The Trade Scam

Let the old man give y'all some help.

Recently, the vultures have come for the trades as they came for the college students of my generation. It seems no matter what happens, these scumbags will come for their pound of flesh.

Let me give you all a guide on how not to get scammed and a basic overview of what is and isn’t worth doing in the trades.

In the trades, there is a hierarchy.

There are trades you go into to make money, and trades you go into for the passion. Passion, as we all know, never pays the bills. If you have not heard this, allow me to disabuse you of the idea that doing what you love will make the money follow. There are thousands of zombies who wanted to be musicians and actors, only to end up strung out in the gutter. Following your dreams tends to lead you into nightmares, so just make money. Life is so much easier with consistent or good money.

I will start from the worst to the best.

Drywalling

Drywalling has been completely flooded by third-world immigrants. It was always done by immigrants, but back in the earlier and mid-20th century, it was done by Italians and Irish, who brought with them unions, and the pay went up instead of down.

Drywalling is paid by the board in most places. This forces most workers to end up on speed or cocaine to hang more boards in a day. The job is physically demanding and often results in broken shoulders, backs, and knees. The chances for advancement are slim to none. Being a finisher leaves dust in your lungs, eyes, and skin.

Mechanics

The CEO of Ford recently said, “He has 5,000 jobs that pay $150,000 a year.” This is complete and utter bullshit. The average mechanic makes $40,000 a year. The absolute highest-paid mechanics in the world work for Mercedes or Ferrari and make $140,000 a year. These jobs are rare because the number of these cars sold each year is rare.

Mechanic is a job guys get into because they love cars. I was speaking with a mechanic this morning. I told him that mechanics make no money because the engineering of cars has become increasingly complex each year. The cost of running a shop, including electricity, equipment, the OEM factory manuals that must be purchased yearly, insurance, and car prices, ensures repairs stay within a range where, if they charge too much, the car should just be replaced.

Mechanics make what is known as book hours. Basically, a mechanic is given a certain amount of time they are paid for each repair. This often does not include communication about warranty issues, diagnosing time, or testing.

Mechanics who are independent rent bays out and have to pay for their spot in someone else’s shop, as a barber does with his chair.

All mechanics have to start at the bottom, changing oil for $12 to $14 dollars an hour.

After this period, if they remain in the trade, they must purchase tools. Mechanic’s tools are not like your craftsman set at home. Mechanics need better-quality tools with more teeth on ratcheting pieces to get more turns per rotation. They need warranties for their commercially used tools. My buddy has $250,000 in tools at his shop. The average is more like $80,000, but they are all purchased on credit and deducted from their checks each week.

You must climb ladders in this trade. Testing is required to advance from lube tech to master mechanic. Each step along the line has positives and negatives. Each step up might mean less work. A master mechanic demands a higher hourly rate, so the brake jobs and oil changes that feed a basic tech will not be given to them. The difficult warranty work and problem diagnoses will be thrown his way. These may end up paying more or less based on hours.

Most mechanics end up with broken hands, blown-out shoulders, scars all over their arms, thrown-out backs, neck problems, knee problems, and drug issues. I have never met a mechanic who wasn’t a drunk.

You get into this field with stars in your eyes, hoping to build hot rods or rice racers. You dream of Ferraris or BMWs. You end up changing out the bearings in a Prius. This is why I decided not to go into the field.

If you must enter this field, get a car, learn the basics, and then apply to be a lube tech. Go to community college to get your ASE certification. After that, you will find your way. Do not go to Devry.

Framing / Carpentry

Framing is a job you get into by walking onto a job site and asking to be a laborer. This is mostly done by immigrants, the Amish, or day laborers. It requires a miter saw, a nail gun, a hammer, a tape measure, and some experience. Today, with modern building codes, there is a supervisor who oversees jobs and dictates how they are done, but the basics have not changed in 200 years.

Carpentry offers a wide range of opportunities, but mostly it involves framing, window fitting, cabinet hanging, or working in a mobile home plant.

