Author: Lu Kewen source: official account: Lu Kewen studio has been authorized to reprint
Recently, in Tiktok, I often saw a northeast couple driving a truck in the United States, sharing their life of driving a truck in the United States. Because the two people’s income is not poor, and they earn $0.75 per mile, the couple’s monthly income can reach more than $10000 to $20000, about 100000 yuan. The monthly salary is amazing. Out of curiosity about the income of blue collar workers in the United States, I went to know more about it.
Note that the above-mentioned one mile is equal to 1.6 kilometers, and their wages will change. In the video, the wages of male drivers used to be US $0.85 per mile, but now it is US $0.75 per mile. The wages should change with the oil price.
Students who have read “America can’t help but gun” know that the westward expansion of the United States depends on the railway, but the railway is more suitable for densely populated areas, such as China, Japan and South Korea. The United States, a country with a vast territory and a sparse population, is naturally developing into a model of relying on cars for short distance and air for long distance. It has created 19633 registered airports and 280 million cars. After the railway completes its historical mission, it goes home to dance in the square for the elderly, At present, there is not much left, accounting for only 20% of the freight traffic in the United States. Usually, transportation mainly depends on trucks.
Therefore, the United States has a large demand for truck drivers, and the trucks produced are extremely powerful. The internal environment is also more complete than the living facilities of trucks in other countries. That is determined by their needs. Just like China is destined to build high-speed rail, our high-speed rail is naturally vigorous.
I asked several Chinese in the United States. They said that the median annual salary of a truck driver is about US $85000, which is two or three times the annual salary of ordinary Americans. The husband and wife work together, running several thousand miles in a car, and there are four or five jobs in a month. It is normal to convert their monthly income into RMB 100000.
However, if you earn money in the United States and then convert it into RMB for domestic people, it is a bit of a hooligan. Most of the money you earn in the United States is still spent in the United States.
A Chinese neighbor is a truck driver. His pre tax income reached $10000 a month, and after paying 27% of the tax, there was still a lot left, which was much higher than the income of ordinary Americans. These incomes were enough for him to drive alone to support his wife and two children, and a small house.
But I am very curious about why there is a job gap of about 80000-150000 people in the United States every year with such a good job? Are Americans not doing this job simply because they are lazy?
If white people don’t do this job, I can understand why tens of millions of black uncle and brother Mo can’t do it?
My friend said that this job is to earn money, but it is not a good job in the relatively loose living environment in the United States.
First, driving a truck is bad for your health. Besides eating and sleeping, you are driving every day. Sitting for a long time without exercising is harmful to your health. The driver stops for a short time while driving, and eats junk food in the service area. If you are not careful, you will become a fat man. You can gain tens of kilograms a year. The kind of big crab eaten by the Tiktok northeast couple is not everyday, and eating KFC McDonald’s is everyday.
As a result, 70% of truck drivers are obese, of which 17% are extremely obese and prone to hypertension and diabetes, while the obesity rate of other jobs in the United States is 30%, and the extremely obese rate is 7%. It is a consensus among Americans that truck drivers are prone to obesity.
Second, the farther this job goes, the more money it earns. Once you go out, you will be away from home for three or four weeks. If you take the job of running from Los Angeles to New York twice a month, you will basically live in the car. If you run outside for many years, you can’t bear to be separated for too long, and it is easy to be green. In the United States, on average, every truck driver has to get divorced twice in his life. People with families do not want to choose this job. It is better to stay at home and take unemployment benefits, However, this job is the best match for the husband and wife to work together. If the husband and wife work together and do not care about the family for the time being, it is really suitable for this job.
In order to catch up with the delivery of large trucks in the United States, people usually stop without stopping and run 24 hours as far as possible. In order to prevent accidents, some rules have been formulated to protect truck drivers. A truck is basically equipped with two drivers, and the shift is rotated and every 10 hours. The electronic punch in system is fully applied when running goods to monitor whether the total service hours meet the legal working hours. The American police can conduct spot checks at any time, People who should sleep should not touch the car. No matter whether you sleep or not, you have to leave it aside for 10 hours.
