It’s a mixed bag. The money’s there if you seek it out and like being out on the road driving a lot of miles. When I started in 1994 I hauled chemical tanker which pays a little better than average. I was grossing roughly $50K then hauling mostly east of the Mississippi. This year I expect to gross about double that as a company driver (I’ve never owned or leased a truck). Prior to 2018 truckers had a huge tax write-off for meals. It alone made it easy to beat the standard deduction by itemizing. In 2018 not only did about 15% or so of earned income disappear into a meal reimbursement instead of a meal write-off, the standard deduction also increased substantially, thus turning itemizing into a thing of the past for most truckers including myself.