Kenyans earn big driving trucks in the US and Europe

This story has significance for readers across Kenya and beyond.

Martin Tetu has rarely stayed in one place for long. After finishing Form Four in Mpeketoni, Lamu County, he joined the National Youth Service (NYS) in 2010 and stayed for two years. He later moved through trucking, construction and port jobs, always looking for better opportunities.

“I am one person that doesn’t settle for less,” he says. “If I feel that I’m not getting what I want, I will quit.”

In 2022, he tried his luck in Saudi Arabia, joining a wave of Kenyan drivers recruited by a Hungarian company. He eventually made his way to Riyadh after paying Sh60,000 in commission fees.

He worked as a construction driver, then a bulk sugar driver, then a petroleum tanker driver. Seven months later, he came back home, worn out by a system he says treated drivers like prisoners rather than professionals.

“Being a truck driver in Saudi Arabia is like modern slavery,” he says. “Some days, you end up losing part of your salary to penalties.”

In Kenya, a friend who runs the Kenya Long Distance Truck Drivers Union in Mombasa connected him to a Romanian company recruiting drivers. Martin paid Sh120,000 in agent fees, his visa, and medical checkup. He landed in Romania in June 2024 and has been there since.

Romania’s working conditions are fairer, he says.

A new driver in the industry, he explains, earns a minimum daily allowance of about Sh11,900. In the general cargo category where he now works, that figure rises to about Sh14,900 a day, what he calls his daily mileage allowance, on top of his Sh465,000 basic pay.

“You rest a minimum of 24 hours after every week of driving,” he says. Under the European Union law, he drives no more than nine hours a day, with mandatory rest after every four and a half hours.

However, better pay aside, life on the road has its frustrations. He says many long-distance drivers in Romania struggle with routes that demand tight manoeuvring along the narrow turns. European winter is also a test, challenging him in ways nothing in Kenya had.

“It gets to minus 15 degrees Celsius,” he says. “The first time I wore leggings, sweaters, a vest, a long T-shirt, a jacket, but it was still cold.”

Being away from his children is the hardest part of working as a truck driver in Romania, especially when he watches his daughter cry at the airport each time he leaves.

Away from the road, Martin spends his free time exploring new places, visiting football stadiums, walking through historical sites and sharing his experiences on social media, which has also become a modest source of income.

“I need to raise my children in a better environment than the one that I was raised in,” he says, explaining what keeps him going. He still remembers his very first salary, back in 2010, and the promise he made that day.

“I was given Sh10,000, and I promised myself that I would never get employed for a lesser salary,” he says. “Thank God, I have never been in a job that is taking me backwards financially.”

Flexibility to study

Martin did not make the move alone. He took his childhood friend, Joshua Komu Njuguna, too. Joshua was a site engineer at the Lamu port then joined the Lamu County Government in 2022 as an assistant engineer. But the pay left him disappointed.

“One night in August, Martin called me at 2am with news of a job opportunity in Romania,” he says.

He was not fully convinced at first, but started the paperwork a month later. His work permit came through in about a month and a half, without using an agent, after Martin connected him directly with the employer. After another month, he received his visa.

“I paid around Sh460,000 for the entire process including visa fees, cost of flights and travel medical insurance,” he says.

He left Kenya in December 2024 and landed in the middle of a harsh Romanian winter, a shock to a man who grew up in Lamu’s heat. “It was a terrible experience, especially since I came in December,” says the 33-year-old.

He started as a motorbike delivery rider, a job that gave him the flexibility to study without being tied to a fixed schedule. “In a good month, I could earn up to Sh150,000.”

This was significantly more than he had earned as a government engineer, despite having a diploma and years of experience on construction sites.

With the income, he began converting his Kenyan driving licence to a Romanian one. He then worked his way through Class C, Class CE and the professional CPC course required for truck drivers in Europe.

The training was not cheap. "I spent about Sh400,000 on training for all my driving licences,” he says.

The language barrier made the theory exams even harder, as he had to take them in English, while the practical tests were conducted differently.

Now driving a refrigerated truck carrying temperature-controlled cargo, he is in his third week of driving solo after five weeks of training with a colleague. “I earn between Sh5,000 and Sh13,000 a day,” Joshua says.

Like most truckers in Europe, he sleeps in the cabin and cooks his own meals on the road.

From matatu to six-figure earner

Patrick Majani, another Kenyan trucker, found a route into Germany trucking industry after working as a warehouse operator and assistant coordinator for an American company.

Before he travelled to Germany, he worked as a matatu conductor on the Kakamega-Nairobi route. It was there that he met the woman who would become his wife; a Kenyan woman already living in Germany. Their relationship led to marriage under Kenyan law, and Patrick had to prove himself through Germany’s strict immigration process.

He studied German in Mombasa and travelled to Nairobi to sit his exam at the Goethe Institute in 2008, needing a minimum score of 61 percent to pass. He landed in Munich on the first of May 2009, arriving on a family visa.

“I was hit by culture shock,” the 42-year-old says, remembering his first night, when the sun stayed up past 10pm.

He spent his first year in a German language school before enrolling in logistics classes in 2010 at a government institution. After finishing, he was hired almost immediately as a warehouse operator for an American electronics company.

Within a year, he was promoted to assistant coordinator, a role he held for four years before becoming a full coordinator, a position he kept until he had worked at the company for 10 years in total.