Although the management is strict and the terrain of the United States is relatively flat, truck drivers are still one of the top ten dangerous industries in the United States. Every year, 25.6 of 100000 people die, and the rate of illness or injury is as high as 4.4%. Everyone does not like to do this job. As a result, American truck drivers are seriously aging, with an average age of 49. All of them are old drivers.
After all these conditions, the life expectancy of American truck drivers is only 61 years, while the average life expectancy of Americans is 77 years.
Everyone is afraid of dying early, and no one drives a truck.
Let me add that there is something that ordinary people can not imagine. The average life expectancy in China is 78 years, which is one more year than that in the United States.
Many people imagine that American truck drivers are well paid and enjoy perfect welfare security. They drive 18 wheel trucks and drive on the endless interstate highways with heroic bearing.
In fact, American truck drivers are hard-working, high-risk, short-lived, easy to divorce, easy to obesity and easy to hypertension.
Generally, two years of work is a barrier. Ordinary people will give up this job after two years and change careers when they earn money.
Most Americans do not choose this job, and naturally they have their reasons.
But for the Northeast couple on Tiktok, it is right to choose this job. They used to sell snacks in the northeast, work as waitresses in Beijing, and go to Russia for beauty. Comparatively speaking, coming to the United States to be a truck driver is the best choice that can only change their lives by hard work without any education and technical background.
For them, not only has their wealth increased, but also the husband and wife eat and work together. Their daughter is temporarily placed in the Northeast without care. This is a leap in their life at this stage.
A Chinese who has worked in the United States for more than ten years told me that he worked in the dark for many years and finally got a green card. After that, he went to drive a truck. When he was a novice, he earned about US $6000 a month. Later, he spent US $130000 on a brand-new heavy truck. Now he works for himself, earning more than US $10000 to US $20000 a month.
Chinese in the United States, who have no green card and no identity, work in restaurants and beauty parlors. While supporting their families, they find ways to find identity. Chinese with formal identity are willing to bear hardships and have some savings. They usually open restaurants, or go to open heavy cards and work as decoration teams. This is the most common way for Chinese to upgrade in the United States.
Truck drivers earn a high income, but generally live very frugally, because they earn hard-earned money, and their welfare is relatively low and their insurance is relatively high.
In short, the job of driving a truck is a hard work that most Americans are unwilling to endure. It is a little bit like risking their lives for money. However, it is a rising channel for civilians in many developing countries, and some people who are willing to bear hardships are willing to do it.
Some Chinese people go to the United States to open heavy duty cards, just to find a way to earn money to support their families, so that they have the opportunity to make money hard, and they will also remit the money they earn back to the country to provide for their children.
And relatively speaking, it is better to open a heavy truck in the United States than at home.
At present, 41 of the 100000 domestic truck drivers die each year, which is higher than the 25.6 in the United States, and their wages are much lower than those in the United States.
Of course, the income of American truck drivers is the same as that of Morgan employees, and no one can compare with them.
American truck drivers don’t have to worry about being stolen oil. That kind of oil can’t be sold in the United States. There are few expressways in the United States. Their road construction costs are mainly included in the fuel tax. Currently, the total mileage charged is only 8633 kilometers, less than one tenth of the total. It is mainly concentrated in the East. These are places we still need to catch up with.
Recently, CNN reported that a young man named Wang Qun spent two months flying from Hangzhou to Doha, then successively transferred to Madrid in Spain, Keelung in Ecuador and Colombia, then walked through the rainforest, took a boat to Panama, and climbed the rainforest in Panama for several days to enter Costa Rica, crossed Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala, narrowly escaped death to Mexico, and then rode a 1600 km motorcycle, Along the coastline to the US Mexico border, under the guidance of the US media, he easily crossed the US Mexico border to sneak into the United States.
