Percentage Pay Info / Waste Refuse Hauling

Discussion in 'Storage Trailer' started by PortlandDriver, Mar 23, 2006.

  1. PortlandDriver

    PortlandDriver RIP, May You Be Heaventown Bound!

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    OK here is the deal...

    I have talking with a company the last couple weeks that are bulk haulers, mainly hauling ag products such as fertilizer and grain. The numbers have checked out and have a low turn over along with a small fleet of 18 trucks. They have good benifit package with medical, dental and a 401k.

    The question I have is who has worked on a percentage basis? This company starts it's drivers out at 25% of the gross and I will be driving company equipement...

    I have heard nothing negative from companies that pay by the percentage of the load as long as you have an honest company...
     
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  3. Anonymous

    Anonymous Forum Retiree

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    i have worked for a "percentage" salary, but it was strickly loaded only, not empty, or bob-tailing, or deadheading. just be sure that you are "covered" when your empty, cuz 25% of nothing, still equals nothing.....
     
  4. Burky

    Burky Road Train Member

    I have worked for percentage for the last three years, hauling bulk pneumatic trailers. The key to working on percentage is the quality of the dispatcher you are working with and their ability to keep the truck loaded. When the truck is loaded, you make money, when the truck is empty, you are driving for free. In general, I average about 67-68% loaded time with pneumatics hauling food grade loads. Our system is big enough to have loads in a lot of areas, so often I unload in one place and may only run 20-30 miles before I am under my next load. For example, a few weeks ago I had a wonderful week, ran 2600 miles total and kept a load on the truck for over 2200 of those miles. That paid 1880 for the week, meaning that I ran at 72 cpm for all miles and 85 cpm for my loaded miles.

    Since I have been doing this, I have consistently made 52-53 cpm for all miles on the odometer at the end of the year. If I drive home, or out of my way a bit, it still counts into the finished mileage, so the actual pay per mile for official dispatched miles is a little bit better than that.

    The keys are keeping the truck loaded , and you can't haul cheap freight. Ag products tend to pay on the low side, so keep an eye on that part of the game. Farmers simply can't pay for bulk loads at the same freight rates that others in the food processing industry do. I hauled feeds, grains, and fertilizers with dumps and hoppers for our local co-op before doing this, and the prices paid on feedstocks are lower than paid for finished ingredients. A simple truckload of corn going to a hog farm has a lower rate than that same load of corn after it has been processed into human edible corn flour or meal.

    On the good side, once you get used to working on percentage, you get out of the miles mindset, and worry more about being productive instead of just racking up miles. And percentage drivers often can tell the boss they aren't getting enough for a certain job. if they aren't making enough, then neither is the boss. And, if the boss picks up extra work, and charges emergency prices, you get a share in that. We get called for a lot of emergency stuff, charge well for it, and instead of just getting more miles at the same rate, I get a share.

    In short, I have a few rules I follow to do well, and the number one among the 3 and a half rules is never to work for mileage pay. Some folks don't like percentage, but if you give it a try you will probably like it. My 02.
     
  5. PortlandDriver

    PortlandDriver RIP, May You Be Heaventown Bound!

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    I have good and bad about driving by the percentage, like what you said it depends on the dispacher.
    Part of the reason that I came off the road was that I was tired of running miles instead of working for a living...
    The company I have been looking at is a bulk carrier with a combination of belly dumps and live floors, I know it pays good with the right company..
     
  6. Burky

    Burky Road Train Member

    Running belly dumps and walking floors greatly increases your chances of keeping the truck loaded and moving. Both types unload fairly quickly, and can be reloaded with other products. Agricultural products aren't nearly as sensitive to differing proiducts being mixed as my area is. As long as you do a decent job of cleanout, and don't have any large amounts of previous product remaining, you can reload and get your backhaul in. Actually, if your dispatcher is good, you don't do backhauls, but do full loads in both directions.

