Originally Posted by
KC10 FATboy
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
Fatty,
I wasn't trying to denegrate truck driving, the point that struck me was the training required compared to the training, time and money investment, and sacrifices that pilots make to get to that first airline gig, and the compensation a pilot can expect these days. And thanks for the info about truck driving, I had heard there was good money in it. I just still have this impression, (and call me egomaniacal), that for the sheer responsibility we assume (passengers' lives), risk (airplanes do crash), and skill required (contrary to what some say here, I still don't believe that your average joe could be a competent airline pilot), that airline pilot pay should be head and shoulders above truck driver pay, even starting. And sorry for the run-on...