How do trucker owners/operators get paid?

Sometimes the take home pay won't even take you home! Oh! How I love my retired life! Most of the time anyway!

 

Whatever you do, PLEASE, do not lease a truck at Swift. Get a year or even two in as a company driver before you do anything.

Leasing a truck there IS NOT being an O/O.

The first year in trucking is very tough on new people. Don't jump from company to company, it will be the same bs with a different name on the door. Job hopping changing companies will also shoot yourself in the foot.

Just focus on getting that first year in, with a clean record, then doors will swing open to money.

 

There are 3 ways most drivers get paid, by the hour( almost unheard of except in a local deal), percentage of what the load pays, generally, the more you haul and the faster you do it,, the more you get paid, and mileage, which is kind of like percentage, only pays a fixed rate, no matter how long it takes.

 

Most get paid a percentage of the load or paid by the mile. I worked for Landstar and they paid percentage of the load. So loads going to Florida paid higher rates because I had drive empty out of Florida, because basically no load leave Florida. When you add the all empty miles to get out of Florida the load was average pay and nothing great.

Some get paid same rate per mile loaded and empty and the company tells you were to go.

 

this guy gets $.50 a mile. plus $15 each time he straps.

 

Brokers or your company usually find the customers.

But...for now, why not concentrate on studying for your CDL? You have plenty on your plate already.

Also, go back and read post # 12. @Dave_in_AZ gave you some good advice. A lot of companies will try to pressure into a lease deal. Don't do it.

 

If you put your truck on a company like Landstar. You use their customers and agents. That's why they took like 35% of the load pay. Plus they bill the customer and everything that includes using their trailer. They also advance fuel money.

It all on the company you lease your truck onto. You use their customers or you go completely on your own and find customers yourself. That not easy but you get all the risk and all the money. Some customers don't pay for like 30 days. If you sign your truck onto a company they usually pay every week for the loads you deliver.

 

Know your costs and the % of profit you wish to make and bid the work, you can charge a flat rate, by the hour, by the ton, or by the mile

personally I shoot for about $3 a mile, sometimes more, there’s other variables, BUT my biggest customer gives me a check every 7 days, so if I dip into the upper $2 a mile range once in a while I am ok with it, if I was waiting 30, 60, or 90+ days for money I might be telling them go screw (depending on who it’s for) when I was hourly it was $125 and 4 hours to show up, anything over 4 became 8. By the ton is going to depend on how far it’s going.

I have never, nor will I ever work by the mile, but just the truck alone is about $1 a mile never mind driver pay/insurance etc

 

Head on over to the O/O section and read up. This stuff is discussed every day. It's pretty impossible to answer your question though. There are a million guys moving a million kinds of things on trucks. Lots of different pay structures, lots of different rates.