Professional truckers start young

Like many of his colleagues, Thomas Nies developed his passion for trucks at an early age. Find out what the trucker likes most about his job and why he is such a fan of the MAN brand in his Truck Life Story.

Thomas couldn’t start driving trucks soon enough. “I had been driving since I was three years old, voluntarily getting up in the middle of the night and climbing over the rims into the cab of the MAN F90,” he recalls. Even as a 12-year-old, he would have loved to take the wheel rather than travel as a passenger. That’s why he didn’t waste any time in gaining his truck driving licence at the age of 18.

‘For me, there is nothing better than getting into my truck in the morning and delivering construction materials to customers.’

“With a grant of 1,000 euros from the volunteer fire department,” Thomas recounts. Thomas’s favourite driving seat is that of his lion, a MAN TGX 26.460 that he drives for I&M Bauzentrum Gerhardt, based in Butzbach. Of course, the 30-year-old is faced with one or two challenges on a daily basis, such as reaching cramped construction sites or juggling tricky loads.

But that is no reason for Thomas to get nervous. After all, he knows that with his MAN he is working with a more than reliable tool. He particularly appreciates the many practical details of his lion, which, in his opinion, make MAN clearly stand out from other manufacturers. And, of course, the design also suits him perfectly. But the driver from Schotten in Hesse is also fond of the MAN vehicles from days gone by: he has two MAN F8s at home, which he likes to take care of in his spare time.

Thomas particularly likes the freedom and contact with many different people in his job as a professional trucker, as he enjoys interacting with others. That fits in well with a wish for the future: an info pool through which he and all other drivers could pass on information and suggestions for improvement directly to MAN – he feels it could help to make the already great MAN lions even better.