Plan 1 or plan 2??

IF this is Salary, it should stand REGARDLESS of Miles run. As a trainer who was introduced to Salary each week which equaled about 6000 gross or a little more each month, regardless of 20 miles run or 20000 miles run (*Hyperbole) each week.

There is a catch in that pile, Salary IF you get 10500 miles a month. That's BS.

Salary means just that you are paid that each week/Month etc regardless of your actual activity with or without that company truck (Home time etc)

The CPM side is a gimmie. Trucking is feast and famine.

Any good company willing to pay salary will be content to do so because it is literally a FIXED COST each week. And there is no more whining or pushback from a more professional workforce knowing that regardless of common problems around the USA with outside parties, the salary covers it all.

I would be mighty suspicious of gaurantees, gotchas, mile limits and so on attached to the word salary.

What I want to hear is simply this.

"Hire on with Company such and such, receive a flat salary of 4725 a month. Regardless of workload or problems that cost time such as legally waiting to be loaded or... unloading a trailer yourself etc if at all possible."

If you are home for a few days that week your paycheck salary MUST stand at equal to 4725 a month.

I used to work for Darden (MBM) via FFE as a Salaried driver. Regardless of my production, delivering to red lobster each week, I received about 900 net pay And that turned out to be a weekend situation working three days delivering to 4 restaurants in about 30 hours flat. VERY physical VERY intense and generally had the middle week off and it worked out very well as a pattern for myself and Darden in Aberdeen Md at that time period.

If I delivered to more during the week burning up my hours? I might have been paid more probably. But it was not my regular assigned route and my salary stood, even when I was home between weekends. Could I have made more? Absolutely. Could Darden assign more resturants? Certainly. But they realized that for the exact work being done the salary was adequate to pay on their end and adequate to me on my end. And the middle of the week was very useful in resting and gaining strength plus decompression ready for another tour into Jersey and Connecticut.

That was my very first salary as a trucker. I loved it. I didnt care if I delivered to 4 or 40 resturants but as far as what was done where I fit in with the 4 assigned ones its a win win all around.

Any time a company advertises a salary but you have to run 10500 miles to get it... that is not a salary. Im sorry to tell you that. It's not.

What do you think I will feel if I ran 9800 miles and got bupkis nothing for the month? I would be gone. Again trucking OTR is feast and famine. Offer a salary without strings, gotches, limitations or certain goals to reach before payout. Just sign the check once a month and pay me. No one should care if I ran 20 miles or 20000 miles that month. What everyone should understand is that kind of salary pay will attract the best in the industry who will stay by your company in thick and thin.

YOU WILL have some who choose mileage. But understand this. In 2001 they paid me very close to .50 a mile. That was considered very top pay. They paid wife .24 to start and .32 at the end of her first year. Total about .75 to the team truck.

After 221000 miles run both of us realized a actual income of about 0.29 to the truck for a gross of 67K roughly.

HA. It would be far far far better to consider a flat 4725 salary to the wife and another 4725 salary to me in that team truck. Monthly. We generate a annual fuel bill of about 85000 roughly in 2001 and revenues approaching half a million if the Cass Transportation Mileage Pay Index per Mode type and percentage for different regions of the USA was averaged for 2001. Mileage pay wont matter and everyone from Social Security through the Unemployment and Labor Depts will understand oh.. we are earning a 4725 salary per driver per month as a husband wife team. None of this obsolete mileage pay which is very difficult to explain to anyone who has need of that information taxes etc and usually feast and famine.

Am I being demanding? No. If you offer a salary, make it just that. No strings. Flat one month paycheck signed and put into direct deposit regardless of how many miles, days or work or home etc. On my side of the truck I would expect your company to come up with a reasonably decent and good revenue freight that would support this nice payroll. You are already probably paying salary to your entire Office Staff. It's time to pay the drivers one fixed cost.

But.... One last thought.

What you COULD do is draw up a set of situations where a Driver who is misbehaving, service failure or some really serious preventable or caught with drugs or drinking or whatever can stand to lose that week's portion of his or her salary. You deduct 25% of the 4725 and let the rest stand. That should be a pretty good deterrent against crazy drivers intent on causing you no end of trouble. If they end up doing this three times you would fire them. You will also find there is 50 more ready to take his or her place.

This industry needs to go to Salary. Without any kind of conditions. EXCEPT my idea that a non performing driver who commits a Service failure causing a situation where the company stands to lose the entire account will lose a weeks pay. Obviously the entire trip will be investigated as to why that driver was late.

The reason I say this is because one of our jobs as Husband wife team was to go after and collect solo or trainer loads that were LATE in our FFE system. One trainer and trainee wasted 15 hours in the Sky City Casino in NM with a west phoenix to Chicago load. They were both fired. Whatever got into them to be that late with such a hot cut flower load is beyond me. That load was in chicago and delivered midnight that very day. The account was saved. No thanks to the lazy trainer and trainee who think ok let's gamble.

 

Salary is nice, but they will get 14 out of you anyway they can, at any time that's legal, as long as you have had 10 off.

 

Not if your a "runner". If your a "runner" you won't have time to take advantage of that because you will be "running" to make the previous wage they boasted about. You won't be able to have the cake and eat it too. Realistically, it's one or the other.

 

That is something I wanted to touch upon. too.

4725 dollars a month, 70 legal hours worked each week total 280 hours each month on the dot. period. end. equals.... drumroll please. $16.85 a hour.

