Oklahoma is a great place to live if you’re a trucker.
After making some pretty unflattering lists this year — including the No. 3 spot on CNBC’s list of Worst States to Live in 2016 — the Sooner State scored high on Zippia.com’s roundup of the nation’s best places for truck drivers.
Oklahoma came in at No. 7, thanks to an abundance of trucking jobs (24,480) and average annual salary ($42,150) measured against the cost of living and a 1.26 location quotient, which measures how common a job is in the state.
Being tops in trucking shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, as shown by anecdotal evidence provided in C.W. McCall and Chip Davis’ classic song “Convoy.”
“By the time we got into Tulsa town, we had 85 trucks in all. But they’s a roadblock up on the cloverleaf and them bears was wall-to-wall.”
A mention in McCall’s well-known 1975 hit is nice, but it does run up against a SmartAsset.com list released earlier this year. That ranking put Oklahoma No. 3 in the Top 10 States With the Worst Drivers due to our high rate of uninsured drivers and 7.74 DUIs per 1,000 drivers. So, it might not be the safest state through which to haul hogs, but you’ll earn a pretty good living doing it.
Print headline: Trucking great