Many jobs that were traditionally performed by the military – truck driving, security, laundry and food services – have been farmed out to private contractors. The idea is if these military jobs are “outsourced” to contractors, then U.S. soldiers are freed up for armed conflict.

These positions in Iraq, such as truck drivers, certainly pay more than the average salary in the U.S. for the same job. According to our PayScale salary survey, the average salary for a truck driver in Illinois is $43,000.

If that same trucker works for a private contractor in Iraq , he will be pulling down in the six figure salary range. According to news reports, truckers have a starting salary of $100,000; but are the dangers worth it?

Wearing only a flak jacket, truck drivers face ambushes, machine gun fire and the deadly IEDs that line the road. Many truckers have complained that KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, does not adequately fit its trucks with armor, adding more risk to this high salary range position.

What if you or a family is killed, while on the job in Iraq ? Do you have legal or financial redress? Probably not. A lawsuit against Halliburton brought by survivors of contractors killed when a fuel convoy was attacked near Baghdad in April 2004 was thrown out.

In the ruling, U.S. District Judge Gray H. Miller said the U.S. military played a major role in sending the convoy and that it was not the courts’ place to second-guess the Army’s decision. “The contracts show that the Army, not the defendants, was responsible for the security of the convoys,” Judge Miller wrote.

However, some convoys are not guarded by the U.S. military, but rather by private contractors such as Blackwater, a security firm started by a former U.S. Navy SEALs, located in a 6,000 acre site in rural North Carolina .

How do private security guards fare in average salary vs. US military enlisted? It pays far better to work for a private company than Uncle Sam.

An enlisted U.S. serviceman makes almost 30K , while a private security officer could easily make in six figure salary range. Chris Boyd of Kroll-Crucible Security says, “It pays quite well. There’s a lot of contracts that pay anywhere from $350 a day to $1,500 a day.”

Of course, the risks are extremely high, who can forget the grisly killings of four U.S. Blackwater security contractors in Fallujah?

No one knows the exact risk because private contracting companies do not release numbers of employees killed, nor does the Pentagon.

In fact, CNN reported that “the Pentagon is urging contracting companies not to speak to the media about the dangers in Iraq , claiming that it makes things more dangerous for their workers who are willing to take the risk.”

But some news reports say that deaths among contractors are actually higher than U.S. military forces.

Another downside is that there is no overtime pay in Iraq for private contractors.

In a class action lawsuit against Halliburton for overtime, workers claimed they were working more than 100 hours a week and not receiving overtime wages, even though a Pentagon contract called for overtime wages to be paid in Iraq .

However, U.S. District Court Judge Melinda Harmon ruled that Halliburton does not have to pay millions in overtime wages because U.S. laws governing military contracts allow only workers employed inside the United States to be eligible for overtime wages.