Originally Posted by
AU96
As I was driving to work listening to CNN HLN, they were running a story about how commercial truck driving jobs are now highly sought after in this economy because "training is only three weeks and starting salary is $30,000." As I was thinking to myself how pathetic it is that that's more than starting pay at a regional and on a par (I think) with CAL first year FO pay, one of the managers for hiring drivers in the story was talking about how they've seen college grads and former AIRLINE PILOTS applying for trucking jobs...who would of known that Goose's words in Top Gun would have been so prophetic... Now, I certainly don't trust the media to get their facts straight on anything, and I know nothing about the trucking industry, but if this story is accurate, I don't know what else better illustrates the decline in fair compensation for what we do, lives hanging in the balance every day, than this does.
Preach on brother Sully while your 15 minutes ticks down..
No, the story is probably low balling those compensation figures. Some of the big truck companies have some very good bennies.
You guys can laugh and say what you want about truck drivers. My dad was a driver and did quite well. I currently have two friends of the family who are making $1xx,xxx a year and they are gone two weeks and home for one.
Additionally, in the spirit of this thread, ever since the Federal Government sought more "regulation" for the truck industry by mandating required rest cycles and duty durations (which by the way are stricter than ours!), drivers have been leaving the industry because there's no big money to be made like before. Making money like my the friends I talked to above is falling to the wayside unless you are in some type of specialty. The dirty little secret was that truck drivers made damn good money.
-Fatty