Pay

You could do ltl and just do drop and hooks and do around $1,500 a week. You might run the extra board but the pay is pretty competitive between most of the top ltl freight companies.

I run 5 days a week with weekends off. Usually start Monday morning or evening get back Friday night or early Saturday morning. Drive around 9 or 10 hours a day and average around 2,300 - 2,700 miles a week. Stay in hotels with free breakfast.

 

That's what I thought too, but I saw an ad for 18 while everybody was posting 21 a hour...people still apply

 

Here is 2 less than 21 a hour in Chicago

 

If trucking companies paid you even minimum wage for every hour that you are out on the road for them a driver would make a ton more money than they get per mile. That's why they don't pay by the hour. You're basically free labor for them unless you're rolling down the road. In my opinion this profession is one where the government has completely failed the worker. Most people would be shocked at the amount of hours we put in vs. How much pay we get.

 

$7.25 x 120 hours (5 days) = $870.
$7.25 x 168 hours (5 days) = $1,218.

That's getting paid for every second even sleeping...which realistically would never happen.
Factor in overtime after 40? $1,160 and $1,682.

I don't see where your mind blowing numbers are coming from...

 

FWIW, Fire & EMS get paid to sleep, even on 12hr shifts. And they get paid hourly: less than $13/hr with 4 yr experience is what a buddy made this year. What they don't get is mandatory breaks/ meal times and there are no hour-based OS rules: I know folks who've worked 120 hours straight.

 

I don't think is varies, I think it is a base wage or minimal wage that matches the nation union wage they pay. The benefits are separate. When we hauled usps stuff, we had to meet the minimal wage thing and figured out how to do this under the drivers contract which is a percentage of the gross.

 

I would love to be making $1,682 per week. At this point in my career that would be mind-blowing . As it is now I make 1200 per week plus about another $80 for mileage bonuses. As far as I'm concerned every minute that you are away from home and in somebody else's truck and doing what they tell you to do should be paid time. And I am making a lot more than most the people you see parked in truck stops. If the federal government required the trucking industry to abide by minimum wage standards for every hour you are under their control everybody would end up getting a pay raise. I think it's only fair that we get treated just like any other worker in the economy.

 

For fun I crunched the numbers and used a little bit of algebra and if I were paid for every hour I was in this truck and paid overtime for all the hours over 40 I would be paid the minimum wage equivalent of $5.51 per hour. If you subtract 8 hours of every day for sleeping unpaid I end up getting the equivalent of $8.64 for a minimum wage. The plus side of it all is I get to be with my wife 24/7 and see the country which is priceless.

 

Because you would stop every 5 minutes and waste company time