As a logistician, I have pondered this question a good deal. In the U.S., qualified truck drivers can make a nice living if they are willing to put in the miles. A recent article in Yahoo News attempts to discuss this question. The article intimates that drivers are fairly desparate, poor, and have few options. I wish that wasn't the case.

Highlights from the article

Fearful NATO supply truckers curse their jobs

TORKHAM, Pakistan (AFP) – Fearful of Taliban attacks and death on dangerous roads, truckers on the NATO supply line from Pakistan to Afghanistan curse their jobs and say they feel like traitors in a time of war.

An unprecedented assault on at least 30 trucks packed with military vehicles and NATO supplies on the outskirts of Islamabad killed seven people this week and renewed fears about insecurity in nuclear-armed Pakistan.

Mir Jan said he had twice been threatened by the Taliban for driving NATO supplies up the infamous Khyber pass -- part of which Washington has branded the most dangerous region on earth -- and that there were nights he could not sleep.

"They stopped me twice here in Khyber. They told me to stop supplying goods to Americans," he said. "They said, we will skin you alive if you don't stop this.

"I am cursing myself for doing the wrong job. I ask myself all the time, why am I helping these kafirs (non-believers)?"

Like most of his fellow truckers from Afghanistan, Mir Jan is illiterate and from a poor family, with little other prospect of gainful employment.

The Pentagon says around half the cargo sent to Afghanistan travels overland through Pakistan, much of it threading through Khyber to the Torkham border crossing after being sent by ship to Karachi.

It says less than one percent of cargo routed through Pakistan is lost and the cost of this week's damage has not yet been quantified. But that offers little solace to those on the ground.

A photo from when I was in Torkham, Afghanistan, March 2010. Trucks were lined up to pass through the border-customs area to get into Afghanistan through Pakistan.