LTL Positions, hourly vs. mileage

Hi, my son was disabled for 10 years, got his CDL right around 1/1/17, and is in his 4th week with an LTL company. His job involves what I'm going to call short hops between terminals each night, the drive time is normally just under an hour, as well as some coupling/uncoupling of doubles. The terminal manager also said he would let him do yard jockey work for extra overtime, which he's done occasionally, which I understand is great practice. This job pays hourly, so if his truck breaks down enroute (like it did today, he had a blowout on the highway), the clock keeps ticking so to speak.

The manager said he won't be able to go to longer linehaul (which is paid by the mile) until Novemberish, which will be 6 months after they hired him, because of the minimum experience required. They have issued him a hotel card, but I don't think they expect him to be using it yet.

Here is what I am wondering, would a straight linehaul job that's based on mileage pay better than the kind of job he has now? What other major considerations would there be between these two scenarios? My son wants to save up so that he can get married and have something to fall back on, so at the moment being out for a few nights a week out should not be a problem for him. I have faith that all of this is going to work out for the best, but I am curious and trying to understand what the main differences are. Thanks everyone!

 

Yes, thanks, his job is at night and it's really kind of modified linehaul, if that makes sense. He's not doing any P&D. I get the general impression that it's somewhat of an unusual position, not being linehaul for mileage or P&D.

If someone is doing linehaul for mileage, what kind of work normally gets paid hourly on each end that you referred to? I know the coupling/uncoupling is a kind of accessory pay rather than being hourly.

 

Yes, you should I hope my son is.

 

Thanks for the input everybody. This just confirms that I don't really have a handle on what pays the best. By the way, it's not that I'm fixated on money, it's my son, he is playing catchup with life in a big way and he is always bouncing ideas off me (this seems to be something that everyone in my house does - I guess it goes with wearing the mom hat There are a lot of considerations but if P&D can pay better than linehaul, that's something to think about for the future too. I imagine P&D would be easier once he has a family, there would be more predictable home time. When he got home this morning he was expressing concern that it would be hard to get a linehaul run where he would be home every day, that he would not have enough seniority and it would take years. It is just a concern, he's not sure that's really the case. It seems to me that I've read other people commenting that they were able to get a home daily run before too terribly long, but I guess that probably depends on your company and terminal, so I don't know.