There should be absolutely NO pressure to go out of hours, to breach the ELD and so on. If a driver found a lawful spot and is safe after say a 8 hour day that's good. Just need to monitor the trip planning and be prepare to make new appts so as to never be late.

Im pretty sure there are hourly wages approaching 30 in the blue collar trades and there is no reason not to pay good drivers and workers that kind of money. You will pretty much eliminate a great deal of wasted whining, pushback, BS, wasted motion and tension. Imagine a actually HAPPY trucking company.

Is that a turkey in the straw? HA... lets find out.

 

My thought is a company will always try to figure out how to pay you less. Always.

Smoke and mirrors on new plans. You have to dig deep to find the gold.

The good thing about this site is the grizzled vets and their seemingly negative assessment of the industry honestly have a perspective that younger guys should heed.

 

DM Bowman took trouble and time to sit all of us down in class and taught us about money losses.

If we only did 100 miles today and made around 200 dollars for one load on the flatbed, we have wasted a oppertunity to run three or four loads on a actually FULL and complete workday per logs.

Even in Bulk tanking earning 400 dollars a day is possible, and more than 1000 a week in gasoline flat.

This was late 80's money. DM Bowman paid me about 3500 a month, of which 2000 net was routine for me. That's based on a very early morning delivery to fishertown near Altoona in any winter weather daily and then a reload of railroad axles or whatever from the horseshoe southwards.

If I got into say 4 flatbed loads A DAY which is quite possible and done, my wages rose accordingly. Bu it would make for a very powerful 14 to 16 hour days. I actually transferred to the sleeper van division and disposed of the lost time commuting home daily. The sleeper van work regionally in the south paid me 10 a hour to sleep at a customer dock times 10 hours at times. To sleep on the clock while waiting was a very nice perk. It really took away the stress about getting loaded and rolling.

When you get into certain freighting like McKesson Medicines in Memphis with million dollar loads due in Detroit by 7 am next morning every day without fail, the money and salary WILL take care of itself. You just pace yourself and roll. Steady eddie and all that to borrow a canadian term.

However. With burger flippers agitating for 15 dollars a hour wage I look at that 16.85 hour salary of 4725 in a different light becuase under Federal Log HOS, we work 70 hours a week. They don't And we probably (Who is this we? Speak for myself...) spend about another 30 hours a week on top of that thinking about something related to trucking. Is that strap holding in this storm? Hows the tarps? Did the kids get into the reefer doors again? What's the temperature. How long am I going to be unloading this van?

Remember in trucking hours spent unloading is no limit. You can drive all week, burn up 68 hours to reach the customer and then spend the next 5 days and 4 nights unloading the whole thing WITHOUT ANY LIMITS

PROVIDED you got 10 hours rest before you drive that thing a inch.

Our Reglations at the FMCSA is very flawed in some areas and they need fixing. I remind you of the 1938 decision to eliminate over time in the trucking industry because the Government expects this industry above ALL OTHER INDUSTRY IN THE USA at that time to EXCEED WORKING HOURS each week almost TWICE what everyone else does.

To me that's a sweatshop you cannot leave.

That 4725 salary will be bought and paid for in blood, sweat, tears and some joy now and then by really hard working people putting in 70 hours weekly. Your office staff is already eyeballing that clock 2 hours before clocking out quitting time. Prodcution inside that place falls off on a friday while everyone is already getting ready for the weekend and so on. Truckers do not have that luxury. They have to roll for a monday am delivery across the USA.

Pay them.

 

Is that a typo? 10,500 miles or 1500 miles per week.

1500-2000 miles a week is the easy part. you should NET 1,275 for that. But the "runners" do 3200-3400 a week for maybe 14-16000 a week as new drivers. That's alot of extra work for just a little bit of extra pay. Like running around like a chicken with your head cut off consistently and forget home-time for a month and a half.

 

I don't think a guaranteed salary every week will work for most trucking companies for one reason, people are lazy, there is no reason to work more or go that extra mile if your pay won't change just my opinion.

 

Performance based pay, CPM, component pay, load pay, whatever you want to call it puts EVERYTHING on the driver. Yet everything that pretty much controls your pay as a driver is completely out of your control.

CPM made at least a little sense when the US had 180 million people, now it has 350 million people and the exact same road system. traffic, road construction, breakdowns, check points. You name it. You simply can't get anywhere anymore. Plus you're at the mercy of the run. Oh, here's 150 mile run for 2 days.

component pay? why should your pay go down because a restaurant ordered only 100 cases instead of their usual 150?

Load pay? totally at the mercy of shippers and receivers. YOu sit for hours for FREE.

truck breakdown? no pay. traffic, no pay/ crappy warehouse? no pay.

NO other profession gets paid like this unless they are small business. Most of us are company drivers. We're employees, we should get paid like employees.

let's switch up the office staff to cents per letter or pennies per meeting or cents per claim. You name it. That #### wouldn't stand. (although it would lead to a large head count cutting which would be good) and let's stop taking it out of our 60 or 70 hour workweek. Most people work 40 to 50. Most truckers hit 40 hours by Wednesday and certainly thursday.

Non hourly/salary pay is simply a way for management to avoid doing their jobs. If you have under performers, coach them and then cut them if they don't improve.

But getting paid pennies while everything is out of your control is ridiculous and has to end. I'm at work, I expect to get paid.