That is a logging truck from pixabay. I have yet to flop one, although I did slide a tanker full of crude off a muddy road once. I stopped as soon as I saw how slippery it was and as I was getting out to put my chains on the whole truck slid sideways and almost flipped. I had to get another driver to come out and suck the load off of me, then he had to offload the oil from my tanks and give me a tug. After that, he had to pull me out of the ditch.

Our company isn't terribly huge, but there's probably 100 employees between all the branches. Ours only has five including the foreman. I think it goes to 8 or 9 in the winter.

I used to work in the oilfield and got paid a lot more because of the sheer volume of hours. We used to work seven days a week and at least twelve hours a day. Sometimes for months at a time. Then you might get a day or two off, or possibly a month. You never knew until they called.

Now that I have a family, I am quite happy to have a regular schedule and time to garden or maybe write a post or two. Working 80-90 hours a week doesn't give you much time for things like writing or eating. The other thing that was good about it was that if an employee was a piece of shit worker he would get run off but here they are protected by the union and probably cost the union and the company a ton more money than a good employee that just goes to work and does their job.

They also should take into account how much training has to go into a new hire and the cost of damage while they are in the first season or so of plowing. I still don't have it down pat, but I have spent 20 years working on every kind of road we have in Canada. From the mountains to the ice roads. I've learned a few things in that time that should be worth a little more than some green guy that recently got their license, which is a lot of the people that get hired.

The funny thing is that when I lived in Ontario, I could never have got this job because of the competition, nepotism, and the fact that nobody quits a job like this back there. Here, because there are far fewer truckers than trucks, you can't even give these jobs away. Nobody will work for 40 hours a week when they can get 80. Which is fine by me.

I have never like the corporate feel of a company, which is why I've always tried to work for mom and pop companies. They always treated me better, but like you said, "lean times".