Starting out pay per mile rate?

Thanks TooGroovy, any info like that helps greatly. You are so right about depending on driver. The "dutifully" driver can make me money and I don't mind paying more for him. But you never know what kind of driver you are hiring, every driver says the same stuff when they start and expect to get paid for that "talk". They want 3k miles a week, they don't need to come home much if at all, they would never leave my truck elsewhere, etc. I have had drivers that wanted home all the time and couldn't get more than 7k or so miles a month out of, always complaining about anything & everything. most negative person I've probably ever had to deal with on a regular basis. Then I had drivers that never wanted to come home, would take any load and would probably average 13k miles a month. I have started giving a raise after 30 days if they look like they want to work, but refuse to start a driver out at twice what others around here pay. My new driver will have 13451 after 31 days and will get a raise on the load after that. That is one reason I started this thread cause I want to make sure he gets a fair wage from me. But maybe the pay is just different around here as he already brings home more than the local drivers I am aware of including the ones in the oilfield. That is the thing around here, most drivers are in the oilfield so it's hard to compare with them, it's a whole different animal.

 

jhavens, I will look into that. I guess that is why I am all about seeing an example. I have to compete with drivers locally and other companies are always promising the world and I won't do that, I'm always up front with everything. I hired a driver awhile back, said he wouldn't work for the wage I was offering cause he was making X amount of dollars, I said "bring me your pay stub", he did and I said work for me to see your first paycheck and see what you think. He did, and he was happy. Most employers around here just don't live up to what they say on different stuff, the ole bait and switch scheme I guess.

I could never say, "pay upto $Xk in your first year" or "you get this bonus or that bonus", I'm more like "I can get you this amount of miles a month at this rate", and that is what they will get if they want it. But I probably will put more bells & whistles in my advertisements cause it does seem to catch an eye or two.

 

Jhavens, I looked into those companies as much as I could on the internet and both look like very good companies. It's kinda hard for me to compare as they are both quite different than what I have going. DOT Foods sounds like alot of driver assist. But I do pay my drivers extra if they want to do driver assist loads (cause they pay more), just never had one that wanted to do it more than one time, lol. TMC is flatbed which makes it hard to compare plus you can't really tell how much that will pay in first year, they kind of seem to leave that open saying 26% for first month then paid by performance after that so not sure what that means exactly (looks like it can go below 23% during first year). I even have a couple of flatbed trailers, just never had a driver that wanted to do flatbed is all (except some local oilfield stuff). Do flatbed drivers make about the same as a reefer driver? If not, what are the differences?

But this stuff just keeps getting me better ideas as I expand. My trucking company has kinda been a "plan B" in the past. But I have decided to spend more time on it so I don't want to keep flying by the seat of my pants like I have done the first 3 years. It started out as purchasing a truck & trailer for a friend to drive and now I have kinda grown to love the business after purchasing the third truck.

 

* I have never expected experienced drivers to start out at beginning wages.
* I have never hired a newbie (but would possibly, just never came up).
* I have attracted decent drivers.

My reason for this thread was just to find out more info so I can keep a pulse on what drivers expect when being hired. Upto this point I have been a 1 or 2 truck operation. But as I just bought my 3rd truck, I plan on spending more time on this company. This has always kind of been my third company and I didn't put alot of time into it. But I've enjoyed the trucking industry and seem to have figured out enough now to be able to make a profit. So, because of some changes in my life I am going to put alot of focus on this trucking business moving forward. My main roadblock to growing will be finding good drivers, that is just the nature cause of where my business is located. As I said, I can't compete with the oil companies around here that don't care about their turnover and make promises that they don't keep cause they don't just cycle drivers thru. A perfect example is one company that came into the area a couple of years ago, promising top wages, etc. Every driver I spoke to back then was going to go work for them. I drove by their offices/shops the other day and it is a ghost town now. Most my drivers come from the oilfield, saying it isn't for them and want to go back to reefer OTR. I'm not saying there aren't other good oil companies around here because I know there are. There are just a few who kinda ruin things around here.