ELD system V.S. hourly paid company drivers

just my 2 cents. was regional being paid .45 cpm and just got a local job for 17.22 hr. i am at home every night but make half of what i did unless i put in 50+ hrs a week.
too many hrs spent working drivers are not compensated for, imo. but withh local, i can actively seek a non trucking industry job around the house. you drivers should be paid much more(the good ones). drive safe

 

Getting home every night just transfers the pressure at the end of the week or end of your OTR road time to daily/nightly. You rush to get off by a certain time so you can have max time off or make family appointments .

 

It also depends on the company and what your hauling.
I drive hazmat tanker. OTR gets both mileage and percentage if its under 375 miles. Plus per diem, pump off, tank wash, lay over, breakdowns and holiday pay.

 

I disagree. The only way mega companies get drivers to knock on their front door is misrepresent the pay they will actually get in the piece work pay system. If the actual hourly rate were know, as well as the hours you have to put in, no one would invest in schooling to take up truck driving. The mega training companies would starve out, and freight rates would go up.

Correct, which proves my prior point: Without misrepresenting the pay, that is only possible in the piecework system, mega training companies would not exist. The already have 100% turnover. If they can't lie to get people in the front door, the cease to exist. If they had to advertise what they actually pay hourly, they would have no employees.

Correct.

No not necessarily

No it does, if everybody was on an hourly pay scheme. The mega companies could not afford to conduct business as they do and drive freight rates down.

Employers pay you what they can get away with not what you are worth. If their is a steady stream of new drivers obligated to pay off schooling working in the same industry you are in, your value as a driver can and does go down to even less then minimum wage. It is always supply and demand, not what you think your worth.

Hourly pay required a trucking manger to manage his assets better. If Billy Bob is screwing the pooch, nothing states that a good manager cannot handle the situation.

 

I feel mega carriers, more than anything, thrive off of the barrier of entry into this profession. New drivers still have to gain that first year or two of experience before major driving opportunities with other companies will open up. Now I know going to a mega company is not the only route for beginners, but it seems to be the easiest and most common route. Until that changes, megas can treat their drivers however they feel since they have them trapped.

And even if that changes. Let's say the megas are paying $14/hour for all on duty time, and let's say the average trucking jobs are paying $20/hour for all on duty time. And let's also throw out there that there is no barrier of entry, and any company will give you a shot as long as you've went through an approved school. Then even still, the megas can just lower their driver hiring requirements. Grab all the drivers with criminal history, previous DUIs, previous rollovers, bad driving records, etc. Pay them a horrible wage, because they can't get hired anywhere else, and then just keep on bashing freight rates as usual. And plenty of shipper will keep using them just to save that extra penny.

That's just how I see it, but I feel the fact that you NEED that first year or two of experience to get a decent job in this industry allows companies to take advantage of you for that time.

It is not easy today, though. In most cases, managers have their hands tied behind their back. They have to jump through hoops to fire someone because companies are so scared of getting sued for wrongful termination. So as long as Billy Bob shows up to work on time and follows the rules, he can drag butt as much as he likes and still get paid the same as his co-workers. While they get to pick up his slack.

This is why I personally like mileage or percentage. It lets me make an above average paycheck because I put in the work to do so. At the same time, it starves out the lazy workers. When I'm on hourly, I resent those workers who can't hold their own. On percentage or mileage it doesn't bother me because I know I'm making a good chunk of money more than they are, so them dragging butt doesn't hurt me. That might be a greedy way of thinking about it, but it is how I think.

I want to throw an example out there. I haul gas locally, 5 nights a week. My carrier pays us by the load, and also pays us delay time. Normal stuff nothing special. We have other gas carriers around that pay hourly. The hourly company starts out at $18/hr for day shift and $19/hr for night shift, no overtime. That hourly rate might sound like a joke, but this is in Florida so it's pretty average. We have drivers at my company that cry and groan about how nice it would be working for the hourly companies. I ask him "Why? $18/19 an hour is not good". He says "It's a lot better than what we're making here!". He shows me his paycheck, and the hours he worked. He was averaging about $16/hr with getting paid by the load. I show him my paycheck, and the hours I worked. I was averaging about $22/hr with getting paid by the load. This guy had been with our company going on 3 years and I was just over 6 months in. There is no reason for that. This is why I cannot stand hourly or salary.

 

You are right. But, you must consider something. The mega companies created the barrier to entry and now their prospering off it.

There was a time not too long ago, about 1992, when all you needed in most states to drive truck was a minimal fee, like $12, and sometimes a written test for an endorsement on you license. Most states considered that a chauffer's endorsement.

