Hourly rate

Be very careful, I've been doing quite a bit of crane work the past 6 months and there is a tonne of wait time, make sure its clear what is hourly and what is paid for mileage wise. We make really good money if we are hauling >250 miles, then waiting isn't a big deal but when we do stuff that is <100 miles, charging $150 / hr for wait time makes for a piss poor day (we include 2-3 hours of load time for crane moves), so we get paid $150 after that per hour and its a ###### paycheck.

Today, I loaded up in Houston, was told to be onsite at 7am, they started to load me around 8 and I left just before 9, I drove 90 miles and got there before 11 and waited 6 hours to get unloaded because they didn't have an assist crane, so we had to self build and it was probably a 13 hour day for me. I doubt I made $300, I probably only pulled $200 which means $800 to the truck.

Which would be ok if everydriver was like me and didn't sit in the truck and idle all day and turned it off. But the 2 other drivers were sitting in the truck with the ac on all day and were being made fun of by the company guys on site for whatever different reasons.

 

Charge an amount that you'd like to see the truck make in an 8 hour time frame. So if you want $800/day, charge $100/hr. Since you didn't get into specifics...not over-weight/over dimensional, $150/hr sounds a little steep. But I will agree, charge a minimum 'show up' fee, 6 hours maybe, along with some sort of compensation with being scheduled for x day and they end up not needing you. It all boils down to what exactly is being done. If it's complicated, charge more, if its through bad terrain, charge more...etc etc etc. Remember, it's hourly pay...so there will always be one person happy and one person mad. lol