Overtime and pay for all trucking time!

To an extent, yes. However some of the LTL companies don't pay OT until after 50 hours.

 

Definitely the job dictates the pay. I just pulled 80 hrs of regular time and 76.35 hours of overtime for my last 2 weeks. It was an unusual cycle, but I'm hauling mining slurry and the pace of the mining dictates the work hours.

 

There are all kinds of ways to shortchange an hourly worker.
Let's take a recent example.
Amazon warehouse workers were complaining they were not being paid for going through mandatory security checks before reporting for work and after leaving work. Some states addressed the issue (the usual suspects, NY and California) others did not. Guess where the warehouses were built?
Many companies require you to take a 15 minute break after 4 hours, a 30 minute lunch break and another 15 minute break in the remaining 4. But don't pay you for them, nor are they required to.

One has to define "work".

There is no way you are going to get paid during a mandatory HOS 10 hour break when the regulations clearly specify you are not allowed to "work".
That is one of the ways trucking companies would regulate your hours, force you to "punch out" , not allow you to do any work (sitting and waiting for a load, empty, with no responsibility for the truck for example.

Now if are are dealing with a "salaried" position. They usually don't have any overtime provisions either.
That is another way a trucking company could easily control payroll costs.
Here is $50,000 year. Do what we tell you to do within the HOS requirements. Take it or leave it.
I know many drivers who would rather get paid by the mile and hope for a bigger paycheck.

 

I'm older and drive part time for 2 carriers for something to do. One pays hourly straight time (truckload only), the other hourly (85% truckload / 15% LTL for me) with 1.5 ot after 8 hours.

The carrier that pays straight time pays $4 per hour more and I always drive brand new equipment with all the nannies. The other, I drive a 2012 Columbia. The part I find interesting is that the carrier that pays ot is struggling to find drivers and has more work that I really want to do, the straight time carrier doesn't have as much work and a flood of applicants.

At the end of the day, a 12 hour day pays exactly the same at either carrier.

 

The chances of Emma Watson grinding on my face has a lot higher reality of happening than these pipe dreams.

 

All this will do is change how a driver's pay is calculated, nothing more or less. Those companies already paying hourly with O.T. will continue to do so, and those paying mileage probably are already exceeding the minimum wage rate with O.T. for the hours worked. Nothing in the GOT Truckers Act will require paying for time logged as off-duty on the log book, so all your detention time and sleeper berth will not be figured into the pay rate calculation.

Think about it this way. As a US based driver, you are limited to roughly 70 on-duty hours in a week, 84 if you are really creative and tight with your mandated rest breaks. So, you can either log on-duty for all your detention time and reduce the amount of miles you drive every week, or keep doing what the industry has done forever and log off-duty at every possible chance to conserve the precious 70 hour total. Either way, there are at max 84 legal hours to work in a 7 day period.

Federal minimum wage is only $7.25 per hour, and in most states this is also the minimum wage, plus I will guarantee that in states with higher minimum wage the trucking companies will try to claim F4A pre-emption (except maybe California). So, when you do the math:

$7.25 x 40 = $290
$10.88 x 30 = $326.40 (if you do the typical max for a week)
$10.88 x 42 = $478.72 (if you can really max out your week)

This means, working your arse off, the most your carrier will be required to pay you under the GOT Truckers Act is $768.72 per week or $39,973.44 per year. This is not the windfall many are making it out to be. The proposed change will not mandate paying for off-duty or sleeper berth logged time so it has no positive effect for truckers despite the propaganda being pushed by OOIDA. Further, since most of their members are independent contractors, this will have zero effect for their bottom line as independent contractor relationships are already exempt from the FLSA.

I work with a lot of drivers paid commission, and those that are engaging in interstate commerce, as are most truckers, their final pay calculation must only exceed the minimum wage with O.T., not their base rate plus time and a half. There is a fundamental misunderstanding of how this will be applied to wages for truckers.

 

While I love the idea of overtime pay and being paid hourly, we'll never get it. Drivers will always be paid roughly the same (and it'll continue increasing a minuscule amount every year) regardless of how they pay is paid out. If they move to hourly + overtime, then they'll just make sure you only get 40 hours a week, or they'll do what walmart does and give everyone just enough hours they don't have to give them benefits. Either way, drivers will still earn the exact same. The only way to make money in this industry is by opening your own business or being an owner operator.

 

1981, Local 312 [Philadelphia area] and the company still had the upper hand.

The hourly drivers made their union guaranteed hours depending on which day of the week they started on [everything was strictly by seniority] so junior men started mid week as the senior men 'timed out'.

Same thing with mileage men; starting Sunday they 'timed out' by Thursday morning and a junior man worked.

When times got extra busy we had to call the seniors who had timed out [they never answered] down to the juniors a few have not yet worked and had given up making weekend plans [they had to answer] would refuse down to the most junior man who was the 'forced or fired'.

That was union life 'back in the day' by the contract. Older HOS so the incoming mileage guys were often told 'see you in 8' and it wasn't nice to be one of the most junior men; but the company didn't pay over 40 hours 50 weeks of the year!

 

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I think the number of States that don’t have their own minimum wage is 13. Those 13 abide by the federal rules. Everyone else is higher.