Assertion Contradicted AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Booth: Front loader heavy equipment operators make $100K annually

Donald Booth · He Bought a Hotel During COVID to Remove One Pain Point · Jul 2, 2024 · at 23:00

Donald Booth, founder and CEO of the American Institute of Non-Destructive Testing, discusses lucrative career paths in skilled trades.

0:00 / 0:13exact quote · 13.8s

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“He's running a front loader and making a hundred grand a year and he's in an air conditioned cab and there's a lot of knowledge to moving dirt and moving earth and making it level and operating this equipment.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

Heavy equipment operators running front loaders make $100,000 per year.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) data for SOC 47-2073 (Operating Engineers and Other Construction Equipment Operators, which includes front-end loader operators), the national mean annual wage was $62,180 (median $56,160) in May 2023 and $65,180 (median ~$58,720) in May 2024. Independent compensation trackers (ERI, Comparably, Indeed) consistently show average annual salaries between $38,400 and $64,150. An annual wage of $100,000 is only reached by the top 10% of earners nationally (90th percentile: $95,570 in 2023) or in select high-cost states (such as Hawaii and Illinois), and is not representative of typical or average earnings for the occupation.

BLS May 2023 OEWS data reports a national mean annual wage of $62,180 and a median annual wage of $56,160 for Operating Engineers and Other Construction Equipment Operators.
BLS May 2024 OEWS data reports a national mean annual wage of $65,180 and a median hourly wage of $28.23 (~$58,720 annually).
Only the top 10th percentile nationally approached this level ($95,570 in May 2023), while industry aggregators (ERI, Comparably, Indeed) report average salaries between $48,000 and $64,000.

Checked against

[1] bls.gov [2] bls.gov [3] nuecareer.com [4] operator-school.com [5] erieri.com [6] comparably.com [7] indeed.com [8] velvetjobs.com

"Operating Engineers and Other Construction Equipment Operators" "May 2024" bls.gov BLS OEWS Operating Engineers and Other Construction Equipment Operators mean wage May 2023 May 2024 BLS 47 2073 Operating Engineers and Other Construction Equipment Operators annual mean wage BLS OEWS front end loader operator salary average

assessed as of 2026-09-02

This assessment is an AI reading of a public statement, made against the cited references with the confidence shown. It can be wrong. The quote, the tape and the references are all on this page; if something is off, use report an error below. full disclaimer →

Mentioned

Heavy equipment operators

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