Is this decent for a newbie flatbed driver?

A little background first...My husband is with a company doing flatbed. He is getting paid 30% of the load after fuel cost is taken out. Also he will be getting a 1099 instead of a w-2 as this company does not take taxes out.
Oh, and he only has 3 months expeience on his own, has been out of driving school since january 2008. We have gotten conflicting answers from the drivers we know.
I guess what we would really like to know is if this is bad, avg., or good pay.
thanks any feedback is much appreciated.

 

Everything sounds pretty good until you got to the 1099 part. I hate playing that game. I did it for a short time as a flatbedder, and man did those paychecks look great. Until I realized that I was considered a "private contractor" and I was responsible for both sides of the tax table. I will get my wife on here (she's a tax preparer) and she can give you some advice if you need it. Other than that, it sounds good. Good luck to you and your husband.

 

And here is the wife. This is not good, unless it's an extraordinary amount of money & it never is. You have a general idea from previous jobs that you have the amount that is taken out for taxes, SS, and medicaid...well double that. That's what you will be responsible for. Although parts of it are a tax deduction, it isn't really enough to make it worth it. Plus you will need to have a lot of writeoffs for your taxes. You are considered like an owner/op, but don't get the pay or the good deductions like fuel. You will have to file a Schedule C with your normal taxes, & that's a pain to do on your own, not impossible, just a pain. In our experience it was a no win situation. We didn't realize how little we actually made at the end, & we ended up paying out alot to taxes once it was over. I do not recommend this to any one. They make it sound so good & the checks look great, but if you can't afford to put 40% to 50% aside for tax ramifications at tax time, you need to get out....as soon as you can find something else.

 

I dont really know that much about working on % basis but I do know you will be paying your own taxes and I think you pay some form of workers comp insurance but not really sure, I am sure someone here knows. One thing to consider is benefits, medical, dental, 401k or whatever else that he wont have. Does the 30% bring in enough to cover all of that? My guess is that it dont. If it does and you are both happy with it then cool. If not then at least he is getting experience and can use that place as a stepping stone to move on to bigger and better things.

 

i noticed that there is a thing that says thanked under the profile like thing. i don't know how to give all 3 of u thanks so i will just say it here. THANKS!!

 

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Well, I don't think he'll be with this company too long. He's overly ticked off now. He had an appt. to pick up at 1430 yesterday and as of now he's still not loaded their line went down and it's not fixed yet. His boss hasn't found him anything else and up until about an hour ago they weren't gonna pay detention pay to him. Now they are but we don't know how much and so far his boss still wants him to wait there. Is this normal?

 

Things happen so it goes. I had a load of pipe that couldn't not be picked up until late the next day. At first the broker told me no detention pay (the fork lift was broke down and the shipper was too cheap to buy new starter so the mech played around with it for a day and a half). Then two days into the run they called my wife and wanted to tell us how much they appreciated our patience so they kicked in an extra $50.
I'm sure by now you know that you'll never get rich being in trucking although everyone else who's not a trucker thinks we're making the big $$$$$.

It's we're making the $$$$ and the fuel companies, insurance companies, the states, the feds all want a slice of our pie.

 

finally, the line is running again. should be getting loaded soon.

 

Yup, that's par for the course. I sat at a manufacturer in central In. for 2 days and was ready to find something else to do myself. I got to calling the boss (I was driving for an owner op with 3 trucks) every hour on the hour until his wife got sick of hearing from me and forced him to call the broker. The broker called the shipper and got their ### in gear and I was loaded in an hour.