Because he was the only English speaker among mostly older German colleagues, he became the translator during video conferences with the company's American partners.

Despite the responsibility, his pay stayed low. He asked for a raise, received only a small increase, and after another year of rising workload with no further salary change, he decided to leave. By then he had earned permanent residency after three years of paying German taxes.

A government employment office asked what career he wanted next, and he told them trucking. They handed him a voucher worth roughly Sh1.5 million to fund his commercial driving course.

“I began classes in 2021 and spent about six months training before sitting for an exam in German in early 2022, scoring 96 percent,” Patrick says.

He started driving in March 2022, before his physical licence even arrived, working off interim paperwork.

After four months with a small Turkish-owned company run by a former neighbour, Patrick moved to a family-owned company where he still works. The company now operates a fleet of about 100 trucks and is run by the widow of one of its two founding brothers.

He is paid hourly, earning Sh3,400 an hour, far more than he made in the office. German law caps his driving at nine hours a day, extendable to 10 twice a week, with mandatory rest breaks after every four and a half hours.

When not on the road, Patrick keeps his evenings simple; cooking and watching television before resting for the next trip. “I come home, I relax, wait for another 11 hours before starting the next trip.”

He counts his move to his current company among the best decisions since it lets him sleep in his own bed most nights instead of living inside a truck cabin. “Where I am now I’m satisfied,” he says.

In the past three months alone, Patrick says, he has taken home a net pay of Sh600,000.

Katuosis with his 18-wheeler

Across the Atlantic, another Kenyan driver had to fight for something Patrick never had to prove; the simple belief that his body would not stop him from doing the job at all.

Joachim Mwangi once drove a donkey cart through a pineapple village because nobody would give him a chance behind anything bigger, and today he sits inside one of the largest trucks on American roads.

Known online as Katuosis, the 38-year-old lives in Ohio, US where he now drives an 18-wheeler. He lives with a condition called pituitary dwarfism, standing four feet two inches tall. He is a father of two; a daughter and a six-month-old son, and he speaks about both of them with unmistakable warmth.

As a teenager, with no money for college, Joachim bought a donkey from his savings and had his uncle design a cart, using it to transport goods and passengers around his village.

“Villagers nicknamed me Mwangi Wapunda. I did that work for four years before an uncle discovered my talent for acting and brought me to Nairobi, where I appeared on Kenyan TV shows including Inspector Mwala and later a regular programme on K24,” he tells BDLife.

In 2010 he became chairman of the Short Stature Society of Kenya, helping members find jobs and school fees while also acting, work that gave him purpose even as money stayed thin.

“In 2017, I was invited to the Little People of America conference in Denver, Colorado, travelling with support from Kenya’s National Council for Persons with Disabilities. I came back home and in February 2018 I left Kenya for good. I lived with a friend named Melky for a year, in Louisiana, unable to work without a permit. Peggy O’Neill, a friend I met from the conference, paid for my flight and sent me money every month to survive, some of which I sent home to my mother, who was raising my daughter,” he says.

He eventually moved to Ohio, where he married and took his first American job washing dishes at McDonald’s for about five months. He learned to drive a car, earning his licence in 2019, and began doing food delivery and Uber trips using his wife’s car.

A friend known as General Njuguna, a truck driver of 20 years, introduced him to the industry, showing him a truck so long that Joachim admits he was overwhelmed just looking at it.

“I believe there’s nothing impossible,” Joachim says, recalling his first look inside a 70-foot truck. No human is limited.”

The process to earn a commercial driving licence was long and stalled by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. He restarted it properly in 2022, enrolling at Eastern Gateway Community College with funding from Ohio’s office for people with disabilities.

Because of his height, he needed extended pedals fitted into the truck, the same accommodation he uses to this day. He passed his exams and started driving in July 2022, four years after his first American job, a milestone he still describes as one of the proudest moments of his life.

Trucking in the US comes with its own strict rules. Drivers are limited to 70 hours over a rolling week, with a 14-hour working window each day and no more than 11 hours of actual driving, broken up by mandatory rest after the first eight hours.

“No matter what you do, how you are working, your pickup, delivery or appointment, you have a clock that is governing you,” he says.

His pay has grown with experience. His first employer paid him 58 cents a mile, and driving around 2,500 miles a week earned him close to Sh155,000 weekly. Today, he is in a lease purchase arrangement, having put down Sh1.8 million for a truck on a three-year contract, paying Sh323,000 a month while earning 80 percent of each load’s value.

Life on the road alone is not easy, and Joachim admits family time is often the price he pays for the miles he covers, along with a diet that leans too heavily on fast food.

Immigration policy has also touched drivers around him, with some losing their jobs after new rules targeted truckers without a green card or citizenship, something Joachim has watched happen to people he trained alongside. When he does get free time, he uses it to explore.

“I’m that guy who likes travelling, I’m that guy who likes capturing new things,” he says, describing how he takes trains to new towns, visits football stadiums and tours historical sites before heading back to his truck in the evening.

“Being among the 10 is a huge achievement,” he says, referring to the small number of little people driving trucks across America. “I don’t have a European passport, so when you go to the airport, you feel like you are obligated to go and get served.”

Reporting originally appeared via Business Daily. Read the full source for additional context.