Chace Barber is a Merritt truck driver who has garnered more than 420,000 followers and seven million likes on the popular video app, TikTok. 

Barber discovered the platform after hearing some of his fellow truck drivers discussing it.  

“One of the other guys at work had TikTok and he used to make TikToks, so I thought I’ll download TikTok and maybe I can make a couple videos,” explained Barber. 

Those “couple videos” have now become about 100, some with millions of views.  

“I got 10,000 views on my first video and I thought, that’s kind of cool that 10,000 people have seen it,” said Barber.

“And then I made a few more and within ten videos I got half a million views. People seemed to be enjoying it, and I just kept posting videos. If I had an idea for a video in my head or wanted to say something I’d just post a video.” 

The topics of the videos generally pertain to Barber’s career as a truck driver in the province’s Interior. Some are humorous and others cover more controversial topics such as the harvesting of BC’s Old Growth timber. 

“I just post whatever I’m in the mood for,” explained Barber. 

“If I’m in a funny mood, it’s a funny video. If I’m in a serious mood, it’s a serious video. There’s very little thought that goes into it, there’s not a lot of high production and pre-planning. I’ve got a few other friends I’ve made on TikTok and they’re big creators, they’re up to a million followers and all that, and they put so much time and effort into curating and it drives them nuts because I just flip my phone around and make a 30 second video. They’ll tell me they spent four hours working on a video and ‘you spent two minutes and you got double my views!’” 

They say to be successful, a writer should write what they know, and such is the case for TikTok too, if Barber’s popular videos are any indication. 

“I think people like a bit of realism,” said Barber.

“We do a podcast, too, Blue Collar Interviews, and it’s just a very real, unscripted podcast. We just interview blue collar workers and it’s the same thing, it’s just the real thing. But now we’re up to 22,000 listeners.”

And it may be a surprise for some who stereotype truck drivers to find that Barber is university educated, and how that ties in with his secondary career as part owner of a solar energy company. 

After attending university for four years, where he graduated with a 4.0 GPA, Barber was offered a job at the Bank of Canada as a junior economist. However, the monetary reward was very poor, with the Bank of Canada offering him as an annual salary what he made in one summer driving truck. 

“I thought, that doesn’t make any sense,” said Barber. 

“After four years of schooling I can make in a year what I was making in four months driving a truck? So, I met another friend in university and we just started a small trucking company then.” 

He and his friend had previously gotten involved in the solar industry while at university, when the school offered a grant of $25,000 to anyone who could bring clean energy to the campus. Barber and his friend and soon to be business partner offered to install solar panels and enjoyed the process so much they started SEI Logistics, an independent solar energy company. 

“And then we realized that starting a company is really expensive, so maybe we should do some trucking first to pay for the start-up costs,” Barber explained. 

Although it would be nice if his TikTok success paid some of the bills, Canadians aren’t eligible to receive compensation from the platform. 

“The American creators get paid for making videos, they get paid per view, but Canadians don’t,” said Barber.

“I don’t get paid anything. But I think that’s why some of the videos do good. When you’re not getting paid for it you don’t really put much time or thought into it, so it’s a very real one.” 

Lack of financial compensation also hasn’t reduced Barber’s celebrity, with people now recognizing him while out and about, and other truck drivers he doesn’t know sometimes waving him down or reaching out to him on the radio.

“I’ll go into Tim Hortons or grab coffee somewhere and someone recognizes me,” said Barber. “It’s kind of weird, it’s a little bit strange. The first few times someone asks you ‘are you Chace?’ and you think, oh shoot, what did I do? That’s my default thought. It’s a fair bit for a truck driver. I am the, I believe, fifth most popular truck driver on TikTok.” 

Barber hasn’t gone unnoticed by the big wigs, either, with Netflix reaching out to him for a reality show featuring truck driver dating. Barber turned the opportunity down because, “It just sounded like a recipe for disaster,” also noting that his girlfriend likely wouldn’t be pleased about him signing up to date someone else. 

Barber did decide to follow up on the interest by joining a few other TikTok creators to pitch their own project idea, but so far, his lips are sealed on the details. 

Regardless, Barber continues to hit the highways and logging roads of the province, and to make videos he’s – mostly – proud of. 

“I apologize for everyone that listened to the video for a minute on me describing how to poop in the bush, I’m sorry for that one,” Barber said, in a tone that might make you think he wasn’t sorry at all.  

“It was like a minute description about how a logger poops in the bush. I would like to apologize for that one. Of course, that’s the one that goes viral. Pooping in the bush, I always knew that would be my niche in life,” Barber laughed.