Like many young people who graduate from high school, Joshua Theagene wasn’t sure which career direction to turn when he received his diploma from Oakleaf High School in 2019.
But with the financial aid administered by CareerSource Northeast Florida, provided through the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), Theagene was able to obtain his Commercial Driver’s License (CDL).
“When I was in my early 20s, I really didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life,” he said. “But now that I’m 26, own my own truck and I’m finding success in this business, I’m looking to become an advocate for programs like these and showcase them to students and point them in the direction of programs like those at CareerSource. It made a big difference in my life.”
Theagene says he wants to help build awareness among high school students about the grants and other financial assistance available through CareerSource NEFL and similar organizations.
“When you’re a young kid, you have to go through a lot of back channels to get this kind of information because at 18 or 17, the only programs that were coming our way were from the military. No one ever told me, ‘Hey, you can get a grant to get your CDL for free.’ And this is a profession that could give young men and women a solid business foundation to work from.”
For Theagene, the decision to pursue a career in trucking came around 2020 when he left Jacksonville to live with his mother for the summer.
“I needed to get out from under the influence of the crowd I was hanging around with and find a direction,” he said. “I was having a conversation with my mom, and I had always been into vehicles, and she said, ‘You know, maybe you should look into trucking.’”
While his mother knew there might be financial assistance to help her son, she didn’t know where to start. That’s when Theagene started his own on-line research and came across a YouTube video from CareerSource North Florida regarding grants available for eligible job seekers who wanted to obtain a CDL.
“I don’t always take things at face value, and since I planned to go back to Jacksonville when I figured out which direction to go, I ended up speaking with Claudette Washington (a workforce representative at CareerSource Northeast Florida who retired in 2025),” he said. “She explained how the program worked, so I decided to pursue it when I came back to Jax. And knowing that Jacksonville is the logistics capital of Florida, I knew it would be a great place to go into the trucking business.”
Once he had that direction from Washington, Theagene contacted Jones Technical Institute (J-Tech), a non-profit vocational and trade school in Jacksonville, paid for and attended prerequisite classes in trucking and passed the basic assessment test.
“By the time I met with Ms. Washington, I had already paid for those courses, had taken the exams and passed them and already had my CDL permit…and had passed my CDL drug test, too,” he said. “I think that helped…that I was considered a serious candidate. The last thing I had to do was write a scholarship letter. As part of that letter, I said that I would advocate for programs like that in my community in the future.”
Not that everything was smooth sailing for Theagene after he received his CDL. He became an intermodal driver with Swift Transportation, a commercial truck driver who transports shipping containers and cargo between shipping ports, rail yards, distribution centers and warehouses.
“After my first year in trucking, I decided to give up all of my worldly possessions and I lived out of my truck for about two years…and that’s commitment,” he said. “All I did was drive, and it was just me and God on the road. That’s when I feel like I really became a man.”
Theagene also picked up a lot of information about the trucking business along the way.
“I had a childhood friend for 13 years, and her dad did trucking out of the port,” he said. “Her dad was about 70 and thinking of retiring and we discussed me taking his position and buying his truck. That didn’t work out, but he still taught me about the business and gave me the foundation to be able to feel confident to go out and buy any truck and work on it.”
Eventually, that’s what Theagene did.
Two years ago, he left Swift Transportation to join Trailer Bridge as a contract driver – loading containers from barges at JaxPort and transporting them to customers throughout the area. At the time, he was one of the youngest drivers the company had hired at age 24.
Over that time, he also met a girl – and the couple now have a home in the Arlington area.
Then, last year he decided to take the leap and purchase his own truck.
“I purchased an older truck to be able to work on it myself, so I do all my own maintenance and everything,” he said. “I bought it from a retired military man who had owned it for 20 years. We went back and forth on the price and he finally let me walk away with it for $14,000. It was a good deal.”
Now that he is on a steady foundation, Theagene is ready to help other young people find their way to a good career – sharing what he’s learned so far about work and the challenges he has experienced.
“I really want to go out and connect with my age and younger and present them the information I’ve learned in a digestible way,” he said. “The WIOA program is not just for trucking, and it also can be accessed in all 50 states. I want to go back to high school, specifically low income areas, and showcase this opportunity.”
Theagene adds that there are young men and women out there who are “very misguided” when it comes to having a successful career.
“They think after they get their college degree, they’re going to go out and make millions of dollars, but they need to have a structure and plan to get there,” he said. “If you give kids a playbook for them to see, how this WIOA process actually works, then their whole perspective will be completely different. For example: this is how I went about saving the money, this is how I make money, this is what I do with the money…insurance…all the ins and outs.”
Beyond wanting to give back to the community, Theagene has another vision for the future: earning a pilot’s license.