Originally Posted by
LapSap
You get the difference tho don’t you??
The stuff in the trucks is paying big $$$ right now.
Your average punter on a plane doesn’t want to pay anything any more.
You are ‘worth’ the income you generate. The way the industry is now, that’s peanuts.
Ultimately, Supply and Demand determines your worth. The demand for the service of qualified road train drivers is high. The barriers to entry, the difficulty in attracting the required number, or quality, of applicants determines the supply. As everyone knows You can’t just walk off the street and get a freshly minted road train licence without experience.
Surgeons= high barriers to entry, highly skilled high performing, highly educated individuals required. Limited numbers qualified. Can command a high price.
McDonalds burger flipper= can walk off the street and be fully trained in two weeks, little education required… etc etc.
You can manipulate the barriers to entry or other factors a little to change the outcomes, as we see with pilots in the US vs pilots elsewhere right now, strong unions vs weak ones… but the simpler laws of economics are relatively immutable.
One of those ways to manipulate those laws is, by various means, lowering your own worth. So, what never ceases to amaze me, is unlike other industries, how quickly Pilots will denigrate themselves, in public forums no less!. Icarus literally put in the title of the thread ‘good for them’, ie long haul truckies driving road trains deserve every cent. Yet every dill with an opinion has to come here and give their $0.02 on how truckies are so much more hard done by, how dare we compare ourselves, and effectively that pilots are nothing more than… overpaid bus drivers… who barely deserve an inflight meal.
Who needed Bob Hawke to denigrate us when we have a ready supply of idiots who will happily do it themselves?