A mile is not really a mile?

The miles that are setting a standard for the industry is so that truck companies and shippers use the same standard when determening the distance for rates that are charged. Drivers can get paid by hub mile, point to point miles, zip code to zip code, etc. Except for hub miles, if you miss an exit and have to go 10 miles further to turn around, only the driver that gets paid hub meter miles makes extra. Companies also keep track of the difference in point to point mileage and how many miles the vehicle actually was driven.

 

I can make a decent living on 200 cpm but thats closer to 1.75 a loaded mile,

Dont forget cpm assumes a minimum mileage a week, i run my nimbers 3 ways

1. Cpm
2. $/day out
3. $/week

Each is a sanity check on the others

 

I shouldn't say accessorial pays are more important than CPM, but it's a huge factor.
Running coast to coast pulling hazmat tankers, was paid cpm, layover pay (paid for 10 hour sleep breaks), fueling pay, 34 hr. restart pay, pre-trip pay, post-trip pay, drop & hook pay, detention pay, etc.
Every company has their own setup for accessorial pays. Only things I really looked at when changing companies, was accessorial pays, average length of haul, freight lanes. If the lanes were coast-to-coast & border-to-border, that was my big selling point.

 

Same here. High CPM is great, but you aren't paying the bills at $200/day.

 

One big reason I preferred pulling reefers, is can haul refrigerated freight and dry van freight.
That can keep you moving real good.
One example, I unloaded a refrigerated load in Ohio,
Then, within and hour re-loaded with a dry van load of paint going to Los Angeles. Having hazmat endorsement was why I got that paint load.
Quick reload of news paper advertisements with 6 or 7 stops at newspaper companies up the coast of California. Stop pay at each place.
Quick reload of canned beans in California going to El Paso, Texas
Quick reload of ceramic tiles to Jacksonville, Florida with two stops.
I think I then got a load of refrigerated orange juice and moving again.
~
That's the way I like to run; keep moving with long length of haul loads.

 

Hauling grain, hopper bottoms. We get paid by the county for one processor.
Some times the farmer is at the beginning of the county, sometimes the farm is at the extreme other end. Can be 40 mile difference. Sometimes his yard is in one county and the bins are across the road in another county. We get paid where the bins are actually located.
It all works out in the end.

 

Wait until they offer postal miles (if they do anymore)
A zip code can be 5 miles in diameter. So figure two circles that are both 5 miles in diameter. Oh and there is a 10 mile stretch between the two circles. The fun thing with postal miles is the miles are between the two circles (10 miles). Even tho you may have to travel 20 miles. Isnt that fun?

 

Back in the dinosaur days; pay phones, decent truck stop food, etc. before the advent of PC miler and others everyone used one standard the HHG mapbook.

It had a point to point city to city listing in alphabetic order. making a rate from Boston to Albany you had to look up Albany to Boston. The book was the size of a newspaper page! Now your customer is in a little town outside Albany and your shipper is a little ways outside Boston so you go to the maps and followed the route from the town to Boston noting the mileage numbers from each intersection or junction to the next until you had written don all these litle numbers added them up and tacked that onto the point to point number for Albany to Boston and that was your mileage.

The Tarriff practitioner, trying to make his rate more competitive would string out some cow path roads to make an even shorter mileage to sell the bid.
Then Rand McNally developed the point to point 'county' codes used in early [think huge mainframes] so a load from Houston to Phila was TX.102 to PA101 and after it got to the computer, it would spit back the mileage, point to point. It was a far cry from hub, maybe better than HHG mileage book and then came PC's and PC miler.

Mid 70's a Chem Leaman fleet owner had R model single axles with an air tag paid runs based on the average of a few senior 'trusted' guys to make an average hub for each cusomer, until they caught one of them eating breakfast in the Peter Pank diner while the truck sat outside, tag air to the max, sitting there, in gear, turning the hub...

 

Company I was leased to would pay shortest miles even though the shortest route was not legal for a 53
Foot trailer .

they always screwed us on the Atlanta to Huntsville Alabama run. Because the shortest route was through the woods but a 53 wasn’t legal on most of the roads through the woods back then .

 

Companies pay using different methods. For example, you can be paid per load, by the hour, percentage of what the customer pays, salary, by weight, by mile, etc.

Too many drivers pick a company based on certain factors and then try to whine the company into changing the pay. Pay attention to the details when you choose an employer.