[wahern]

Have you ever done roofing? There are few occupations which will destroy your back faster than roofing. Everybody in construction knows you always outsource roofing if you can; better to feel sorry for the poor folks (usually literally quite poor) stuck doing that work than to be the one people feel sorry for.

Road construction might be worse, though.

Note well: No roofer or road construction worker would tell someone to skip college. If college is in the cards, just go to college and get it over with. Even if you never use your degree, it would still be the right decision, so long as you didn't take on a ton of debt going to a private school. (If the thought of slogging through college is off-putting, know that a lifetime of manual labor will be even worse. School is work, and if you can't make yourself suffer through that, you are very likely going to be even more disappointed with the choices manual or unskilled labor throw your way.)