Schneider Percentage Plan

I had the opportunity to chat with a guy who was on the percentage plan. I'll pass on the info he gave to me while we wait for a percentage driver to respond to your questions.

When I asked him about the typical pay for a load, he just looked at me funny. Apparently, there isn't much in the way of "typical" unless you're looking at freight by the region it's coming out of. Texas, for example, has a butt-load of cheap freight, so the average pay per load is fairly low.

They do not all pay at least the "cents per mile" equivalent. He had a long rant about some other drivers that came over to percentage at the same time he did. The rant was based on their constantly choosing to take "long miles" rather than thinking about the ratio of "miles to pay" percentage. From what I could gather, he made more money doing 300-600 mile short runs on a frequent basis rather than running the 1000+ mile runs. The percentage pay for the shorter runs netted him more money, while his buddies that ran all of the longer loads lost their butts.

He closed the conversation by mentioning that the guys that came over with him had all returned to mileage pay. He said that being on percentage required a great deal of thought and the ability to track your freight trends for specific areas. [heh, he even mentioned that when he retires, he was going to auction off his little notebook (said this tongue-in-cheek, I'm sure)]

You can take this info with a grain of salt, but I gotta say that it was an enlightening twenty minute conversation. I'd been wanting to run my own truck again, and the thought of doing it on the percentage board was subtlety appealing. Our chat has given me pause, though.

Edit: Oh! Thought I'd add that he mentioned he grossed 25k higher for the last year that he was on percentage then he did on the last year he was on mileage; however, he stressed that a lot of folks not only did not see that kind of increase but actually ended up seeing a decrease in their gross. Again, grain of salt, eh. Enough of what he said rang true, though. Percentage based seems to require a higher level of focus and forethought than mileage based.

 

I've also spoken to one O/O on the % plan... He said he made a lot more on the % plan vs mileage plan, but you had to use your head. $2.50-4 for the 200-600 mile loads vs $1.40-1.60 for the 1000+ loads... So you have to pick and choose the shorter loads that pay more, but you have to be careful not to end up in an area where there are no loads and you have to bobtail.

 

No problem, man.

I recall that he said something similar to what Blacklions posted, too. There are areas that are like "black holes" for freight (i.e. you can take freight into that area, but there's never any freight coming out. You're stuck).

I don't know if Schneider warns you ahead of time about where those areas are, though. On percentage, if you have to deadhead somewhere, that's pure loss. Might be part of what contributes to some guys losing their buttocks trying to run percentage.

Take care, and good luck to ya.

Edit: There is a Schneider National forum run by SNI drivers for SNI drivers that might interest you. It's not open to just anybody, and you can't register there with anything except an ISP email account, so I doubt that posting a link here would violate any terms that Truckers Report might have. It's not a very active forum, but it's got some useful information on it. Here's a link to the O/O section of the forum. There's a couple threads on there about the percentage program. Not sure if that will be helpful or not, but I figure the more info you get, the better off you'll be.