There is a reason they keep sniveling about 'driver shortages' for decades. If you like living out of a bunk for 5-6weeks with a coiple days off now and then, working 100+ hours a week and averaging less than $10 an hour, go for it. California has over 640,000 CDL holders and less than 100,000 jobs for them. You aren't covered by Federal overtime laws either so you don't get time and half over 40 even for local jobs where 80% of the job isn't even driving, they just require a CDL to drive the work truck, and use the overtime exemption to rob you of overtime pay. If you're desperate and don't need a life or money or a home, go into trucking.
Truck drivers work longer hours for lower real pay than they earned decades ago. They suffer the indignity of being forced to wait for hours to get loaded or unloaded while people whose time is more highly valued are taken care of first. Their work and pay structure often calls for them to forego compensation for their time in trade for the opportunity to put in extra hours to run extra miles every week, often keeping them away from home for weeks at a time. Does this picture fit the model of the 19th Century sweatshop? Long hours, low wages, and unsafe conditions characterized sweatshops a hundred years ago. Haven’t we banished them to the dustbin of history? As we recently have learned, this economic environment can coexist in the modern world with our gleaming cities, prosperous stock market, and hi-tech.
Don't fall for the 'mileage pay' scam, either; you aren't paid by the mile, you're paid a flat rate from zip code to zip code, and usually shorted. And you get to finance your company's expenses out of your pay while you're on the road, too, for tolls, 'lumpers, parking, etc. They 'reimburse you a couple of weeks later', interest free of course.
