I moved in the other direction. Helped my father run a business that could roughly be classified as "sewer and water installation", among other things.
The term "manual" varies a ton. The work I was doing was extremely physical, requiring long hours (12 hours on a reduced day, six days a week) during the main work season. Friends working in a grocery store had very different working conditions and pay.
The first thing to keep in mind is that it's hard to do a job with a heavy physical component after 50. There's a good chance you'll end up managing other workers, and it's not the same as managing office workers. And finally, as is the case with many of these types of jobs, mine required considerable intellectual effort in addition to the physical effort (solving problems, dealing with regulations, etc.) and I had to deal with customers all the time.
I had a similar background. Grew up doing manual labor on a family farm, then college then active duty military for several years. There's a huge difference between "manual labor indoors normal hours" and "manual labor outdoors all hours all weather". For the first 15 years of my software career I couldn't believe my good fortune; awesome pay, intereting work, smart coworkers, dry and warm! Heaven!
Now at 20+ years in software I'm so fried I can barely push a key a lot of days. My body is wrecked because I haven't kept fitness up. I need to make some changes for sure. Looking at possible hardware start up now.
The term "manual" varies a ton. The work I was doing was extremely physical, requiring long hours (12 hours on a reduced day, six days a week) during the main work season. Friends working in a grocery store had very different working conditions and pay.
The first thing to keep in mind is that it's hard to do a job with a heavy physical component after 50. There's a good chance you'll end up managing other workers, and it's not the same as managing office workers. And finally, as is the case with many of these types of jobs, mine required considerable intellectual effort in addition to the physical effort (solving problems, dealing with regulations, etc.) and I had to deal with customers all the time.