Oklahoma Lyft Driver Goes Viral After Meeting Mike Rowe: ‘Stories…Worth Telling’

Published: December 14, 2023Photo from Mike Rowe’s Instagram Oklahoma Lyft Driver Goes Viral After Meeting Mike Rowe: ‘Stories…Worth Telling’ By Movieguide® Contributor

An Oklahoma Lyft driver has gone viral after he gave DIRTY JOBS host Mike Rowe a ride to the airport.

“Last week in Baltimore, Uber charged me $85 for a trip that usually costs $20. I looked into the way their ‘surge pricing’ model actually works and didn’t like what I learned. So today, after checking out of my hotel in Oklahoma, I called Lyft instead, and was picked up by a guy named Mike. He was driving a red F-150. It was clearly a work truck, full of tools and lumber. I sat up front,” Rowe shared on Facebook.

Rowe and the driver began to talk, and he found out that the driver handbuilds campers.

“By the way, if I like your website, do you care if I share it on Facebook?” Rowe asked.

“Why would you want to do that?” he responded. “I’ve got a few people who follow me on social media,” Rowe said. “I’m not sure why they do, but they do. Maybe some of them are in the market for a pretty good camper, custom made by a quasi-retired carpenter who drives for Lyft when he’s feeling frustrated?”

Since then, Rowe’s post has received over 420,ooo likes and over 53,000 shares.

“I thought it was a pretty standard ride. I didn’t fully realize who was in there,” Mike Morse, the driver, told KOCO News 5.

“I opened up the back of my truck and was unloading the suitcases, and I recognized him. I said, ‘Hey, who are you?’ And he said, ‘I’m Mike. Mike Rowe.’ And I said, ‘All right, DIRTY JOBS,’” he continued.

When the two got to the airport, Rowe asked Morse if they could take a picture together.

“I thought that was crazy. Usually, celebrities don’t take your picture,” Morse said.

“Somewhere behind his mustache, Mike might have smiled, as I walked into the only airport in America named for a cowboy who never met a man he didn’t like. There, I boarded my plane and checked to see if there really was [a] website called ‘Mike’s Pretty Good Campers,’ Rowe concluded his post.

Since the post, Morse has received hundreds of messages asking about his trailer business.

“I thought, man, that is crazy. He really wrote a good story about me,” Morse said.

“The country is filled with people like Mike,” Rowe followed up in another post. “Talented individuals who work hard at multiple jobs, but still remain curious about the world around them, and genuinely interested in the people they encounter. I’ve always believed that their stories, however modest, are worth telling.”

Movieguide® previously reported on Rowe:

Mike Rowe recently talked about alternatives to a four-year degree as tuition prices continue to skyrocket and fears of a recession loom.

“Here we sit, we’ve got eleven-and-a-half million open jobs, most of which don’t require a four-year degree. We’ve got $1.7 trillion of student loans outstanding that we’re being asked to pick up the slack for and we’ve got a generation of kids who are simply not trained for the opportunity that exist,” Rowe said.

“At my little foundation, mikeroweWORKS, for the last fifteen years we’re been talking about this. And I’m telling you, I’ve never seen the headlines catch up to us as the way they are right now. The word has gotten out and people are really taking a hard look at learning a skill that’s in demand,” he continued.

Rowe believes that the current generation of teens and young adults has been taught to only value jobs that require a college education. They don’t see vocational school or trade school as viable careers paths and the jobs that these programs lead to are seeing the largest numbers of employment opportunities.