How Dangerous Is Driving Trucks for a Living?

Are you thinking of driving a truck as a career? Before diving into long-haul, regional or local trucking, take a minute to consider the pros and cons. Advantages include independence, travel, flexible hours, and relatively decent pay and benefits. However, plenty of negatives are involved as well, including potential work-related injuries.

In fact, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)’ Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries lists workers in transportation and material-moving occupations as having the most fatalities of any occupational group, with transportation incidents accounting for 37.7% of all occupational fatalities in 2022, for a total of 2,066.

Fatalities Among Truck Drivers

In 2022, according to a December 2023 article in Truckers News that cites BLS stats, heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers suffered 934 fatalities, with 95 for light truck drivers. The breakdown includes:

• 747 occurred as a result of actual transportation incidents.

• 56 from exposure to hazardous materials or environments.

• 29 from “violence and other injuries by persons or animals.”

• 27 from falls, slips or trips.

Other cons of the trucking life include loneliness and boredom, hassles finding parking, high gas prices, rude motorists, and the constant risk of getting pulled over by law enforcement.

How Much Can You Earn Driving a Truck?

It’s not all negative, however, with the trucking life offering many benefits for individuals who value a life of travel and independence. Plus, the pay can be relatively lucrative for someone without a college degree, though it depends on where you work, what sort of trucking you end up doing, and how steady the work is.

In the United States, according to Indeed.com, the average weekly base pay for a truck driver is $1,891 ($98,332/year). In south-central Ohio, it’s $1,788 in Chillicothe, $1,311 in Portsmouth, and $1,548 in Washington Court House. In salary terms, those amounts range from $68,172/year (Portsmouth) to $92,976/year (Chillicothe).

In Ohio overall, Indeed says, the average base weekly pay for a truck driver is $1,561 ($81,172/year). A few random numbers for other states: Florida, $2,197; California, $1,395; Kentucky, $1,561; Arizona, $1,814, and New York, $1,566. That works out to between $72,540/year (California) and $94,328/year (Florida). (The annual salary numbers assume the trucker will be paid for every week of the year, as happens in a typical salaried job, though that’s not necessarily the case with truckers.)

Other statistical sources come up with different numbers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, tractor-trailer truck drivers earned a mean annual salary of $53,090 as of May 2022. Yet, the trucking industry itself, as quoted in an article posted on the American Trucking Associations’ website in April 2023, said truckers on average earn $70,000, not including “full benefits.”

It’s likely that some of that variation can be explained by how the statistics are defined, as well as the fact that as pay goes up, many truckers choose to drive less.

In any event, the trucking industry has been sounding the alarm in recent years about what it says is an alarming decline in people going into trucking as a career. According to a January 2023 article in Business Insider, industry groups maintain that the United States needs 80,000 more truckers to keep up with freight demand. They’ve mainly blamed deregulation of the industry – as a result of the federal Motor Carrier Act of 1980. For various reasons, this has resulted in truck-driver wages not keeping up with inflation. Combined with other downsides of the trucking life, the pay has not been enough to lure and retain drivers.

If you’re thinking of going into trucking, you’ll need to weigh the pros and cons and assess how much value you place on such intangible things as independence and life on the road.

This article was written by Terry Smith, a freelance writer, working with Warren Law Firm.

In 2020, Terry left The Athens NEWS in Athens, Ohio, after editing that award-winning publication for 34 years. His columns and editorials have placed first in the Ohio News Media Association’s annual weekly newspaper awards in recent years. Before returning to Athens and his alma mater, Ohio University, in 1986, Smith reported for newspapers in Ohio, Arizona, Idaho, Colorado and West Virginia. He is currently freelance editing and writing from his home in Southern Ohio.

Featured Image by Lechon Kirb.