OTR trucking overall pays pretty well, but it's an extremely physically and emotionally taxing job that doesn't really get the credit it deserves. How would you feel if you were "home" for a weekend every 2 weeks and living in 20sqft the rest of the time?
He wasn't driving for Walmart of making that kind of money then, so I hope he was able to move into a different career that didn't do further damage.
It's not a job I'd want to do. Ergonomics aside, I find driving to be very unpleasant in large doses. Having to put up with traffic, shitty drivers, weather, and everything else 8-12 hours per day is not my idea of a great time.
"Healthy foods" are going to be largely inaccessible through long sparsely-populated stretches of the country. Even where they are available - in markets, fruit stands, etc. pulling your huge truck off the road to park is expensive (in terms of time) and difficult (in terms of space). Truck stops have the infrastructure for your truck. But their food selection is mostly junk.
Please don't reply "sitting down all day". I have been doing that for more than 20 years in a comfortable office (mostly Hermann Miller Aeron), and my back is fine.
My guess: The vibrations of the truck are awful for your bones.
Driving freezes your body into one position for hours on end. Doing it in a car for a few hours on a road trip makes my neck hurt. Doing it every day would be deleterious very quickly.
I work at a computer at a desk, but the ability to stand up at will just to use the toilet makes a big difference. Can’t do that driving a truck.
Absolutely. If a driver is at fault in an accident, Walmart will get sued for $zillions.
I once knew a middle aged man laying tile. I asked him why was he laying tile for crap wages. He said he lost his trucking license because he had a DUI (not while trucking). Doing construction was the only job he could get. He was quite bitter about it.
Source: https://wisconsindot.gov/Documents/dmv/shared/cdl-disq.pdf
Even the lower rate such as concrete laborers wanted 100+ an hour.
I suspect the low pay of many of these trades is just a symptom of housing and construction being the number one money laundering industry and thus tradesman are always saying they're making nothing while simultaneously asking 100+ an hour cash and working full weeks.
Id bet the BLS income reports are off by like 50+%.
It's not too hard to get cash-only "customers" to buy services you don't have to actually perform.
It's also pretty easy to write two invoices, feign a mixup, and skim some off the top of a payment.
I agree that in my experience a lot of contractors would rather deal with cash and it isn’t exactly a secret why. I got a significant all cash discount on a new roof.