Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What Blue Collar Trade Would You Consider?

I can tell you here in FL, HVAC for residential services would be hard to beat, very few people are willing to go a day or two without AC in the summer which begins in March/April and runs through October. Schedule seasonal service during the winter and take time off to hunt.

Electrician. Particularly if the person has a good work ethic.

GreggH

I worked as a carpenter full time for 16 years before becoming an electrician. Have been an electrician for 11 years now.

I would encourage anyone wanting to get into construction to consider electrical work.

I’ve been a machinist and a welder/fabricator in the past. I love welding and building metal stuff but wouldn’t go back now, too hard on you and you realize this when the old broke down hands on jobs are 55 and look 75.


Nobody wants to be a residential plumber around here but they make great money. As a buddy told me when he started doing plumbing work, “nobody argues price when they have turds floating in their basement”. As long as people live in houses with running water they’re going to have to have a plumber. Same can be said for electrical but I cannot seem to grasp the theory.

I have a fellow here at the house right now working on my heat pump. Those guys are busy all year round. AC in the summer, heat in the winter.

Good clean trade and another trade that one could do on the side.

Electric for the win. The demand is much greater than the supply of electricians.

If I wasn't a carpenter I'd be a carpenter, but I am a carpenter so I'm good there.

Electrical is a fall back in case we run out of wood.

Ive been an residential electrician and a commercial/industrial electrician for 35 yrs. The later has been much better for me. I dont really like working in someones else's home. It has been a very good career.

Spend 6 hours in an attic in the summertime attempting to fix someone's unit and you may sing a different tune. Or in a crawlspace with 18" of clearance and full of black widows and wolf spiders.

Waiter at a high end steak house

Should add nursing to that list. Much easier money than electrician.

Add farming, logging, fishing.

I think I'd want to be a surveyor or lineman

my bud was a surveyor, gave him a 4WD and he'd get out in the country figuring out new ways to get it stuck, knows every back road and diner in the south.

Only bad part of the job was dealing with landowners over easements.

Either electrician or heavy equipment operator. I enjoy running big equipment and think I could enjoy it enough to not get too bored too quick. Our son is working towards being an electrician and enjoys the multiple avenues for various specialties available within the trade itself.

Has Longshoreman been mentioned.
Had a friend move to Seattle he ended up running a crew that cleaned out tankers and he made big money.

Farmer.

Physically, maybe. Stress-wise, nowhere close. My brother is a nurse - made big money right out of school, but that job will kill ya!

Nice thought but unless you family is already in the business, the cash outlay to buy all the land and machinery and everything else needed would be astronomical.

I grew up on a farm. My dad was chained to it 24/7 but he and his brother got the farm from their father. There are some benfits, but starting from scratch would almost be impossible.

I think a lot of folks confuse or don't understand the difference between a true skilled trade and an occupation. All skilled trades are occupations, but not all occupations are skilled trades. Everybody's a "professional" now too, at least the ones who haven't been reclassified as "heroes." (No I'm not a grumpy old man!)

For myself, I did a tool and die apprenticeship in the early '70's. It's a great trade and I love the work. A lot of the work has gone away, however. With CNC a lot of the fixturing has been eliminated for production machining and grinding form tools for production turning is a thing of the past as well. Press dies, die-casting dies and plastic molds are still important, but much less work is entailed in making them now with CNC capabilities in the toolroom. There's still some gage work, but CMM's have taken over most of what was done with gages in the past.

If I were looking to get into a trade today I think it would be electrician. Absent any unlikely and truly astonishing technological breakthrough, we're going to be using electricity for some time. It's one of the trades, also, that doesn't take a huge investment to go independent.

I've done quite a bit of welding, and I like it, but it's not something I'd want to do day in and day out. Guys I've known who've done it for years all seem to have had some sort of health issues.

airline pilot , 'cept it doesnt pay what it did once.

My dad was a builder and he also owned a plumbing shop that my oldest brother worked at and eventually bought. So , I had the choice when I got out of the Army to go to school on the GI bill, go into plumbing, become a builder, or something else.. I also learned to weld in high school and had a couple welding jobs after high school to pay the bills until I figured out what I wanted to do..

I chose something else and became an electrician. It is very hard work at times and can be hard on your body but I wouldn't consider anything else. Now that I'm retired after 40 years of it I sometimes miss the work and the challenges of some of the installations we had to do, but my body finally said enough about the time I turned 65 so I gave it up. My son is an electrician also and he makes great money but he doesn't love it like I did. One thing about the electrical trade, you need to have a pretty good aptitude to keep up with it as it continually changes and most states now require continuing education to keep their license current.