The case for the $100,000 a year trucker

Where can I get this information? I want too share this with my congressman. Thanks

 

What recruiter told you about their dedicated route on fantasy island?

$100,000/(52 weeks x 5days x 550miles) = .70cpm. Who pays .70cpm, never loads or unloads freight, never has truck or trailer problems, and can plan 550 miles of work for just 5 days a week?

 

Ltl companies. Most of the big companies you seeing pulling doubles down the highway. The ones when I first started driving I said to myself "I would never want to drive something like that. No comfy bed behind you and no cool aluminum wheels and chrome dual exhaust stack and that wiggle". That's who pays that kind of fantasy money.
Thank goodness I decided to take a 50% pay cut to go load tires at a tire plant for a couple years( yes I was married with 3 kids) this turned into a linehaul job with same ltl company. And the rest is history. It's out there, the instructor at my driving school back in 1991 always would say "get your first year or two in and doors will open that you don't even know are out there yet.
I remember Bruce Williams, radio host and business guy used to say it didn't matter what kind of degree you had just that you had one to work for him. It's that you stuck it out for four or five years to get degree. He would train you how he wanted. It's the same in trucking. Most don't stick it out. Be one that does and those doors can open for you to. You have to get out and beat on some doors. Good luck

 

Stop buying in to the mega mentality. There's more that goes into the total pay package than just miles. If you figured out my pay per mile for last year, it would be roughly $1.20/mile. I'm a company driver, and that rate is more than many lease ops are happy with. And if you hadn't guessed, most of my trips are not paid by the mile. The ones that are, are paid at $0.47/mile. When you add in detention, stop pay, drop / hook pay, and other miscellaneous extras that we get paid for, it works out to much, much more than that.

By the way, we're hiring.

 

No, that means TWO other drivers are earning $20K (mathematically, anyway).

I think those figures probably come from the fact that the vast majority of the drivers out there work for starter companies making less than $40K. Many drop out, and very few make it to $100K LTL linehaul jobs, for instance. If it were on a graph, you'd be able to see that it's a small percentage of the industry overall that makes over $80K.

We do a disservice to newer drivers by making them think those jobs are everywhere. You need experience, the right location, and a little luck to get a very good trucking gig.

 

Well, those jobs _are_ practically everywhere. What the newer drivers don't realize is that the jobs that pay well are the jobs that most drivers won't do, and require you to live somewhere that most people don't want to live.

 

maybe by using Dispatchmytrucks.com and dispatch yourself or something

 

I hear ya. I'm just saying those jobs are in the minority of trucking jobs overall, as evidenced by low turnover rates and very little or no advertising. They are more desirable to drivers, so they're a bit harder to get. There are exceptions, of course, but if you look at fleet sizes of the megas all put together it is easy to see where the $40K average salary figure comes from.

 

You hear someone braggin' on miles and 100k in the same post you cannot help but think of the mega recruiter. The rest of us don't care about miles: that is mega think.

That is definitely the case. http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes533032.htm

The top 10% make a median of $61,150 a year. So less then 5% make over 61k, so a 100k trucking job is a real rarity. Yet, every fleecer you meet clears more than that. Every newbie fresh from the recruiter is sure he will get that.

The point of this post was if things were equal to what they were 40 years ago, the average trucker should be making quite a bit more then he does. That is true and something more should realize.

 

Just ask the old timers....
when FRIEGHT was regulated our wages were pretty much set in stone
Paid by weight
....then they deregulated the freight, making it an open market for the lowest bid