Mileage pay

Oh yeah, I get taxes taken out. I don't own my own truck yet I kinda treat the truck as mine but I drive for an owner who leases to Dahlsten. They don't take taxes outta his settlement but he has his own trucking/construction business so his office personal does all that for him, I'm sure.

 

Either pay system can be good or bad. As stated by Raiderfanatic, running a lot of empty miles brings your overall rate per mile down in a hurry when you are on percentage. You lose the upside of great paying loads on mileage pay, or the bonus of picking up LTLs. Percentage pay best aligns the goals of the driver with the goals of the truck owner. Most employees like to know what they are getting paid no matter what, and so are usually paid mileage. Percentage pay for ind cont seems to be a hold over from the old days of trucking, but it works for us.

 

Yeah, it doesn't matter how the load is paying...be it by ton, mile or rate...I always figure my pay by the miles dispatch sends.

The owner of the truck did tell me to keep track of my empty miles over the next month and let him know what it figures out per mile for me. He said he will adjust my percentage accordingly cause I shouldn't be making "company driver" money, as he put it.

Driving empty is a lot more relaxing than pushing 80,000 but sure doesn't pay. lol

 

Heres what someboy told me , the miles are on q-qual com, are from shipper too outer city limits ,or from city limits too city limits , so if you drove anthor 34 miles in the city too rec , you do not get paid for that, that what i was told one time, dont know if true or not i just ran the miles they gave me, Everett.

 

You can never make up the miles you lose when you go mileage pay. Where at % I can always make up what I lost.

 

Do some use, for example, Rand McNally's mileage which I believe goes from city limits to city limits and not actual miles you may drive, even without a detour?...

DOH! I wrote this while reading page 1 and see someone else said the same thing...Nevermind...

 

Here's a bit of HHG info/propaganda from HDT & Rand McNally; it's an old article.
http://www.heavydutytrucking.com/2003/02/056a0302.asp

 

5 types of driver pay:

*Hub: paid by the actual miles driven off the odometer or a hubometer. Quickly disappearing as well someone is losing money paying drivers for an actual driven route including out of route miles. This is pretty much gone as the drivers themselves ruined it by driving out of route to maybe go see a female or bypass a scale or just to pad the paycheck. Or in most cases being dishonest with someone paying him for his real miles! The by passing the scales usually the owner knows this route and it might be fine with him but the going to get into the horizontal bebop might not!

*Practical= almost the actual mileage you drive as shown by a computer generated route.but explained below.

*Shortest= Another computer generated route which is the shortest route.

*Percentage= The load pays $1000 and you get a percentage of the load. If you get 10%,25% or whatever the owner will either tell you what the load pays or show you the paper work or lie to you and tell you maybe some number of dollars less that what he actually made! This CAN be the best way to get paid but not if the person writing your checks is dishonest.

*O/O arranged pay. Pay you bartered with a produce company or manufacturing company or small business to haul their freight for. Usually written into a contract. This is what brokers do also.

BUT the O/O is doing the "sales" part of the deal and cutting out the broker who takes stupid money off the top for 15 minutes of phone and paperwork! Thia O/O has an operating expense account that he uses to pay bills with untill the receivables come in which is then banked and paid out to his accounts. This O/O s a businessman and is at the top of the game in real small business operations! This is where you would like to be if you wanted to do real O/O work!

The thing about computer generated and book miles is it is usually zip code to zip code. Or center of town to center of town.
There ARE some truck routing programs that actually route address to address but I would love to know which companies use them and pay dock to dock!
The stupid thing about shortest paid mileage is the program will route you along an interstate highway. GREAT! UNLESS the interstate has a curve in it and there is a small state highway running in a straight line bisecting the curve then the program will route you off the highway onto the side road!

This 1/2 the company saved there and in other places along this route can add up! Some of these "shortest" routes can shave 20 miles on up off the "practical" mileage saving BFI say maybe $7.00 they will not have to pay you! WOW! BUT!!! All this stupid getting on and off and slow traffic red lights , city centers and the most important thing in the truck your HOURS! Not to mention the lost fuel that will happen from the starts and stops instead of a steady speed. Some moron college grads figured this one out and of course a moron boss did to and for them being the cheap arsed idiots they are they are saving those few dollars! Everything looks good on paper doesn't it! Wait for those 1/4 hours to disappear off the log book when each one of them is worth more than $7.00! Those shorter mileage routes are never shorter on time! They take longer so you're killing your log book to save some chump change!

If the company you're looking at pays on the short scale leave and go find a better company as these companies are more than likely about to fold or turn into a nightmare in the future!

 

The only one you forgot about was hourly pay. That is the only true way that a company driver can be paid for all of the hours they work. Just because some of us do not do OTR, we are truckdrivers nontheless.

Drive safe