Dream Delivery: YouTuber Freddie Dobbs who went from unemployment to millions of views thanks to his motorbike

As a biking YouTuber, he’s been able to combine this with his personal sense of style, creating videos that are truly unique to the motorcycle community.

Chatting to the hosts of the Full Chat podcast, he explained, “With regards to biking, I love the style side as much as the motorbike. For me, it’s almost 50/50.”

His choice of bike, a modified Triumph Bonneville T100SE, has style and substance.

“I always feel, with a motorbike, it’s the deep, personal, emotive attachment,” he said. “I could never sell it.”

Despite making a career out of it, Dobbs didn’t start off as a motorcycle enthusiast, with his passion for two wheels starting in his twenties.

“I grew up in the Fast & Furious era - it was all about cars. You pass your test, and immediately you want to be Vin Diesel,” he joked.

“No one was biking when I was younger.”

Things changed for him as life moved on.

“I remember one day, I was going to work. I was about 24, in a job I hated,” he began. “This was a miserable job for me, office job, cold calling, picking up.”

“I remember thinking, ‘God, I’m turning into a vegetable. I’m going to a job that I despise, In a commute, on the train that I hate. I need some joy’.”

“And I thought, ‘God, I think I love biking, but I don’t know why’, cause I’ve always loved cars’.”

In order to feel a sense of change, Freddie made some spontaneous moves.

“So, I booked my Direct Access (Test), and I passed second time because I just felt like I needed some excitement in my life,” he revealed.

“There had to be an outlet of joy.”

In a rush to get going, he would purchase a basic, entry-level bike that he hadn’t researched.

“None of my friends, none of my family rode, and I didn’t know what a cool bike was,” he continued.

“So I got this bike and all those weird Gore-Tex stuff. I passed (his test) in the summer. I put this Gore-Tex stuff over my normal clothes, and I was riding around, losing about two litres of sweat an hour.”

“And I thought, ‘I don’t like these clothes and I don’t even like the bike, but I know there’s some magic there’.”

Freddie’s love affair with motorbikes would truly start there, with his confidence growing as he trialled some better bike models.

A few years into his biking journey, his life would seemingly take an unpleasant turn when his recruitment company collapsed after eight years. To make ends meet, he would become a delivery driver.

“Again, I needed an outlet, I needed some form of joy,” he admitted.

“And that is where this all comes over to. I saw this in the classifieds, a Triumph Bonneville, £3650.”

“I was still an Ocado delivery driver, on minimum wage, so this was all loan money, and I sat on it for the first time, and I thought, ‘Yes’.”

“It’s the first bike I’ve ever sat on where it just clicked - everything felt glorious.”

His Bonneville, with the help of his partner, Monika, would become the key to his success.

“Monika was posting pictures of me on Instagram, on the Bonneville, and I was furious at first because, actually, I’m kind of, in a way, shy.”

“I thought, ‘No Monika, my friends are going to bully me if I start doing these poses with a Bonneville. Please don’t post anything.’ And she did it anyway because I was like a vegetable.”

This was successful but hard to monetise, so the pair would remain delivery drivers during the pandemic until Monika encouraged Dobbs to make his first YouTube video.

Reluctantly, he agreed.

He would add, “It was 30 painful attempts just to say the intro.”

The initial awkwardness was worth it as Dobbs has made YouTube and social media his full-time career, filming all over the world, including in many local Suffolk locations.

“I feel like I’ve won the lottery. The feeling is even more incredible than I thought it could be.”

“I know a lot of people look at YouTubers and, a lot of the time, you know, and you could say, ‘Is it really that good? Come on, it can’t be that good. It must be so much hard work’. It is that good. I get to wake up every day and act like a child. I get to pretend all of this stuff is business. It’s like a dream, I can’t believe how lucky I am. It’s easy, it’s amazing, it’s a joy. I’m so over the moon that I can do it everyday. There’s nothing difficult about living your dream.”