while others of you are out on the road doing what truck drivers do, and that's keep freight moving and making sacrifices for the people they love. And so my hope for you is whether you were home or you were away, you were able to connect with someone important to you. Right. And that's super easy to do nowadays. A phone call, a text message, a video chat, such as FaceTime or any of the platforms allow you to do it. There's so many easy ways to stay connected. But just hearing someone say that they appreciate you matters so much. Okay. And so as I was thinking about Father's Day and the people that have influenced my life, it got me thinking about something else. How many people are still carrying things that they should have let go a long time ago? And how many opportunities are we missing because we're holding on to old frustrations? And I see this play out with every single new driver. So that's part of why I'm so focused on this because it's it's landing home with me because of there's so many relationships that we're damaging because we're fighting battles that are already over. Okay. And that's why I want to talk about it today. Letting it go is the theme. And one thing I've noticed over the years is trucking has a lot of drivers carrying baggage. Maybe the company you worked at treated you poorly. Maybe a dispatcher had lied to you. Maybe you got promised to load and someone else got it, and you felt like the rug was pulled out right from underneath your feet. Maybe you felt unappreciated for all the hard work you put in. Maybe you really got burned. And you don't have to look far in trucking, lease purchase programs. I hear a lot about that, where drivers were misled and you got burned. And so listen, some of those things actually happened. I know that. And I'm not here to tell you that they didn't, but I'm here to ask an important question, okay? How long are you going to carry it? How long? Because at some point, what happened to you stops becoming the thing holding you back, and your refusal to let it go becomes the thing holding you back. So you're already over what happened to you, actually, but you won't let it go and you carry that baggage to everywhere you go, to every company, and it's actually the thing holding you back. It's the thing that's stopping you from growing. And I've seen so many new drivers start at a new company, even our own, right? You don't have to go very far to monitor someone's new journey with social media the way it is, and they've they're just there waiting for someone to let them down. They almost go to orientation with, well, let's see what they can do to lie to me today, and because they're just thinking someone's out there wanting to do that. They think that this industry is a company first, driver second. It's one. If we're one, if the company is one and the driver's one, a company succeeds. It doesn't work the any other way. It doesn't work any other way. So if you see it as somewhere else, a different alignment, maybe there's something that is not true with the employer you're working with, but the companies don't work unless you guys are aligned. So stop waiting for someone to disappoint you or the new dispatcher to say something that triggers an old, you know, an old cut, opens that wound back up, because then you're sitting down already suspicious, even at your first day of orientation. What are they going to do to trick me? What are they doing? Where's the smoke and mirror?

unknown 3:44

Right?

SPEAKER_00 3:44

You're waiting for that new manager to ask a question. You're waiting for that ops manager to say something that doesn't align with what you were told in recruiting. You're just searching for it, and you're already defensive and you haven't even started the job. Why? Because somebody else broke your trust years ago. And the problem isn't the new company that created the cut in your side. We're trying to heal it. We're just trying to heal it. It's not us, it's not the company you're going to that did it. Okay. The hard truth that is the hard truth. You have to recognize it. Sometimes we are our own worst enemy. And it's not because we're bad people, but because we become attached to our pain. We become attached to our disappointment. We become attached to our story. And we start telling ourselves, I've been burned. I can't trust anybody. Every company is the same. Nobody cares about me. And after a while, we stop looking for opportunities because we're only looking for reasons to be disappointed. Now, don't misunderstand me, friends. I'm not saying forget the lesson. Keep the lesson. Learn from it. Use it to make better decisions. Don't carry the weight forever. A lesson can help you. A burden will crush you. That's the difference here. And one of the best things you can do when you start somewhere new is give yourself the permission to start afresh. You have to give yourself the permission. You have to come into it with a clean slate. Give the company a chance. Give the people a chance. Give yourself a chance. Not every dispatcher is the same in this game. Not every manager is the same in this game. Not every company owner is the same in this game. And with that being said, not every company is the same. And so if you walk into every new opportunity already suspicious for all the things that I said, and you're ready to expect disappointment, you know what you're gonna find? Disappointment. And so what if the thing you've been looking for is sitting right in front of you? What if it's you listening to this podcast and wherever you've been hurt, you're ready for a fresh start? Check us out. Give us a call. Let's talk. Our mission is to set you up for success. And so just think about it. What if this new opportunity is a really good one? What if the next relationship is actually healthy and you can have a good time? You can enjoy your job. What if the chapter ahead of you is better than the last one? You're never going to find out if you keep living in yesterday or your old wounds. And so here's my challenge for you this week. Ask yourself, what am I still carrying? What baggage have I grabbed from every single job and carried with me right over my shoulder, and I'll never lay it down? Who am I still angry at? Who are you still angry at? What experience am I allowing to control my future? And then ask yourself, what would happen if I finally let go of all that? What would it look like? Would I actually be happy? Would I trust people? That's your answer to find out. Because at the end of the day, Father's Day reminds us that life moves really fast. Our kids are growing up, our parents are getting older, opportunities will come and go, and life is too short to spend it dragging around yesterday's baggage, friends. So learn from the lesson, keep the wisdom, drop the weight, throw that bag in the trash because your future deserves more attention than your past deserves anger. Let me say that again. Your future deserves more attention than your past deserves your anger. Let it go. Leave that baggage behind. Throw it in the trash. Thanks for listening to Keep Trucking Personal. Until next time, stay safe. Appreciate you tuning in. If you got value out of this, subscribe and send it to someone who takes pride in the job. We're not just moving freight, we're shaping the culture. Catch you on the next one.