As a kid, you are told that Jesus was a carpenter, and you see your uncles or grandparents making a good living off of these trades. This is mostly because Baby Boomers had it super easy, with low immigration levels while suburban housing supply expanded at breakneck speed.

Today, the framing and basic work are done in a factory and brought to the site in pieces that bolt together. This has made the trade a low-paying afterthought to be done by the cheapest workers possible.

The average pay of a framer is $48,000 a year, and $54,000 for a carpenter. There is a reason we lack people in this profession.

Roofer

Would you like to work in direct sunlight all day long while 30 feet off the ground? Would you like to carry 100lbs of shingles up an aluminum ladder? Well, if you said “Yes,” roofing is the job for you.

This used to be a great-paying job. Today, the average pay is $48,000 a year. That is around $24/hour. This is another job that has been flooded by third-world immigrants. Mexicans, Guatemalans, and Africans are the people you will see doing these jobs.

Falling off a roof is something I have heard more times than I can count as a reason guys are on disability who used to be in this field.

There are, of course, specialties in this field, like solar installation, commercial roofing, and slate, but they will not keep you fed year-round. Roofers work when the sun is shining. You cannot have a roof exposed to rain or the elements, so expect days off regularly. High winds, snow, and cold weather freeze lines, so no go on the pneumatic guns.

I know guys who do roofing, and they tend to branch out into carpentry or landscaping, which fits into this box and extends their abilities.

Becoming a roofer is as simple as applying at a roofing company and starting at the bottom.

Concrete

Masonry and concrete tend to go with excavating. This is also known as earthmoving.

Basic concrete guys earn around $56,000 a year. Experienced guys in the union earn $90,000. The money in this field is in equipment operations and in opening your own business. This is a ticket to $300,000 per year.

Good equipment operators can make from $100,000 to $250,000 a year. This, of course, depends on the equipment you operate. Crane operators who build commercial buildings will make more than a guy operating a skid loader.

Bricklayers and concrete pourers will spend a ton of time on their knees, bent over, shaping forms. The wear and tear from this job is evident, but the money, as you become more skilled and in demand, goes up year by year. Starting wages are awful at $41,000 a year, but as a Master mason in a good union, you can make $100,000 a year.

To become a mason, you head to a local union and ask to become an apprentice and get started. Do not go to school for this.

HVAC-R

Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration. My father was one of the world’s best commercial HVAC guys. He spent his life with a beeper or a cell phone pressed to his ear, running off at 8 pm to fix some problem at a restaurant. I spent many days sitting in a booth at a diner or bar while we waited for an ice machine to cycle.

He made a lot of money back in the 1980s and kept making it until he “retired” in the 2000s.

This job requires schooling. You must know electrical, gas, plumbing, coal, BTUs, diagnosis, refrigerant, duct work, carpentry, hazmat, and a ton more.

This job is like being the on-call doctor for the construction and restaurant industry. Every time a machine goes down, or a family loses heat, you are out on the phone and out of the door with a pocket full of wire nuts and a screwdriver sticking out of your back pocket.

You also have to install new systems in new homes while upgrading and updating 200-year-old houses. Switching a coal boiler to electric baseboard heat, you need to know the BTUs needed to heat the place, plus the codes and where to run the lines, while figuring out why the previous owners of the building ran the upstairs electrical on dollar-store extension cords directly into the breaker box.

In summer, you are in 140-degree attics running insulation and ductwork. In winter, you are in a frozen basement, replacing a water heater or diagnosing a 50-year-old oil-fired boiler.

This job will injure you from time to time. You will meet all the people. The pay is not bad. If you are good, you can make $100,000 a year. If you’re okay with it, you can make $50,000 a year. You will eat great food and some really shitty food.

To get into this, look for a course at a community college. If you are in PA, go to Vo Tech in high school, or they have courses at night that can be taken with Pell grants.

CDL

Wanna see all the nation’s highways? Wanna get treated like shit by dispatchers and lied to by recruiters? Wanna be away from home when family emergencies happen? Wanna make a really good paycheck one week, then starve the next? Truck driving is for you.

