--- title: How Trucking Went From One of the Best Jobs in America to One of the Worst description: Developments in the trucking industry illustrate important changes in working class America authors: - name: Denver Nicks url: https://money.com/author/denver-nicks/ at_money_since: 2015 articles: 60 covers: - Career Advice - Banking - Business - Credit Cards - Economy and Politics - Housing - Identity Theft - Insurance - Investing - Lifestyle - Loans - Personal Finance - Pets - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes social: - https://x.com/DenverNicks - https://plus.google.com/105122198911201917932 former_staff: true published: '2016-05-10T20:33:21.000Z' modified: '2024-04-16T10:54:25.000Z' section: Career Advice tags: - independent contractor - Labor - pubdesk - Transportation - Truck driving - Trucking word_count: 421 canonical: https://money.com/trucking-worst-job/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![Truck driver at wheel in cab of truck](https://img.money.com/2016/05/gettyimages-599776011.jpg) In 1980, the average trucker in America was making an annual salary, adjusted for inflation, equal to more than $110,000 today. Twenty-five years later, truckers make on average about $40,000 a year, working harder, longer hours, and with less job security. Sociologist Steve Viscelli, in an article published Tuesday in [the Atlantic](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/05/truck-stop/481926/), describes how truck driving—once a blue-collar job with good benefits, relatively high wages, and considerable political clout—today is just the opposite. Following deregulation of the trucking industry in the late 1970s, during the Jimmy Carter administration, competition among truckers increased and compensation fell as commonly set rates went by the wayside. At the same time, the once legendary clout of truckers' unions (the Teamsters, a name synonymous with union power, was originally a truckers' union) began to disintegrate along with the political influence of unions throughout the country. Viscelli blames the decline of trucker fortunes on the rise of independent contracting—an arrangement wherein trucking companies outsource many of the risks and costs of trucking to truckers themselves while declining to pay for benefits, all while advertising the arrangement as one that empowers truckers as small business owners. But the reality can be anything but empowering. Viscelli notes that some contracts in which truckers lease their vehicles from companies bind them in an kind of indentured servitude until the full cost of the lease is paid. In some cases, a trucker who wants to switch companies or leave the job might be hit with a bill of as much as $65,000. With long hours (many of them unaccounted for labor, since truckers get compensated primarily for driving time but not time spent on paperwork, filling up a gas tank etc.) and extended stays away from home with little human contact, all for an income that tends to hover at or even below minimum wage, trucking is a particularly difficult industry. But many of the challenges faced by truckers are shared by the [growing](http://time.com/3446170/work-life-balance-email/?iid=sr-link2) segment of the labor force classified similarly as independent contractors. Most notably of late, Uber drivers have been organizing and suing the taxi company over what workers [claim](http://time.com/4019439/uber-judge-class-action/?iid=sr-link1) are unfair labor practices. The relatively low pay and long hours in the trucking business may be the reason for the [substantial shortage](https://money.com/american-truck-driver-shortage/) of qualified truckers in the United States today. To address the driver shortage, the American Truckers Association recommends “increasing driver pay, getting drivers more time at home, as well as improving the image of the driver and their treatment by all companies in the supply chain." ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/trucking-worst-job/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Career Advice", "item": "https://money.com/career-advice/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Jobs", "item": "https://money.com/jobs/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "How Trucking Went From One of the Best Jobs in America to One of the Worst" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/trucking-worst-job/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/trucking-worst-job/", "name": "How Trucking Went From One of the Best Jobs in America to One of the Worst", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2016-05-10T20:33:21.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/trucking-worst-job/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/trucking-worst-job/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2024-04-16T10:54:25.000Z" }, { "@type": "Article", "headline": "How Trucking Went From One of the Best Jobs in America to One of the Worst", "articleSection": "Career Advice", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2016/05/gettyimages-599776011.jpg", "width": 5123, "height": 3415, "caption": "Truck driver at wheel in cab of truck" } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "Denver Nicks", "url": "https://money.com/author/denver-nicks/", "@id": "https://money.com/author/denver-nicks/#author", "image": "https://img.money.com/2012/09/09_1165862081.jpg?quality=85&w=640&h=640&crop=1", "sameAs": [ "https://x.com/DenverNicks", "https://plus.google.com/105122198911201917932" ] } ], "publisher": "https://money.com/#organization", "datePublished": "2016-05-10T20:33:21.000Z", "description": "Developments in the trucking industry illustrate important changes in working class America", "abstract": "Developments in the trucking industry illustrate important changes in working class America", "@id": "https://money.com/trucking-worst-job/", "inLanguage": "en-US", "dateModified": "2024-04-16T10:54:25.000Z", "wordCount": 421, "keywords": [ "independent contractor", "Labor", "pubdesk", "Transportation", "Truck driving", "Trucking" ], "about": [ { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Career counseling", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_counseling" ] }, { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Jobs", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobs" ] } ] } ] } ```