What's the deal with welders?

Dentists have a high rate of suicide.

Drywall folks & painters like their chemicals.

Different trades & professions attract similar personality types.

Hard to imagine the person’s career decision making mind, one who decides to wear all that hot protective gear while wielding white hot tools in dead heat of summer.

Was a pipe fitter’s helper one Deep South LA summer. Just damn.

It’s the opiates.

Guy down the street from me has a lifted truck with huge tires, chrome, and wrap, and he made a custom grill for it that reads "welder money"

They're usually the ones flying down the highways like they are going somewhere to save humanity.

In general the trades are eaten up with substance abuse and addiction like you would not believe

A buddy at church runs the welding department at a Cat plant. He was saying almost everyone was somewhere on the autism spectrum. It seems to draw people like that.

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Guy down the street from me has a lifted truck with huge tires, chrome, and wrap, and he made a custom grill for it that reads "welder money"

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Don't they not even make that much money relatively speaking, but they make more money than what they could have been doing?

Making a lot of money because you work 2x as many hours as someone else doesn't count either.

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Don't they not even make that much money relatively speaking, but they make more money than what they could have been doing?

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Pretty much. It's not a bad living as far as money goes by any stretch but a lot of them act like they have Elon money. I've known many who were paycheck to paycheck because of child support and financing toys that they never have time to use.


We are currently paying pretty big money (relatively speaking) to a lot of them for some data center projects. With their OT they are making more than me. It's not something I'd care to do, though. Straight 12s and living in a camper 11 months out of the year sounds miserable.