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The story
In the late 1980s, truck driving was grueling work — but one where you could still aim for an annual salary of ¥10 million. The trend is said to trace back to the deregulation of the logistics industry around 1990, when a flood of new operators intensified competition and pushed down both freight rates and wages. On a 5ch thread, users recalled that delivery giant Sagawa Express ran bubble-era job ads boasting that drivers in their twenties could afford a Ferrari, while others pointed out that the deregulation actually predates the Koizumi reforms, having happened instead in the early 1990s. These days, more drivers are switching over to taxi driving, but that field carries its own new worries — an oversupply of vehicles and the rise of self-driving taxis.
The term “blue-collar billionaire” has emerged, drawing attention to this high-earning blue-collar class.
In the late 1980s, truck driving drew attention as a grueling job where young workers could still earn ¥10 million a year.
(details omitted)
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Can't be helped — it's a job literally anyone can get into.
Labor costs dropped because of the strong yen and deflation.
Already oversupplied.
Every company's got more cars than they need,
so they're constantly posting job ads full of sweet talk.
You can't earn like you used to,
but they still advertise it like you can.
The trade-off is, if you crash, you're on the hook for the damages yourself.
If anything, the Koizumi reforms were the final nail in the coffin for this industry.
Tell him to give back his "BOSS" jacket.
Sagawa's job ads at the peak of the bubble literally said drivers in their 20s could afford a Ferrari.
Apparently there's no trace of that these days.
Wait, did you hear that secondhand from a senior coworker about bubble-era pay?
If he lived through it himself, he'd have to be pretty old by now.
Care taxis charge ¥10,000 for a 15-minute one-way trip.
With pay-for-performance jobs, where you earn exactly what you put in, it's easy to overlook what you're giving up in exchange.
Anyone can see it's absurd to waste an hour just to earn 1 point (1 yen) — that's obvious to everyone.
But when something looks like decent "high pay," people fail to notice the huge sacrifice hiding behind it.
Take taxi driving, for instance — 21-hour shifts and only 72 days off a year.
You should really think hard about what you're giving up to earn that paycheck, especially if you're young, or if you don't have many years left.
There's actually research saying night shifts can shave 17 years off your life.
72 days off a year, seriously? They'd need to either double the days off or flip it so you only work 72 days a year — otherwise it's just not sustainable.
Even worse off — nobody wants the job, so there's a severe shortage.
Re: #64
Rural bus drivers are a famously underpaid job, aren't they?
Age 57, 8 years on the job: ¥8,598,548
Age 54, 12 years on the job: ¥8,016,076
Age 42, 7 years on the job: ¥7,729,642
Age 25, 6 years on the job: ¥7,641,196
Go independent as an owner-driver and the company can't skim off you, so you keep it all — the best drivers end up striking out on their own.
You need a 10-plus-year accident- and violation-free record just to get an independent license, so it's pretty tough.
Who'd even apply for pay this low?
Highways, maybe, but regular roads are a long way off.
No matter how much AI learns, I can't see it preventing accidents caused by pedestrians and cyclists doing unpredictable things.
Spoken like a true Showa-era old-timer.
It starts next year.
Turned out to be clock in at 5am, finish at midnight, one day off every 10 days, and bonuses of just ¥100,000 each for summer and winter.
Get your license out of high school, save up a down payment driving a 4-ton truck, get your heavy-vehicle license by 20 —
bring your own dump truck, overload it without a second thought, and you'd be clearing ¥10 million by age 20.
Companies like that will eventually get weeded out and disappear, I'd think.
Re: #132
Or so I dreamed, lol.
Dump trucks, rough-terrain cranes, and other construction vehicles cost about as much as buying a house.
And yet bus drivers get paid so little for it.
It used to pay well.
Back in the bubble era, they got criticized for it and it even made the newspapers.
Remove that floor, and subcontractors and sub-subcontractors are forced to take jobs with almost no profit at all.
Push policies that drive incomes down, and this is exactly what you get.
Well, that's basically true, but both construction and trucking run on a carrot-and-stick system that keeps subcontractors right at the edge of survival —
the profitable work basically stays in-house, while the thin-margin, money-losing stuff gets dumped on subcontractors.
Don't you get it? If they don't take the job, they don't even get that bare-minimum income, so they're forced to take it.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The high-income trucking boom is believed to trace back to the deregulation of market entry and freight rates under the two logistics laws enacted around 1990. As new operators flooded in, supply outpaced demand, price competition pushed freight rates down, and drivers’ take-home pay shrank along with it. The “Koizumi reforms” mentioned in the thread likely refer to the 2003 deregulation, but the actual turning point came earlier, in the early 1990s — a timeline mix-up that’s easy for readers to fall into as well. The multi-layered subcontracting structure common to both construction and trucking is also cited as a factor that thins out the share going to subcontractors and sub-subcontractors. In the taxi industry too, there are cases like Kyoto’s MK Taxi where going independent as an owner-driver can mean high earnings, but overall, an oversupply of vehicles and the practical rollout of self-driving taxis were raised as concerns for the future. That said, some in the thread felt that fully autonomous driving on ordinary roads is still a long way from practical use.
※This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (News Flash+) thread “[Blue Collar] The ¥10 Million “Trucking Dream” Shattered — Truck Drivers Turn to Taxi Driving.”
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