Percentage Pay

Don't take the numbers I throw out there to heart. They are by no means meant to depict what you can or cannot make. I live in another country than you where our dollar is valued different, our oilfield probably pays different and I have absolutely no working knowledge of the American oilfields besides my one driver being American and having worked em all.

Just random numbers for examples sake.

 

With the O/O I just started working for he pulled out his load sheet and let me look at all the possible loads I would be taking and it shows what the truck makes on each load. I get 25% of that so its pretty easy to figure. We have a long run of almost 300 miles that pays me 220.00 a load and we have numerous shorter ones that pay 75 to 110.

If you are working on % and they don't want to show you the numbers I would walk away quickly and let them know exactly why. That is like telling a guy "you are gonna make X dollars per hour" Well what is X? "We can't say but it will be good"......yea right.

 

You won't, but you WILL know if what you are being paid is making the grade for you. In some of these oil fields labor is in demand to the extent that drivers are being paid well above what their job would pay just about anywhere else because they can find another job before the door closes behind them. Companies need drivers just as much as drivers need companies in many locations, more in some. I'm making 25% in the Bakken and it's averaging about double what my pay was in Louisiana.

 

Most of us give the driver our settlement sheet on his loads, most of the owner ops I know pay 21-30% off the gross to the truck. A lot of the owner ops paying 18-21% are not second or third tier. So it ends up being the same amount. Our water truck drivers are first tier at 19% or per truck billed hour. Drivers choice. Crude are all %. tried hourly but the drivers tried to make all their money on wait time by letting other drivers behind them unload first. Good drivers make good money. Seat warmers, not so good. With me, the better the driver, the better truck he gets or picks out. The other % issue is housing. If i provide housing or a truck to live in, I pay a slightly smaller %. its not fair for the out of town guy to get free housing and get one week off a month where my driver that goes home everynight and drives his 6 and 1 gets paid the same.

 

Thats sum it up pretty good. Sandbaggers like hourly, overachievers like % "Good drivers make money"

 

Problem is the screws are being tightened on cowboy trucking and pretty soon the 70 hour superstars doing 100 hours of work are going to find those 30 hours much more difficult to come by. I've been trying different ways to squeeze more time out of 70, there is still some room to be had but it's getting smaller and smaller. My only gripe on % is breakdowns, company trucks that are not properly maintained break down and cost you your day or at least half of it.