Drivers pay

I am getting back into driving come spring. and am looking for a place to work like yours and Ken Ro. I'm a fair driver but not a super trucker and I have always ended up at the top of the drivers list for one simple reason. I show up and do my job.It has always amazed me how far you can go just on work ethic alone.

 

I think you're too easy going and let your drivers walk on you. I know a guy that did just what you're doing, and let his drivers run the company, and soak him right into the poorhouse. Get tough, but not stupid.

 

You are right that it doesn't matter to me. Don't the megas pay $xx per mile with guaranteed xx miles a week? That is a question because I've never worked for one. 70k does sound decent unless they are living in the truck 5 days a week being payed 14 hour days then it comes out to $19 an hour and sleeping and eating in a ####ty ### truck stop eating ####ty food. Subtract 2 hours a day for a hot coffee in the morning and eating a hot meal at end of the day. I can find a local driving job that pays $25 hour easy and sleep in my bed with my wife and eat my wife fabulous cooking. And you seem to want the best of the best to do that.
I mean no disrespect but it is what it is. No way would I live in a truck 24 hours a day M-F for 8 bucks an hour all hours in the truck. There is definitely no reason to put in the extra effort if it pays the same either. You can look down your nose and think I'm a selfish prick all you want but I think the shoe fits both feet here.

 

Hey your not wrong that it should be better. What else should be better? Pay to the truck. I was doing a minimum before it was even heard of. I don’t care what the megas do either man. I just do everything I can and the minimum is just that, a minimum meaning pay goes higher then that.

I think you took offense to my post when maybe you shouldn’t have. I wasn’t calling you a selfish prick. I was calling people who only care about themselves and leave the company owner hanging while he’s trying to do the right thing selfish pricks.

 

It is not that you are doing it wrong, you just haven't rounded up the right hands yet, hopefully you will get there with some that likes to make money.

Some claim you are paying too much, I am betting that you are not the only one around doing the same job, so pay them less and see how much more turn over you will have.

I see the same thing all the time here, in the summer when gravel season starts, the driver pay is just a tad over 60 bucks an hour. that is Davis Bacon and everybody has to pay it. We will usually work 11 to 12 or more hours a day and 6 days a week, at least half the drivers will be great hands until they have about the third check under their belt then start coming in late and or missing days. I always fired them quick, because if you don't the other half will start thinking they can do the same thing.

Eventually you will get a crew that knows that truck has to be run for them to make the good bucks.

 

As a new driver in early 2000s I started out as a dirt hauler. About 8 months in I had the top paying spot. We were dispatched to a site for the first load then the site boss would tell us what to get next. Some drivers that complain and want to be sent home early would get their wish. And then they cried that a newbie was being requested for better runs. Just do the job or find another you are willing to do.

Keep paying well. Get and keep a reputation of the guy a driver wants to work for and you'll end up with a good crew. Less turnover and lazy workers will generate more revenue and more than make up for the higher pay.

 

He found out the hard way that good reliable drivers are hard to find no matter how much you pay them. There is something about trucking that attracts flakey flea-baggy types and that is just the way it is.

For the record I don’t think $1500/wk on a home every day company job is that bad at all, especially if they only drive a couple hundred miles a day and sit around waiting the rest of it.

 

Local jobs vs road jobs are a totally different animal IMO but it is my opinion that most road jobs don’t pay anything near well enough to compensate the driver for babysitting the truck 24hrs a day and living in it. Even on your 10-hr break you are never really “off-duty” if some carrier has convinced you to be held hostage in their truck 1000 miles from home. That should pay a flat $100 layover pay plus whatever the mileage pay is IMO. That would be more realistic than trying to pay road drivers by the hour and would light little fire under the companies and dispatchers to either keep that truck moving and making revenue or send the drivers home if their ain’t enough freight.