    One of the reasons I run the empty miles I do is that we can't intermingle products. So if a trailer is hauling corn starch, it has to stay in that product unless it gets washed out and readied for another product. So many times I will run empty to an area where I can reload the trailer with a compatible product. If I could just dump in a load of anything, my empty mileage would go down considerably. But we factor that into our rates, so I get good money on the haul and usually make up for my empty miles.

    I did have one trip out to Yonkers NY this year, couldn't get a haul out of there. headed to Buffalo Ny, had a deal to haul a load a day from there to Dover De that paid about 300+ a day, and was about 2 weeks worth of work. But it got cancelled (I think the local terminal kept it for their own guys) and I ended up picking up in Toledo. Net mileage empty was 710 miles, and it paid nothing. But those things happen once in a while, and you just smile and go on. a return load would have been nice, but it doesn't always happen. Got to see some nice country, went down the hill into Scranton Pa without carrying 30,000 pounds of bananas.....
     
  7. PortlandDriver

    PortlandDriver RIP, May You Be Heaventown Bound!

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    You haul food grade products?
    That can be a hassle with the wrong person in the office..
     
  8. Burky

    Burky Road Train Member

    It's pretty involved hauling food grade, because a mistake is very costly. We figure that any contamination, stopped at the lowest level possible is going to be 100,000 of expense to clean up and get things back to square. So we have some safeguards that prevent it from happening, and for the most part they work. We require a receiver to come out and personally oversee us hooking up our hoses, our trailers are washed internally at least every 10 days, we never mix different products or trailers, and lots of other precautions. I always keep in mind that the food I haul today is what I am going to buy for dinner tomorrow, and they are very few meals I eat where some part of the product didn't flow through one of our trailers.

    I'm also trained in hauling plastics, which is every bit as specific as food items are. The plastic pellets can be very temp sensitive, and mixing the wrong items in can destroy an entire run of products at the plant end. Going to the wrong address, or unloading into the wrong system means that GM doesn't get the dashboards they need for the next day's production, and they take great offense to that happening.

    But, doing that means that we are paid better and that's one of the main reasons why I do it. I made almost 62,000 last year, spent over 225 nights sleeping in my own bed, and drove 120k miles. The longest I have ever been out in a truck is 6 nights, and last year the most was 4 nights in a row. Handling hoses and monitoring gauges meets my neeed to be out of the truck and doing something instead of sitting in the break room, so form me this is an ideal form of trucking. Everyone has specific needs, and half the battle is figuring out what you need and then matching up with that. I tend to run less miles than average, make more money than average, sleep home more than the average, and enjoy what I do. And in my eyes, that makes me a winner.
     
  9. PortlandDriver

    PortlandDriver RIP, May You Be Heaventown Bound!

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    I agree on the last part, if you are not happy in what you are doing then find something else to do because you are not doing anybody any good including your self...
     
  10. Anonymous

    Anonymous Forum Retiree

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    hey "Burky", i'll pose this question to you then. very often in my local newspaper there will be an ad or two regarding "walking floor" trailers, but i know for a fact that this job is for hauling garbage to either the local landfill, transfer station, or down to new jersey/delaware areas. on the average, what would you (or anybody for that matter) say how well garbage hauling pays??

    garbage will never go away, it just gets "moved around" before its final "resting place". i often thought about applying for the job, but just never did so.

    it might be (at least in my area) worthwhile for an up and coming O/O to haul garbage, if he can stand the smell at the landfills.
     
  11. PortlandDriver

    PortlandDriver RIP, May You Be Heaventown Bound!

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    Don't know the exact numbers but can imagine they pay by the ton. The work may not pay the best but it would be consistant.

    There was a company here in Oregon that won a bid to haul garbage from Portland to eastern Oregon. They started out with five trucks and after 10 years they ended up with a fleet of over 50 and from the word on the street the equipement was paid for...
     
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