Feds & DOT say's $16.+hr. -$25.+hr.

yeh, but how many miles do you get each week?

I notice you also have 30 years experience. companies pay more to go to canada or to pull hazmat. but the average driver will never see anything close to that kind of pay. mileage pay has dropped significantly in the few years since I started driving. and it had already been dropping decades before that. and it hasn't bottomed out yet.

 

I have only been driving two and half years and I have only had local jobs and nothing under 18 hr, and I just got another local job which I get 19 hr to start then a dollar raise after three months then reviews every three months after.

 

I just ran my numbers for the past 4 months since leasing to a well respected LTL freight company. Skipping the boring details, I figure I made about 6 bucks an hour straight time for 80 plus hours per week. If I made $16 I'd do backflips and cartwheels! Then I'd go to the hospital... hehehe

 

Mid .50's per mile is the norm for LTL line-haul at top scale. Takes anywhere from 2 to 5 years to reach depending on where you work. .555 here but we're still down 2.5% so we actually make .541 per mile. At the end of their contract in 2012 or 2013, UPS Freight line-haul drivers will be at either .63 or .66 - I forget which but that is a $120,000 per year gig.

Miles vary depending on the run you bid and have enough seniority to hold. I run a 420 mile run each night with an additional 3-5 hours on the clock at a good hourly rate. FedEx Freight has some long meet and turns that would easily have a driver over 3,000 miles per week. I could hold a longer run but once you've been doing this a while you look at what number you are on that run, if you like the ride, and at Con-way you want to know about the dock time at a hub before you bid it.

$75,000 to $100,000 is the norm for line-haul drivers at FedEx Freight, Con-way Freight (east/central), and UPS Freight. I'm with Paddington - if it's not over .50 I wouldn't consider the job.

 

do you ever go home or have a day off????

 

I'm home daily - I run night line-haul and generally work from about 7:30 PM till 7:30 AM Monday night through Saturday morning give or take an hour on either side. What I do is no different than working a factory job on a 2'nd/3'rd shift except I'm driving a truck and being compensated for all line 4 work like drop/hook and fuel down to the minute. It's terminal to terminal. I run from my home terminal to my destination and back every night. I have enough seniority to hold the same run every night under normal conditions.

I'm off on Saturday and Sunday but my sleep schedule is kinda screwed up - it the price you pay to make the money. I'm off tonight since Con-way Freight shut down night line-haul the Mid-Atlantic due to the snow as they did Friday.

FedEx Freight is very similar and they are home daily as well in the East region. Many Teamster carriers still use lay down runs so they might not be home daily but they're still home most nights. Both Con-way and FedEx still use lay down runs out west, but the mileage on those runs is huge and so are the pay stubs. It's very easy math - I need 3 hours and ten minutes of clock time per night to break $300 which is always the goal. My run requires 7 hours of driving and we're on a 60 hour log book. I generally try to max my time on the dock as long as there is work so I'm around $345 per night on an 11 1/2 run 5 nights per week. This is why $85,000 is a piece of cake even though I take every unpaid night off I can - like tonight.

 

what's a "factory?"

 

You have an awful lot of questions for a chief.. A factory is somewhere that you get paid an hourly rate for everything you do while you're there - maybe running a machine, welding, or painting new equipment. Like I said, my job is no different - I report to work and get paid for everything I do till my shift is over and I go home. It's an amazing concept for trucking - get paid well over.50 per mile for driving and well over $20 an hour for everything else. It works pretty well chief.

 

Ouch.. That hurts.. I hope you're not leased to UPS Freight - you'd crap yourself if you ran the numbers for one of their line-haul drivers.

 

With the exception of the major LTL companies, union or non-union, most driving jobs are paying what they did in the mid 70s. I can show check stubs from the mid 70s that will equal what most drivers are making today.

I had my own truck for several years, before and after deregulation. One of the accounts that I remember out of Balitmore to Pineville, La paid $2300(I ran on percentage, this was my part), after deregulation this load was being pulled for $1200. Remember, what fuel and overhead expenses were then. But then came the "mega-carriers" and they started this "throat cutting" and the race to the bottom started.