Look, I get it. It's not fair.
Nothing in life is fair anymore. It's not fair that I cannot save money and get any kind of a return...how will I retire? But it is what it is; this is what Statist tyranny and unchecked Central Government takes us to.
If you can't farm, don't farm. I used to be a truck driver. There used to be money in it. Now there is NOTHING but heavy, micromanaging, insane regulations - and the pay has disappeared. Truck-driving is what a lot of Pakis and Mexicans who speak no inglez do. Pay is lower than in fast-food.
I gave up my CDL years ago; and if I have to drive a truck to live...I'll rob banks first. Either I'll get away, or I'll go to the Federal Penitentiary - and STILL live better than an over-the-road trucker.
Farming, too. Government destroys lives. Just ask someone who lived through the Third Reich.
You can still farm, but you have to change crops. Now that might sound simple, but if you are set up to plant, harvest, handle and store wheat, and switch to canola or sunflowers or barley, for instance, you will require different equipment to handle that seed, and to harvest and store those crops. That gets expensive (six figures or more), and besides, if your family has been growing wheat for a couple of generations, you know what works best. Another crop means a whole new learning curve, too, and yes, the government will have its fingers in that, too
It isn't like when I was a kid, when we grew tobacco, and if it looked like tobacco wasn't going to be a good crop to grow that year, put in potatoes or something else instead, but those were far smaller fields (only a few acres), and not the massive multi-section (a section is 640 acres +/-, a square mile) operations of this region.
The place to drive truck is the oil patch, BTW, usually shorter hauls with liquids and HAZMAT, hauling anything from crude oil to drilling mud to fuel or fresh/salt water. There are 'dry' loads, too. That generally pays fairly well. The rig moving industry lost 2/3-3/4 of the market when 'walking' rigs came out, drilling on multiwell pads. And the whole industry purt'near imploded when oil prices dropped, but anything associated with oil production is ongoing, and that oil and salt water is commonly hauled at least short distances by truck. The one place on shore where the hit hasn't been so bad in the Permian Basin Area in Texas.
OTR, from what I have heard, is where drivers who aren't owner operators get screwed.