The country relied on truckers to deliver goods and materials during the height of the pandemic. Now, the federal government wants truckers to show up at Southern California ports in the dead of night to help alleviate the supply chain logjam. If government officials feel strongly that truck drivers are vital to the economy, perhaps it’s time to pay these men and women overtime.
It may sound counterintuitive to people who have not driven a truck for a living, but long hours do not necessarily result in increased wages. In the vast majority of occupations, when someone exceeds the 8-hour workday or 40-hour week, time-and-a-half pay gets triggered by law. Unfortunately for communities with empty store shelves, the federal government went out of its way to deny truckers the right to overtime pay scales.
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the federal government created what is known as the Motor Carrier Exemption. This law empowers now-Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg the authority to establish maximum hours of service and maintain an unfair rule making truckers largely exempt from hourly pay increases after an 8-hour shift or 40-hour workweek.
“Section 13(b)(1) of the FLSA provides an overtime exemption for employees who are within the authority of the Secretary of Transportation to establish qualifications and maximum hours of service pursuant to Section 204 of the Motor Carrier Act of 1935,” the exemption states. “Drivers, driver’s helpers, loaders, or mechanics whose duties affect the safety of operation of motor vehicles in transportation on public highways in interstate or foreign commerce.”
Denying truckers the ability to make overtime pay led to a series of seemingly unorthodox ways of doing business. Long-haul drivers often work on a per-mile basis or flat rate that makes sense when compared to the hours of service regulations. With the exception of pandemic-related relief loads, the hours of service rules stand at 11-14 hours daily and a maximum of 60-70 hours within 7-8 days. The average tractor-trailer operator earned $22.66 per hour in 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. But those 20-30 hours after 40 do not necessarily increase to $33.99. When truckers are tired and aching after completing a traditional 8-hour shift, there is no additional incentive to work late.
By contrast, the FLSA creates opportunities for light delivery drivers to earn as much or more than heavy-duty vehicle operators. Delivery drivers averaged $16.51 per hour in 2020, with light truck drivers’ median pay coming in at $17.81 per hour. Employers typically have to pay these drivers overtime rates. That means they can earn $24.765 and $26.715, respectively, after 8 hours and go home after completing their shifts.
If port authorities and the federal government want goods and products trucked to their final destinations expediently, the first step involves providing tractor-trailer operators fair and equal treatment under the law. Eliminating the overtime exemption will attract more long-haul truckers and motivate CDL holders to work late.
Sources: freightwaves.com, overdriveonline.com
I can appreciate the article but i think it would be put to better use where the general public could read it , instead of places where only Drivers see it .
100 % correct . Should be on the evening news . But they don’t report any real news anymore
Agreed. Besides. With my 34 years driving i am.making less ans less by the semester.
Goods are going up, fuel,tires tolls, are ridiculously going up by the week,but our pay,benefits, respect, and comfortable time.home. arent there.. all.need us before they born,during they life,and after they die. Againg no respect,no pay, no benefits
…and in the meantime, the Brotherhood of Truckers will be quite willing and tickled to death to deal out malicious compliance to an otherwise ungrateful, entitled and contemptuous government and populace.
Screw them. Fair treatment under the laws they created, or suck it up butter cup. They made this problem and took advantage of it for decades. Now they want to cry when it works against them. Poor babies. Poor entitled choosing beggars.
If they think it’s so easy to do this job, let them start filling the driver shortage themselves and come see how things really are for once.
Amen, driver. Amen.
Couldn’t have said it better my self – Hear, hear!
Completely agree . The one thing to look out for is if the Gov moves the job up as critical to the USA , they can import drivers . They already do a side step on this and import sub-standard drivers as ” Driver Trainers ” and they are legal to be here for 6 months . Then they file extensions and other liberal B.S. and end up here for years . They work below wage and live in there trucks .
This crap never makes it to the news , but it should !
Professional drivers are few and far between. The drivers that are capable should pursue the best driving jobs. In other words the phrase “say no to cheap freight” should be reworded to “say no to cheap jobs.” Refuse to work for mega carriers etc. The shortage and moral is for the most part there fault. If drivers refuse to work for less they will have to pay more. Drivers will not agree to any one strategy nor will they stick together. Drivers as a whole can change the system but it takes commitment. Don’t accept cheap jobs. There are good paying jobs out here.
LOL You’ll get regular delay pay and like it, Driver!
If you want overtime, get a local driving job that pays by the hour. Long haul trucking is an unsupervised job…. it pays by the miles to give incentive for productivity.
should join union ,bend over take one for the teamsters
Unions dont want anything to.do with this industry..
That is just the problem there is no incentive you get the same amount at mile 1 as you do at the last mile and it doesn’t compare to the work others get in the industry. What is the incentive if you can stay home work a construction job and make as much or more?