The “story of a young boss of a Chinese milk tea shop who can’t speak English running to the United States” carefully planned by CNN ended with “he plans to eventually become a truck driver in the United States.”
I laughed when I saw the word “truck driver”. Is this really not a job advertisement in the American truck industry?
This gives people a feeling that an ordinary person who can’t speak English can easily sneak into the United States, so can I.
A milk tea shop owner can be a truck driver in the United States with a monthly income of about 50000 yuan, so can I.
If it were so easy, the 200000 refugees on the US Mexico border would have been released to the United States. You can say that all the South Americans are rejected by the United States, but now 5000 Ukrainians are also stuck at the border.
To drive a truck in the United States, you must first get your passport and visa. The visa is the most difficult one, and the rejection rate is very high. When you arrive in Los Angeles with a visa, you can have a work card or a green card, and then find a truck driving school to take part in training and examinations. The contents of the examination are all English words and spoken language. This set is very time-consuming and expensive, and ordinary people may not be able to afford it.
Can we learn from Wang Qun’s smuggling?
Certainly not. First, Wang Qun was actually instructed by CNN all the way. He is a personal show. Second, it is too dangerous to die in South America.
After that, let’s compare the truck drivers in China in detail, and we can clearly see the current gap between China and the United States.
According to the data of the Ministry of transport, the number of truck drivers in China is now as high as 17 million, far higher than the 3.3 million in the United States, accounting for 74% of the total freight volume and 31% of the turnover.
Among them, drivers born in 1970-1979 accounted for 41.6%, truck drivers aged 26-35 accounted for 56%, and drivers aged 36-45 accounted for 29%, with an average age of 36. In terms of education, 66.8% of them only had junior high school, 12.3% had high school, and only 1.9% of them had junior college or above.
Most of them go long-distance to earn a living, accounting for 63.6% for those over 500 kilometers, and 32.5% for those 50-500 kilometers. Most of the monthly income is concentrated at about 6000-10000 yuan.
Almost all truck drivers are born in rural areas, 90% are married, and most of them have two children. According to the number of four in a family, this occupation directly affects the lives of 70 million to 70 million Chinese people.
It can be inferred that the job of truck driver provides a promotion opportunity for a large number of young and middle-aged men with junior high school education in rural China, so that they can obtain a stable income in the tertiary industry and do not have to live in agricultural production.
In order to get a deeper understanding of their specific lives, I privately consulted a dozen truck drivers.
Some of these drivers pull oil in Dongying, some load ore in Tianjin port, some pull coal in Ordos, and some scatter in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai.
At present, the industry is mainly self-employed, accounting for about 80%, 40% of which are still paying off the loan, 60% of which have paid off the loan or bought the car in full. If the owner wants to hire a driver, it will take 300 short trips and 500 to 1000 long trips.
If the loan is still being repaid, the pressure is particularly great. A master works day and night with a monthly car loan of 18000 yuan. On the 30th day of the Lunar New Year and the first day of the lunar new year, he runs bills. There is a lot of work, but the price of the owner is low. He doesn’t do it. Some people do it. If they don’t earn money for a month, they have to borrow money to repay the loan. They can only work with their teeth.
One car owner said that before 2017, the life of truck drivers was still good. After that, more and more people bought cars, and the price was down.
After that, the oil price rose, and the software such as cargo Lala, Didi freight and yunmanman was launched. It was convenient for the cargo owners and logistics companies, but the money that the driver got was actually lower. The five or six people around him sold their cars and changed their jobs. They were eager for the state to introduce policies and set the minimum freight.
Once there is a ticket, it runs day and night. People who run long distances do not rest. They eat, drink and sleep all in the car. When they meet a restaurant, they eat some. When they don’t meet a restaurant, they deal with it with instant noodles and biscuits. They can’t choose a restaurant. If they choose, they may have to stay hundreds of kilometers away. Many drivers rarely eat hot meals for half a month in order to catch the time.
