More guaranteed salaries

Don't forget the signing / retention bonus. I saw a $12,500 employee retention bonus advertised today on a billboard.

 

Dm bowman offers a guarantee as long as safety is met.
Safety to them equates to fuel mileage and Qualcomm use.
Which means you’ll be getting .33 cpm and not the 1200...

 

In my opinion a bonus tied to fuel mileage is a bad bonus, and unfair to it's own drivers. Say a driver runs a dedicated run 25,000 lbs out, 10,000 back on mostly flat land. Much easier for that driver to hit the dangling carrot.

 

These companies are becoming more and more desperate
as time goes on

 

True. Trucking outfits are desperate to attract experienced drivers ... desperate to the point many will throw a lot of ordinary pre-hire caution and ongoing safety check procedures to the wind. People will get hired to drive who have no business driving any more, and some carriers will pay huge, bankrupting costs at some point down the road. These occurrences as noted below will become more and more common as drivers slip through cracks as companies hurry to fill seats

Recent example:
https://cdllife.com/2018/record-setting-101-million-dollar-verdict-trucking-accident/
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Patterson filed a lawsuit against FTS and Bill Acker back in 2013 after the September crash.

This month, 5 years after the initial crash, KLTV 7 reported that jurors had made the unanimous decision for Patterson to be awarded $101 million from FTS International, $75 million of which was in punitive damages, and an additional $50,000 from Acker.

Shortly after the accident Acker underwent a drug test. The drug test showed that Acker had significant amounts of marijuana and methamphetamines in his system while driving the truck. This wasn’t the only thing found on Acker’s record… he also had 3 moving violations within a matter of 3 months of his hiring date. In addition, Acker was also on company probation for being involved in 3 other wrecks while working for the company!

As if that wasn’t enough, KLTV 7 states that Acker reportedly initialed documents falsifying that he had undergone new-driver, defensive driver, and defensive driver drug and alcohol training, as well as completed an official drug test.
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"Guaranteed Minimums" scare the hell out of me. I KNOW there is so much fine print behind the guarantee as to make it either impossible to obtain, OR keeps the driver in a desperate struggle to remain in "conformity", OR the drivers are constantly driving past their comfort levels, either by "force" or personal motivation to not lose the guarantee.

Those guys hired on "guarantee pay model" will be the first to go when things slow down. Not if, but when.

 

In a good economy drivers with skills in machining , fabrication , etc return to manufacturing. It hasn’t even started getting painful yet

 

Just like that $50,000 bonus that was floating around a month or two ago.
Chances of seeing it are 1%

 

Flatbedder here. Checked out a company with a 65K salary. Honestly, I'll stick with mileage pay. They had a 24 day a month out minimum (that's fine), 9900 miles a month and forced dispatch (including regional and possibly LOCAL work) requirement. That part bothered me a bit. They require a driver on this salary pay to pay THEM BACK if he doesn't hit 9900 miles a month minimum. They said that they don't penalize anyone for working but idk...the "fine print " scared me off.