Only thing about this time, deregulation was about 12 years underway, and the mega companies and their business model was well formed: Pay drivers CPM treat them like crap, rinse and repeat. To stem the tide of drivers entering and leaving the profession they lobbied for the CDL license. This way they could lock drivers into a training program, and obligate them to work for them. Smaller companies could not just hire anyone off the street; they needed to pass a CDL written and driving test. You couldn't just hire a guy and give him on the job training.

O.K. I am going to partially agree with what you said here but there are some other points to consider.

The real hourly wage at a Mega is usually much less then minimum wage, once you figure overtime. $14 and $15 an hour is what they pay senior drivers doing local work.

Megas already have lowered their standards where they all hire fellons, DUI, and bad driving records. That isn't going to change.

What you may not be considering, is that megas use the illusion of piece work to hide the actual wage. No recruiter wants to tell their prospects they pay less then minimum wage and expect you to pay off $6000 worth of student loan to work for them. Instead, they hide the real figure by saying their drivers 'average 3000 miles a week @ $.35CPM + accessories, mostly drop and hook, and they their is a "driver shortage."' Add to that most people figure they are better then average, so they figure they are good for 3500-4000 miles. Hell, I am an experienced driver and if I didn't know better, that does not sound half bad. But that is not the reality of the job at all, and before a driver realizes it, he is in debt to the training company for thousands of dollars.

If a mega had to advertise in the same market place with other employers for workers, they would have to raise the price they pay to drivers. No one would invest $5,000-$7,000 dollars for training for a job that paid less then minimum wage.

Don't let so manager or business man BS you. Most states are right to work states and you can get fired for any reason.

Most unemployed workers cannot afford a lawyer. Lawsuits rarely win, and have to prove some sort of protected class discrimination to pay off. Employers violating safety laws or labor laws rarely pay more then back wages to workers.

What most employers are worried about when letting an employee go, is having to pay the increased unemployment taxes. This is pretty easy to avoid in trucking, where you can almost always fire a guy for some piddly safety reason.

Well that the selling point for piece work. I don't buy into it. I have worked a number of piece work jobs, and I always find the most incompetent employees and management when working piece work.

Paying by the hour requires management to know their job or else loose out to the competition that does. Piece work always promote incompetence in the front office, because the inefficiency of that incompetence can always be dumped not the workers.

I glad your doing well in your job. But, the points I am trying to make apply to piece work in general. Their can always be an exception.

And consider, you are working in a field where a large portion of the employees are on hourly. In order to attract good talent within that field, your employer has to be on the the ball and your piece work pay has to be competitive. If it isn't he wouldn't attract the talent to survive. But, if your in a field that is predominately piece work only, it is much easier to mismanage your business and still survive.

 

A lot of good points in this thread. But for myself I have to agree with @superflow . I made 72 k last year working 5 days a week some 4-day weeks. Paid by the hour, and I can't ever see my self going back to cents per mile. I'm not saying it's not possible, I just don't see it in the future.
As far as the argument about hourly some guys milking the clock, other guys working harder and getting the same pay, I get that. But they know who's milking the clock and who's not. As long as I go in and do my job as well as I can and they're willing to pay me a decent wage for it, I figured both sides are happy.

 

You already have the ability to tell your company that you're not able to drive because you're not fit for duty. The regulations prohibit your company from requiring you to drive when you're tired or sick. Grow some balls and tell them that you're only working when you feel that you're safe to work.

I had a dispatcher that would put me on a load that had me start at 11pm and be back at the yard by 9am. Then she wanted me to start at 7pm the same day for the next load. Legal, but not possible for me to get quality rest. Yeah, not happening. I refused, citing the fact that I wouldn't be able to get sufficient rest during the day. Dispatcher whined, but an email to Safety fixed that issue in short order. I told them that in order to obtain sufficient rest between shifts, I required no more than a 2 hour difference in start times in any 24 hour period.

Learn the rules of the game, and play a better game by using the rules to your advantage.

 

Ten hours off wasn't enough? I'm not trying to find fault here or make fun of you but ten hours seems to suit most drivers just fine.

 

Sounds like the person you replied to is local by saying "back at the yard". If that's the case I can attest to how hard it is to get quality rest in with 10 hours off with a 4 hour shift is start times.
He needs to drive home, then he has to make food, relax enough to get sleep, etc... All the while need to get up earlier in the morning, shower, get ready for work, drive back to work, etc...
Even a 20 minute drive home is almost 3/4 of an hour just in commute time. Throw in shower, food, etc and those minutes add up fast. I know when my last job wanted me in after only 10 off, I only got about 6 hours sleep.