I usually sleep in the car when I stop for a rest at night, because there are many people stealing oil, goods and porcelain.
The people who steal the oil are all local people. They hold crowbars in the service area. They can pry open the fuel tanks one by one to steal the oil. They can pry more than ten cars in a night, so they have to keep an eye on them.
Those who steal goods are all prizing the back door after dark and climbing in to steal goods. Sometimes there are too many thieves, and the driver dare not resist.
The people who touch porcelain are also very annoying. If they have too little money, they can directly pay for it. If they have too much money, they can call the police at 110. The main reason is that they waste time and can’t afford it.
A driver who hauled coal in Inner Mongolia said that it was difficult for them to get on the road. The road administration and traffic police would impose fines at any time. They would go to the factory to work. The security guards and loading and unloading workers would ask him for money. It was clear that the owner of loading and unloading goods or the factory had already given it, but the loader still asked you for money. If you didn’t give it, he would pick your fault, or the car wouldn’t be unloaded for you.
The security guards who look at the gate should also be given. They don’t give much. The security guards give 20 or 30, and the loaders give 50.
A master said that they have been dealing with the road administration, traffic police, cargo owners and stevedores for many years, and they are often at a disadvantage. They are forced to make a compromise, which consumes both physical strength, emotion and dignity. They do not intend to let their children do this.
If the husband and wife drive together, it’s better to take care of each other. The wife usually doesn’t quarrel with her husband on the truck, for fear that the husband will lose his temper and have an accident. If they don’t drive together, it’s easy to get divorced. This is the fate of the truck driver, no matter in the United States or China.
What I fear most is the danger of work.
In one year, 9% of drivers have encountered accidents. One master said that he had worked for many years, and some of his peers were disabled and some died. He had seen several of them with his own eyes. Another Chenzhou master, born in 1986, killed an old man in Huadu, with a loss of 1.3 million yuan, an insurance of 1 million yuan, a loan of 300000 yuan, and a suspended sentence. He could not leave Chenzhou. He reported to the local police station on time. Now he has psychological shadow and no income, My wife goes to the real estate company to make money from sales, but now the real estate is also in recession. The house can not be sold and the couple can not earn money. Now the couple quarrel every day for money.
A truck driver concluded that this line is better than screwing in the factory, but it is much harder than white-collar workers. Without social security, it is a hard and dangerous job between the factory and the office building.
At present, truck drivers in China and the United States are both hard-working and earn higher wages than ordinary people, but they are full of bitterness. However, the United States, which has the advantage of US dollar, can raise the income of truck drivers higher, which is impossible for other countries.
In fact, the treatment of American truck drivers has been declining all the time. The golden age of American truck drivers was in the 1970s. At that time, their hourly salary was as high as US $30. At that time, the average income of Chinese workers was 40 to 50 yuan per month. According to the exchange rate at that time, it was about US $20-30 per month. The income of American truck drivers per hour was equivalent to the income of Chinese workers per month. The difference between the two monthly incomes was two to three hundred times.
At present, the income ratio of truck drivers in China and the United States has been reduced from two to three hundred times to five to six times, which is also very, very difficult.
Truck drivers are a profession that can provide a lot of jobs to the bottom of society. The existence of this profession has greatly diluted social contradictions and solved social conflicts. If Chinese truck drivers can make a stable monthly income of more than 10000, it will be a great contribution to the whole society.
The difference in income, treatment and living environment of truck drivers between China and the United States also shows that we are really just a developing country, and we still have a long way to go.
Finally, I would like to use a paragraph left by a Chinese truck driver in the truck forum as the end of this article. Let’s understand that this job is not easy:
Foot on the life and death board, holding the soul calling plate, three meals without a stove, four seasons without a bed.
Thousands of families send warmth, chasing the sun and the moon alone, drinking blood and tears alone, seeing only the dust but not the salary. People and animals can be deceived. Taste all the flavors of the world, and persuade you to drink more wine. Drive the steering wheel carefully.