Today in the San Jose Mercury News there was an article on all the city/county employees that earn more than 100,000.
Of the people listed, quite a few were Bus Drivers :eek:
Now I know that figure is deceptive. The income is probably also the sum total of their wage, overtime, and pension, meaning what they take home probably is less. Still, not bad!
Reminds me of a roomate I had- he was a bus driver, real cheerful guy. He moved out because he was retiring at 55 (sweet!) bought a house by saving a ton of money by living in a room he rented from a friend. Up until recently I never really realized how lucrative this job is, here I have a BA and I’m struggling to get by and this job has been under my nose the whole time.
Hell, yeah, they’re Teamsters! One of the very few union jobs in this town, and they do pull down the big bucks. And if they ever feel like they’re not getting enough, a threat to strike usually rectifies it.
My brother drives a bread truck in the bay area. He makes that kind of money too, which I’ve always found kind of amazing. He does get part of it from commissions though.
I owned my own rig and I never got to six figures, but then I always took off at least month or two every year.
Teamsters isn’t what it used to be in most cases, my brother tells me his health coverage is zip once he retires.
I hear it’s pretty stuff competition to get a driving job though. A friend of mine used to work at UPS shuffling boxes around at a distribution center. You had to have years of seniority before you could drive a delivery truck for them.
It depends on how much overtime they’re working. If they’re working eighty hours a week, it’s the equivalent of working two fulltime jobs for $50,000 each.
I would say it worth six figures at least to be able to drive a large multi-ton vehicle within inches of the parked cars that line every SFO street, without hitting them, for eight plus hours a day.
I have no cite for this, but it used to be common (for municipal workers) for older employees to pay younger employees to work overtime in the older employee’s name. The younger employee got the money (paid in cash) while the older employee got credit toward his pension. This was strictly illegal, but widely tolerated, especially in municipal situations. This could result in people working 100 hour weeks on paper. (I have no knowledge of that being the case here - many of these abuses have been eliminated).
A few years ago, a newspaper survey declared driving Sydney buses to be the worst job in the city. I’d imagine SF might be similar. Sydney Buses can’t fill its vacancies at the moment, and hasn’t been able to for several years. No way I’d do it - the stress of driving a large vehicle in narrow city streets is a job on its own, and customer service is another. Combining the two? No way! At least truck drivers don’t have to be cheerful and polite all the time. Bus drivers do.
From what I’ve seen riding the buses, every trip has at least one feral weirdo who threatens, “I’ll take your number!”. I’d want pretty good remuneration to do that gig.