I am a truck driver. This job is feast or famine. Currently, it is a feast. When Biden flooded the country with immigrants in 2021, it was a famine. I went from $2000 a week to $500.

This job is awesome when it’s great. The scenery, the freedom, the solitude, I spend nights staring at the moon sliding behind the clouds while rivers flow beside me, and I am at peace. Then a moron stops dead to look at a possum on the side of the highway, and I want to murder someone. You get paid for what you do. There is no hourly pay or guaranteed money. If your truck breaks, you don’t eat. If a shipper takes 3 hours, you don’t get paid. If a train blocks you, you don’t get paid. It is either mileage or load pay. The thing is, though, in good years you can make unreal money like life-changing money. I was making $3000 a week during COVID. After I made $500 a week, this is how the industry works.

Those were the worst years I had ever seen. I currently make about $ 1,600 a week. No boss, no office, no bs.

Want to be a CDL driver? Go to a company school. Schnieder, Swift, and CR England are all good choices, and they won’t rob you. Do not go to the dumb CDL schools.

Plumbers

Learn to plumb has become the new learn to code. The money is good as long as okayu are ok with dealing with other people’s shit and don’t mind getting a few cock roaches on you.

True story: We were removing an old black pipe from a place we were renovating, and I had to carry chunks down the steps. A roach the size of a half dollar crawled out of a pipe and up my arm. I threw that fucking pipe down the steps so fast. Bleh, I can still feel it on me.

You can make $100,000 a year as a plumber. You can start a business and make a whole lot more. You will be in bad places. You will crawl under trailers and be in basements filled with fecal matter. You will sweat. You will braze pipes and run PEX. You will learn to read blueprints. This job is great. I think the pay will decrease as more people choose to do it because that’s how money works.

If you want to be a plumber, go to a local plumbers ’ union and apply to be an apprentice. Do not go to school for this.

Sparkys

This job scares most people away. The idea of being hit with 440 v 200 amp lines makes most people back away really slowly. Electricians are seen as the air force of the construction industry. They don’t do much, will not pick up a broom, and have no idea how to use tools.

They make good money. They have to have knowledge. They deal with life and death every day. The pay starts at $40,000 and goes up to $130,000 before you leave and open your own shop as a master electrician after ten years.

Wanna be an electrician? Go to your local electrical union and apply to be an apprentice. Attend a local community college and take a course. Do not go to trade school.

Welders

Do you love wearing a pearl snap button-up shirt? Do you love telling other people how much better you are than they are just by stating what you do for a living? Do you enjoy having a permanent suntan on your arm? Do you love making things stick to other things? Well, have I got a job for you!

Welding is a crazy profession: some positions pay $300,000 a year, and others pay $18/hr.

The best welding jobs are probably for the guys who weld the pipes for natural gas and oil out in the field. The worst ones are the guys who make windows or work at a mobile home factory.

I used to weld at a steel mill, making pipes. I made the same money I made operating machinery. That’s how factories work. Welders might make an extra $1.00 perhour. But the difference between a job where you are underwater welding on a deep-sea oil rig and a guy in a factory is night and day. You fly out, stay on the rig for a month at a shot, work 6 12-hour shifts for 4 weeks, then go home for 2 weeks, and repeat. The deep-sea guy is scuba diving in salt water, watching sharks swim by him while stick welding in a giant suit. That job is going to pay well. The guy running a submerged arc welder in a factory, repairing gaseous welds on large-diameter line pipe on a 12-hour shift, then going home to his wife, is going to make less.

To become a welder, you can find jobs at machine shops or factories where you can get hired as labor and bid on the job once inside. That is often the best route to take. Taking welding at your local vo tech in high school is always recommended. Buying a cheap welder and trying it yourself is also cool.

Conclusion

These garbage trade schools charging $75,000 to teach you the trades are completely unnecessary. Do not fall for their bullshit. If you actually want help getting into the trades, hit me in my DMs, and I will help you. We do this in our Discord all the time. We have guys from all walks of life who know the ropes and will guide you.