Before I was a programmer I was an industrial electrician and had worked on sites, after I was a programmer we where down on a site installing some equipment and a plumber walked past and said “your the guys who came 200 miles to turn on a switch right?” And I instantly replied “nah, we just heard there was a scouser doing some work so we had to come look!” the techie I was with looked like he was gonna shit himself but the other guys around fell about laughing.
The thing with work sites is you can’t take any shit but you won’t find funnier people either.
(It was also the most meritocratic job I've ever had- your ability, or lack thereof, was on display for everyone to see. And working on teams where everyone is competent is a joy, virtually regardless of actual task.)
Some of the successful ones that own their own businesses are able to make a lot of money (a consistent >500k/year). The downsides are that those businesses are difficult to scale since they are service oriented, and they depend on good physical health. Moreover, consistent quality is mostly the responsibility of the owners, and again, that can't always scale far either. You also get out what you put in, in most cases it seems like the pay is a linear function of productivity. It's definitely not easy or normal to make that much, but it's doable as a tradesman