VT, you are an articulate, positive person so I do not want to irritate you. It is for the sake of clarity here that I take an offensive stance against the trucking job and lifestyle.
Personal outlook profoundly affects how one feels about every kind of work from trash collector right up to President of the United States. This is also true of trucking. If you are in a place in your life that a ten dollar an hour job for 12 hours day will be helpful in allowing you to meet your goals, then you may happy in the trucking industry. The same can be said of the trash collection industry for that matter. I just want to point out that trucking is not better than most other blue collar jobs and in most cases is actually worse.
Pilots are not blue collar workers. Stepping down to working conditions and income levels typical of trucking will be a big step backwards for them. It would only be a way to survive while getting back on their feet. I would describe it as gritty, dangerous, low-paying, uncomfortable sort of a job. I know there are drivers out there with Petes containing Caterpillar diesels of which they are highly enamored, sort of like shiny jet syndrome, and some of them are also reasonably paid. I take your point on this, but that does not change the fact it is a dangerous blue collar job that puts one in trucking yards, freeways and loading docks all hours of the day and night, and chained to a hard rubber ring for most of the rest. Home every night is a tradeoff for having to work like a dog to get the cargo there in a day, box by box in many cases, for all but a few who do that kind of trucking. As I said earlier drop and hook plus home every night is an exceptional job and is only possible with either a big dose of luck, a lot of dues paying, or a lot of seniority at a firm that offers it. Even if you have it all the other conditions still apply, and many of them are highly unpleasant.
The real difference with trucking is the risk exposure of spooling up a 40 ton machine all day at close proximity to concrete structures and other vehicles. In addition, the cargoes are sometimes deadly. Risk exposure to fatal accident is far higher in trucking than aviation, and this can be easily proven.
My logic was flawed in my earlier statement comparing a fatal tanker accident to anything else, because after all if you're dead you're dead and it doesn't matter how you get to the accident site. My point should be, trucking has a higher risk exposure than flying and most other jobs. This is fairly obvious and I am not going to prove it although it would be easy to.
There is one thing about trucking you failed to mention, which is a shining positive for it: any law-abiding person can set up a trucking yard on any backyard location in the US and actually run a profitable business from their home. That is a great feature. It is why I originally got into trucking, I wanted to be near the mountains. Now I prefer to fly there for the day in a Turbo C182, and make it back home by 6 for dinner.
Cheers.
