I feel the same as you about programming games, but can sort of see it for truckers, because surely some truck drivers picked that job because getting in the "flow" of long-distance driving appealed to them. I presume the trucking games try to appeal to exactly that feeling without, as you say, many of the actual stressors of the job.

So I can imagine it might let them reconnect with that feeling and be a relaxing experience much more easily than a programming puzzle game would let us reconnect with what we love about programming. Being a puzzle game it inherently will involve some frustration, which is the thing I want to escape from after a day of programming.