Differences Between Layover and Detention

Off topic, but drop pay is a goldmine ask about it when applying at different company's. Per deim another gold mine. Drop pay is when the company pays you "X" amount for every additional pickup or drop. What makes it a goldmine is most are close together so you log very little on duty or drive time.

Here is how it works: A pretty typical week for me: I get a load with say 6 pickups and 6 drops all pickups are close together (exagerated, usually its a few loads but do average around 10 to 15 extra paid drops per week), all drops are close together on each trip (extremely picky load planners), with most drop pay you just made a huge amount of money and burned little of your extremely valuable 70 hrs or drive time. So you get most of your drive time. I run 3200 miles for the week (drive one bad ace unrestricted truck I can easily do that 100% legally), that would gross me $1120 on miles alone. I get an extra hundred bucks on one of the trips for detention (sitting on my butt playing video games in my sleeper while a lazy shipper/receiver takes there sweet time to load/unload me) so now my hypethetical gross is up to $1220.00. 10 paid drops at $35.00 a pop brings your gross to $1570.00. This is a pretty average week for me, I occasionally get harder weeks more pay and slower weeks less pay, but this been average so far. Pretty sweet, per-deim pay is where it gets even sweeter!

Per-deim: I make .35 cents per mile (CPM) The way the company I work for does it on paper is, I work for .25CPM then I get .10 CPM perdeim. They do it in a weird way though. Per deim is money that you get paid that doesnt get taxed. So I only get taxed on 3200 miles times .25 which equals 800 bucks the rest is handed to me tax free. The tweeked way they do it, probably percentage i totally dont understand it, is they also take a certain amount of the extra pay like drop detention pay ets. and a small amount of that is thrown int he per deim pool as well. So uncle sam Takes an enormously smaller bit out of my ace. Its like getting free money, love it.

The reason I blurted this out is there is lots of different things to look for and ask when applying or just looking at or researching different trucking companys. Some of the smallest things like drop pay, per deim, detention ets. Even faster trucks make a massive, and I do mean massive difference on the pay you make and actually get to keep before/after uncle sam sticks his greedy paws into your hard earned money.

 

im gonna say it depends on who you work for, I've only had 3 layovers and a quick phone call to dispach for the PO# for my Trip envolope was all it took. I've heard lots of problems with the biggers companies not wanting to pay.....




American Trucker

 

I agree with the drop pay, here at W/S we get $20-$25/per stop and with 5-25 stops per load and 1000-2500 miles makes for a GREAT paycheck.


As for the per diem, from my understanding your screwing yourself by takeing the per diem pay. You cannot claim your Per diem on your taxes and get a big 'ol refund for being on the road since you wanted to take home a few extra buck per check......Your better off taking straight pay.

If it didnt benifit the companys just like leases companies wouldnt waste their time with it






American Trucker

 

Your wrong on the per deim bud. The IRS gives per deim to anybody who works away from home. Its a huge tax break to make up for the extremely high cost of living away from home. I worked construction for little over decade, everytime i went on road both the two different employeers I worked for paid it. Its just an amount of money taken from the top of your wage you dont get taxed on, ever. You still get the big bonus at the end of the year it just shows up as if you made less than you actually did, becouse the per deim is non taxable income. It is a lot more work for the accountants to do so I can see a lot of companys not offering this bonus to there employees, but if it is there take it.

25 drops per load? Son of a #####! I thought I worked hard! Are you local? How many trips do you do a week? I log close to 70hrs per week but work probley double that, sometimes more I am sure why i almost never type in forum, or play online video games or really anything anymore (paper logs works very well with mutiple drops). What do you take in per week just rough idea example: between $10.00 and $15.00 per week. if you dont mind?

Watkins sheapord is small enough I think they run paper logs right?

25 stops that reduces you to a 58 hr clock. If you company doesnt pay extra till the second or third pickup or drop that 58 hours get slashed even farther. Even with a solid truck you would be hard pressed to get more than 2500 miles per week, your pay would be pretty close to equivallent to what I make, but you would be doing twice the work. If Watkins is on E logs, pretty sure they run paper but if they do run Elogs than you would be able to run under 2k miles per week. I know there trucks are restricted to 60-65 MPH??? I know they are restricted, I pass them all time going way under posted limits. One trip under 2k miles per week about 200 hours of driving, docking, weighting, paperwork, counting, stacking freight per week?? Not possible. If it was possible, you would be a freeking dingbat to do it.

 

ya i understand the per diem thing, and YOU have it wrong, if you take it in your check like you do, you cant claim it again at tax time....so you LOSE money, your company SAVES money.


Up to 25 stops per load, i've never had more then that, they can be anywhere between 2 and 25 stops. Our LTL loads average 15 stops.

I'm OTR not local. Amount of loads depends on how long the loads are and how many stops lol

When i'm doing trailer load freight i get between 3000 and 4000 miles a week

When I'm doing LTL loads, i'll get between 2400-3200 miles a week

Like this past week i did 3,347 Miles, one 1700 miles 9 stop load, a 642 miles trailer load, and a 641 miles trailer load = $1,133.90 Gross for the week.

We get paid for every stop in including the first. so 25 stops at $20= $500 just in stop pay!

Yep we run paper logs, trucks are 65mph.

Often times on the bigger ltl runs we have at least a few stops within the same city as another stop so you just log line 4 you dont have to go to line 3 between stops.

my paychecks average $850 Take Home, they can be $700-$1100 a week take home.






American Trucker

 

one other thing on per diem I just learned. Since you are not claiming that income it does not count for credit purposes. So if I'm trying to buy a new pickup I may not get financed if my income looks like it's less than it really is.

 

You are right on that of course, but there is a trade off as well. Thats a double edged sword. The less you make the lower tax bracket you are in, so with per diem not only do you get a fair some of your hard earned money completely tax free forever, you also have the ability to stay in a lower tax bracket becouse you make less money. The lower the tax bracket you are in the smaller the percentage of your extremely hard earned cash uncle sam takes. The higher the tax bracket you are in (the more money you make) the higher the percentage of claimed income that the irs steals from you.

As far as looking like you make less effecting a vehicle purchase. I honestly dont know anything about that. I do know that the "buy here pay here" dealerships go almost exclusively off that, I would think respected banks or loaning companys would put a greater emphasis on credit score. I would aso think that even though on your tax forms it shows you making a lot less money than you really did, your pay stubs or online statement will give immediate proof of how much you really made each month, once again assuming that having almost instant proof online or if your company doesnt email or otherwise post it online that your paper pay stubs would also renege on that lower income than you really made concept.

You do have proof of how much you really made, everything will show that you did make the full amount, but that a certain percentage of what you made is exempt from taxes.

 

We never have a layover issue. I always have a backhaul on QC before I get to my destination. As far as detention, we have detention forms that we fill out once it is over 2 hours. As long as the receiver signs off on the time you arrived and were finished it is not an issue being paid. In my short time with the company (3 weeks), it has only happened once.