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Truckers don't have it easy.
- There are 1.8 million long-haul truck drivers on the road in 2019. Their median income is $43,680.
- They play a crucial role in the American economy. Some 71% of freight by weight is moved by a truck. If they all stopped working, grocery stores would run out of food in three days.
- But some of the people who count themselves among the legions of truckers in America say they feel misunderstood.
- Dozens of truckers have shared with Business Insider what it's really like to be a truck driver.
- "To be able to be a truck driver used to be quite a good blue-collar, middle-class job, but over the past 40 years, it has kind of dwindled away," Gordon Klemp, principal of the National
Transportation Institute, previously told Business Insider. - Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.