I respect them too. Here in the UK I always try to say good morning and thanks to our bin collectors.
Do you know how many hours do they do? Is it the fact that when their route is complete they are finished for the day? Because then there is a pretty good incentive to work hard and fast.
We (stannp.com) created an app for the shopify marketplace some time ago which helped shops send letters and postcards to their customers. The app would sync recipients with our platform or trigger mail to be posted. The shopify rep said we had to implement their billing API on across our whole platform so they get a 30% (i'm sure it was 30% back then) cut on all transactions. It drove me crazy because I saw mailchip in the marketplace and I'm pretty sure they didn't implement the shopify billing API and give 30% for their subscriptions.