What are the upper ages for men in physically demanding jobs

[kjg1963]

My bf is 57 and is a "working" foreman. He still has to run heavy equipment, jump in ditches, and lay pipe. Unfortunately he has to still do this because his crew is always understaffed. I don't know how much of a toll this work takes on his body as he doesn't really complain. From what I can tell, at 57, he has the same body aches and pains as he had when he was 35 (when I first met him). However, he has had other health issues as he has aged.

[Joe90]

I do fruit picking in the summer, and am the youngest there, at 55, 10-12 hours a day, with a handful of days off in three months, and some very hot days. Doesn't really feel any different than it ever has.

The rest of the year, I work in construction and tree planting.

No reason why people shouldn't be able to do relatively easy work like construction, until 65.

[BMW R1100]

I worked as a fitter/welder to make the mortgage payments while I wrote my Great American Novel, but got tired of the injuries and hurts that came with it and needed to do less physically demanding work. I took a course in electronics to become a technician, but found as a f/w I was making more money than a technician. In the city library one day (this is pre-Internet) I came across a big book put out by the government that listed job types. I looked up "writer" and found a listing for "technical writer". The description fit me to a T. I had a BA in Comm thanks to Uncle Sam and with my AS in Electrical Engineering Technology I got the first job I applied to. I quit my welder job and have been a tech writer for 25 years and still write novels. My BIL was a pipefitter for many years and is on disability now.

[Tencent]

Why worry about physical labor when 100 years from now all these jobs will employ autonomous reploids

[Blondebaerde]

Originally Posted by srjth

I am specifically asking about men in very physically demanding jobs. There are several fields I can think of, but one in particular that comes in mind is construction. I am not close enough to the careers to observe for myself, but when it comes to the people I know in them, I'm realizing that I don't know any men past the age of 50 who are doing the actual hard labor. I'm not talking about being in a supervisor role, I'm talking about doing the actual strenuous hard labor. I'm thinking the ones who have lifelong careers in these fields either get injured or move into supervisor roles. What has been your observations or experiences of this?

Out of college, the STEM degree I held led me from Science to Engineering. And awhile there (maybe five years) we did as much construction as engineering. So I became very good as a nerd overseer of the project (Science, engineering) that had construction crews. Small job, I ran it. Multi day, they had a crew chief. Weeks, months they had a boss and maybe an overseer on the multi million dollar projects. I got to know these men well, there were no women at that time, this was the 1990s and that's just how it was.

I was just thinking, "there were no men over 50 driving shovels" and see that you wrote it. The boss, and the overseer, spent their days on planning, troubleshooting, meeting with the scientists and engineers. Put a tie on them, they'd meet clients and sponsors, often Field Grade officers (O-6s from the Corps of Engineers, for example). Most of those men were late 30s to mid-50s. One infamous fellow was "Boss Robert Rushin'" we called him, he looked like a leather holster with eyes and was from Midland, TX. He'd seen some hard days in that Texas sun. Years later he got caught in a pavement machine, God knows how, and lost an arm though survived. We were shocked he didn't beat the machine to death with his free arm.
That was it for his career, probably, but if ever a hard-ass Master Sargent 30 year man with limbs missing there was, absent the military, it was Boss Robert. I liked him. He had barely concealed contempt for me and the other 20-something eggheads, but was polite to the officers and executives. So be it.

Most shovel drivers were hard young men, 20s-late 30s. I saw few or nearly none at 40, though on my jobs the older men almost always drove equipment which btw takes a certain deftness and skill. I taught myself how to drive loaders and backhoes, and forklifts, over the years on our equipment. Not rocket science, but precision is needed and that's skillful. And one or two of the very sharpest of that bunch became bosses. The one out of a hundred hiding a clever intellect behind the brawn became a overseer.

Construction labor is like the English sailors of old in terms of toughness and grit, though at least our men were well paid under Davis-Bacon projects (public works), prevailing wage that essentially demands wage equality and in a place like CA, that's good money indeed. Few if any griped about wages on our jobs. But at what cost? Those guys took sick days monthly due to entirely legitimate strains and stresses to systems like the back and hips. Do that fifteen years, see how you feel at 50.

Likewise, they'd be picked off due to going to jail for bar fights and other criminal actions, or be on the lam from the law, etc. so the pool of labor tended to shift as guys floated job to job. SF Bay Area, far as I could tell, was arguably one of the best in the entire county for year-round projects, I was on a few (Presidio of San Francisco, Mather AFB, Castle AFB, etc.)

As an aside, I don't believe there are many, if-any, deep core divers over 30. Might want to ask why.