Mike Gaffin — you might know him better as “The Boston Trucker” — says he never considered himself an “influencer.” It all started back in 2009. Gaffin was just a guy who loved the infinite variety of interesting things he saw in his trucking job, and he wanted to share those experiences with his young son, Nathan.
“My son was a couple of years old (in 2009). I was on a construction site getting loaded — and I made a little video,” he told The Trucker. “I didn’t know what to do with it, so I created a YouTube channel I called ‘The Boston Trucker.’ I put the video on there, just so my son could see it.”
Today, that YouTube channel has nearly 68,000 subscribers who enjoy watching the more than 900 videos Gaffin has posted over the years. He’s active on other social media platforms as well: Videos he posts on TikTok, along with photos on Instagram and Facebook, help drive more viewers to the YouTube channel.
More than 25 years after that first video was published, social media revenues are helping put Nathan (who’s all grown up now!) through college.
How it all started
Like many drivers, Gaffin’s trucking career started early, long before he ever thought about marriage and children.
As a child, he and a brother often rode along with his father, David, in a White 9000 truck — precariously perched on a milk crate in the rough-riding cab. David also took the boys to truck shows and industry events. It seemed only natural to Gaffin that he would follow in his dad’s footsteps.
A love for trucking wasn’t the only thing David passed along to young Mike Gaffin.
“Dad always carried a camera with him. He took tons and tons of photos through the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s on the road, and with me and my brother going with him,” Gaffin said.
In 1988, soon after his 18th birthday, Gaffin earned a commercial license in Massachusetts — and when he hit the road, he carried his trusty Kodak and extra film along on every trip.
Because he couldn’t drive interstate until he turned 21, Gaffin took a local job picking up damaged trucks and trailers, transporting them to the shop for repairs. From there, he moved to a local driving job with another company in Framingham, Massachusetts. It was there he first went over the road (OTR) when a driver called in sick one evening after being dispatched on a load bound for Indiana.
“There wasn’t that much you were really worried about getting caught back then,” he remarked. “I was just so excited to go driving.”
Gaffin’s OTR career lasted nearly 15 years, with stints at Bud Meyer Truck Lines, Walmart Trucking, New Century Transportation and others. He says the New Century job — less than truckload (LTL) with multiple stops — was particularly grueling.
“I was doing hazmat LTL freight, basically (from) New Jersey to Maine to Boston, six days a week,” he said. “I didn’t sleep for eight years! I was up and down I-95 and over the George Washington Bridge twice a day.
“The money was good,” he continued. “But money isn’t everything; you learn that later in life.”
Family matters
Gaffin’s “later in life” included marriage in 2003, the birth of a son in 2006 and then a daughter in 2010.
“When we had my son in 2006, I started coming off the road,” he said. “When he was born, I was home every day. And it’s been that way since.”
A part of his decision was prompted by his own experience as a youngster, growing up with a father who was on the road a lot.
“He was gone, and a lot of happened in the family dynamic because there was only one parent there,” Gaffin explained. “If he had been around, things might have been different, and I just didn’t want to repeat that.”
Gaffin also says that, like many drivers, his father’s health suffered because of the sedentary OTR lifestyle.
“He paid the price for it,” Gaffin said. “He was a bodybuilder in the ’70s, and when he got off the road, he weighed 450.”
The elder Gaffin has since slimmed down but he still deals with health issues, including difficulty walking.
“I use that as an example of where I don’t want to end up,” Gaffin said. “I try to preach that to my fellow drivers.”
Photographs and memories
Throughout his trucking career, Gaffin has enjoyed checking out truck shows and other industry events, recording photographs and videos along the way to post on his social media accounts.
Over the years, he’s entered several trucks in some of the contests. All were company trucks; he cleaned and polished them on his own time and often spent part of his trucking income on chrome or other enhancements.
This isn’t the first time he has appeared on the pages of The Trucker, either. He was featured in a 1997 issue, appearing in the “Show Trucks” page in the then-print edition.
Gaffin says his “influencer” side got a major boost in 2017 when he was contacted by Shell Rotella, who invited him to the Shell SuperRigs competition in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that year … at their expense.
“I deleted the email, and then a week later, they reached out again,” he said, “I think I’ve been there every year since then.”
During those years, Gaffin says, he shadowed the SuperRigs judges to learn how entries were evaluated and to get an up-close view — with photos and videos — of each truck entered. (Disclaimer: The author was one of those judges at the time.)
In 2023 he became a SuperRigs judge himself. You’ll find him working with the Shell Rotella crew at this year’s SuperRigs event at the Atlanta Motor Speedway May 29-31.
Gaffin has picked up a few sponsors along the way, who help cover his travel expenses to the events.
His primary income, however, is still earned behind the wheel of a truck.
Since he started driving locally to stay near his family, Gaffin has mostly pulled dump or heavy equipment trailers.
“I get a lot of offers to do videos, like commercials, and some want to send me products (for video review),” he said. “I usually turn down 99% of those. My focus is on trucking and my family, and then videos as a side hustle.”
However, Gaffin’s lifelong love of trucking is always evident, even when the family is on vacation.
“We were in London. We were in Israel. My family looks around and says, ‘Where’d Dad go?’” he said. “Well … Dad was making another video for the YouTube channel.”
When asked what message he’d like to share with his fellow driving professionals, Gaffin goes right to the heart of trucking:
“Be kind to one another. Be courteous. Without us being a family and a brotherhood, we don’t have anything.”
The trucking family has Mike Gaffin, aka The Boston Trucker.
Cliff Abbott is an experienced commercial vehicle driver and owner-operator who still holds a CDL in his home state of Alabama. In nearly 40 years in trucking, he’s been an instructor and trainer and has managed safety and recruiting operations for several carriers. Having never lost his love of the road, Cliff has written a book and hundreds of songs and has been writing for The Trucker for more than a decade.