Long haul trucking is far from being unsupervised you are told where and what time to pickup your load and where to fuel and what hwys to use personally I don’t call that unspervised that’s not to mention the cameras in truck and Elsa long haul trucking is one of most supervised jobs they are
Preach
No matter what, it will somehow be made to look like the dastardly truck driver is totally at fault. We’re just too lazy to handle the freight. Never mind that CA laws have ‘just-like-that’ made it illegal to drive trucks CA deems to be too old and too damaging to the almighty environment. Start running these ships to TX or FL and solve this problem.
Government bullshit is all it is. They create the problem, cry when things happen and then break their arms patting themselves on the back for a so called solution. All their regulations have forced out many drivers and mom and pop companies. Elds have forced us to account for every second. I get paid by the mile, that rate doesn’t change. Hos is just another form of government control and suppression.
F#*@# goverment
the problem is and always will be is the driver ,they want to be owner operator and operate their own truck and make their own business decisions and run the truck ,but then they haul cheap and have mechanical issues and so on ,so now u have a driver shortage ,and a bigger demand for drivers ,and noone wants to run or haul cheap freight
Remove the brokers and dispatchers from the equation and pay those stolen percentages to the Owner Operators and that will be incentive enough!
The problem is not long trips. The problem is shippers and receivers taking too long and not valuing the time of the truck drivers. Most truck drivers just want to drive. The time spent WAITING and not getting paid at all is WAY more of a problem than getting paid per mile without overtime. Most drivers aren’t using their full 11 most days anyways.
If ANY law is to be changed it should be one requiring shippers and receivers to pay per hour for unloading/loading. Forcing them to pay for our time would make them real efficient real quick.
The ports in Southern Cal need major efficiency upgrades or they will be slowly taken out of the loop. They better start looking at the way the rest of the world operates and head that way.
And even when we are presented with the cold hard facts the Trucking Comunity still satanize Unións…they dont allow to go their Drivers without pay…You cant say anything you want regurgitering all Fox news says about Unións….but the fact is we go without extra pay and Unión Workers cash their good checks day in and day out….
Agreed
All of these driver pay problems will be over soon enough. Computers won’t cry about there pay. Paying people $50,000 or $100,000 a year to hold a steering wheel for 11 hours a day can’t last. Technology makes work / labor less and less needed.
Tell me the difference between the government and big carriers. Companies will tell you if you get two log violations, you’re fired. But can you please get this 1000 mile load there by tomorrow? And the government says, you’re a bunch of wreck less, irresponsible kids so we need to regulate how and when you work for SAFETY! But can you delivery this load of toilet paper because people need to wipe their ass? Oh don’t worry about hos! It really is crazy how much crap truck drivers take in this industry. Smh
Curt Morehouse – you said EXACTLY what’s in my head (but in a much clearer and more concise way). Thank you.
Perfect example – I deliver to a warehouse of a major retailer whose computer system goes down every Wednesday for 30 minutes. We truck drivers just sit there and wait for the system to come back up (can’t receive or ship without the computer, can we?).
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that if THEIR employees were idled for 30 seconds (let alone 30 minutes), management would be all over that to get it fixed. Not so for truckers as their time is free…
If you research the history of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), you will find that during the Great Depression (when the FLSA was first enacted) truck drivers wanted to be exempted from the FLSA because they did not want to be tied to the new minimum wage rules. It seems that back then driving a truck was a good job that paid well, and above the newly proposed minimum wage. As much as we blame the government for all of our troubles, this problem seems to be self inflicted. Get in touch with your representatives and ask why you are still exempt from overtime almost 100 years later. My guess is the major carriers don’t want the rules changed.
Add to the double pay standard the fact that most ruck drivers don’t get paid for all the work we do. How many OTR drivers get paid to pre-trip, post-trip, scale/adjust a load, fuel, sit at a dock waiting to load/unload, or any of the myriad tasks we perform on an almost daily basis? Pay us for everything we do! Office workers get paid to put paper in a printer. Why shouldn’t we get paid to fuel?
The trucking industry is stratified. Some make good money,, most don’t. You can make a great income and not kill yourself, or you can be a wage slave, or you can bust your ass for leftover peanuts as an owner operator.(worse, a lesee) paying $2000/month or more for a new truck to “look good”, or they could actually afford and enjoy any down time for repairs on an older truck they own outright, and turn an easy $100,000+ per year, and still take 2 weeks off a year, and pay only reasonable taxes. IT’S A BUSINESS people, not a job. AMHIK.
I was an owner op up until Nov. 2020. After the elections I saw the writing on the wall and got rid of my truck and took a company job. Although my gross earnings have dropped dramatically, my net take home has actually gone up, BUT… I was very selective of who I agreed to work for. They pay me $.75 CPM. I get $20.00 per hour detention pay, layover pay, and if I have to tailgate or in any way handle freight, I get a minimum of $100.00. It’s not difficult at all to bring home $2000 per week. I said all of this to say, if drivers refuse to work for companies that won’t pay a fair mileage rate and accessory pay, the wage problem will fix itself. Over my career I’ve found the best companies to work for are 100-500 truck fleets.