Truss manufacturers will usually provide structural drawings for your house using their trusses, if you talk to the lumberyard that sells them. You bring floorplans, and they'll design the trusses to support it.
The hard truth about the trades is you need to start young, while you're body is able to take the punishment, so you have time to learn the skills to take a less punishing senior/ownership role by the time your back/legs/arms start to give out. This isn't insurmountable, but it needs to be planned for.
Look for jobs where your background gives you more of a leg up, and are done indoors, with a stronger emphasis on health and safety.
Things like:
Industrial Electrical
Automation Technician
Machine Operator
Millwright
Avoid jobs done for small crews with a more cowboy attitude, like most residential trades.
In the grocery retail business, the trade press is free if you work for a retailer, and very expensive as a wholesaler. The subscription also comes with listing in a registry, moving the expense to the marketing budget.
As a buyer in much smaller part of the supply chain, my experience is that no-one who uses the supply chain wants a simpler supply chain, they want to meet their business goals. If you use software to simplify your supply chain, you'll use that to do more complex things with the supply chain until the gains are erased.
The USDA Agricultural marketing service has an incredible amount of frequently updated data and reports about the movement and price of agricultural commodities through the supply chain.
So, I'm a produce buyer for a grocery store in the Northeastern USA.
The vast majority of fresh figs in the USA supply chain are Black Mission. They're also the best, at least by the time they get here. Brown Turkey are also available, but rarely carried at grocery stores. Kadotas and Adriatics are also available, but much less common.
I'm a produce buyer for a small grocery in Maine. We focus on local vegetables, but also buy produce from the national supply chain.
We work with a broker at the Chelsea produce market in Chelsea, MA. Twice a week, I email him an order for the produce we need from the national market, specifying details about each product (size, grower, production region). He uses his knowledge and relationships to buy the best product he can, from the large wholesalers there. The market has around 240 dock bays, and is open from 2 am to noon. We send a truck down to arrive at 8 am, and pickup the produce from the wholesalers where our broker ordered.
The overall produce market is structured into growers, that grow and harvest the crops. Packers, that purchase crops from the growers, wash, cool and pack them, and shippers, that purchase from packers. The wholesalers in Boston purchase from shippers, and sell to regional retail and wholesale customers. Many companies are vertically integrated, and own multiple links in this chain. Larger groceries and supermarkets either negotiate directly with the packers, or the wholesalers at the Chelsea market. A large store can commit to buying on a large enough scale to drive their retail price below what I can pay wholesale during the peak season for a commodity.
I also have a json api: