Overtime pay ! Make it happen .

It doesn't make any sense up here in the sticks either. We pay the drivers by the hour.
We long ago got rid of the OTR style hauling that came with built in delays on each end. Let the megas run a race to the bottom with low rates and way too much time spent sitting at a shipper or receiver. We can't afford to do it.
Granted, most of our work is specialized and fairly local. There are a lot of times when the truck is working by the hour. When a driver is making time and a half it's nice to know that the truck and the company is still making money. Sometimes the driver is making more than the company is but that's alright, we do just fine anyway.
Maybe the megas, with their nanny cams and micro managing, can put up with 100% driver turnover every year. We can't survive as a company like that.
To get and keep good drivers you have to pay them, give them good benefits, and have decent equipment. There also has to be mutual respect.
This company has been in business for over thirty years and driver turnover is almost nil. Most of our drivers stay here until they retire. We believe that paying a good hourly salary is one of the reasons.

Edit to add....One other thing, we have absolutely nothing to do with brokers in any way. They'd have all the trucking companies hauling dollar a mile freight. Most of the brokers I've dealt with remind me of used car salesmen.

 

I get paid overtime. I’d walk off the job the second someone tried to pull that on me.

 

I see, you have a fundamental misunderstanding how things work at a CPM mega. Their is no 20% that does 80% of the work in a CPM company. That is the myth of the mega company CPM supertrucker that outproduces the rest of his co-workers. Their are reasons behind the myth, but it is a myth, and therefore not true.

Maybe it hasn't occurred to you the reason CPM megas run the way they do. Lets see if I can explain. CPM megas have a large percentage of dedicated freight that pays a premium rate. As part of that dedication to that rate, the mega must have the equipment and drivers to cover that customer's freight needs. However, most of these customers run a seasonal business that would require the seasonal hiring of drivers. When the seasonal downturn comes, those drivers laid off would be eligible for unemployment benefits that would be a financial burden the trucking company.

So the CPM megas have found a way around this. The hire drivers excess their needs to cover the dedicated contracts. Since these drivers are only needed for the seasonal surge, they run them OTR on the open spot market until they are needed for the surge. But the key is they are excess! They are not a prime consideration for profit margin of the company. As such, planning more miles then the weekly quota that they feel is necessary to keep a driver is not going to happen. No matter how hard you run, no matter how much work you put in, except during the surge, you will not get any more miles, or pay working for a CPM mega.

The myth of the piece work supertrucker, is just a lie installed by recruiters and dispatcher to get drivers in the door and working for their piece work scheme. "You will reap great rewards with your hard work if you jump when we say jump." The reality is you can and will bust you but, bend all the rules, make the extra effort, and when the load is is all done you will sit until some planner gets off his but to fill up his weakly quota.

 

First off a great many trucking companies pay CPM not merely megas. I'm not trying to defend megas as bastions of employee motivation, seeing as anyone with any motivation would have been motivated to find a better paying job.

That being said I don't love CPM either. I think it's a relatively bad way of compensating the driver as it presumes all miles are created equal. They aren't and never have been. Furthermore it can create massive issues when accessorial situations (detention, layover, etc) come up. There are a lot of trucking companies that are paying drivers 50-100 bucks a day for detention and .32 a mile on relatively good paying direct freight that they are literally grossing 3+ dollars a mile on. I don't have a problem with them turning a profit, but I do have a problem with them taking loads that have complexity, wait time, and just ######## in general to get a high rate and then not passing on the drivers share.

And all of this is incredibly subjective so it really just comes down to an individuals understanding of business ethics. I will say this though, I never worked a job in my life where I didn't firmly feel screwed. That's why I run my own show now... And holy #### is it awesome. Seriously I WAS getting screwed. Who knew?

EDIT: But bottom line I think way way more truckers should be on % of gross deals (probably with some kind of meaningful fuel efficiency bonus--because profitability wise those guys who get an extra 3-4 mpg actually ARE generating a huge amount more profit than their more heavy footed brethren). That would do the best job of aligning the trucker and the trucking company. In a perfect world employers and employees would share their incentives perfectly. Those kinds of organizations barely need managers. It's literally just for quality control and weeding out bad apples when everyone's getting paychecks to actually work for the companies best interests.

 

I most often refer to megas, because anything I say about the concepts of trucking, their will be an exception. That exception will come from the driver of some small company who diverts attention from the point and the conversation with the exception.

Despite the exceptions their are plenty of companies that are run like the megas. They set the trend both in rates and pay scale for the industry and therefore a pertinent point can be always made about them.

I guess you are missing what I am saying.

I didn't respond directly to all your inquires because this can be a lengthy subject and we loose people, if not ourselves, in the conversation.

CPM is what appears to be a piece-work pay system in the capitalist ideal. It is not. That is only a facade of a command control rationing system more akin to communism. Before you get your panties in bunch consider my previous post again and remember in a mega you only drive what miles are dispatched to you. It is a command system;you just don't finish with one bit of freight and help yourself to the next.

The CPM is not rewarding the hard worker; it is just their to masking the low pay. Pay so low that no one would consider the profession, let alone training school costs, if the real hourly wage was advertised.

As to the second point in your paragraph, various trucking companies come up with convoluted pay schemes. What is generally the case for the megas, is they rarely if ever pay any of the accessorial pay. It is far to easy to cheat a driver out of it. It is just a come on, like CPM, to make a prospective employee think his time won't be wasted. However, I now that is not true of some smaller companies, not that they don't try to cheat the driver.

Disagree with the subjectiveness of the issue. Most truck drivers are of a certain political outlook and they system caters falsely to that outlook. The truth is hidden in the real numbers that most truck drivers will never explore.

I would prefer not to divert on the faults or benefits of %. It may be necessary for some small operations, but will not be ever used as trucking pay scale on the whole. I will just say that although % can be fair, it has most of the disadvantages of CPM and drivers are often cheated on %.

3-4 mpg advantage on a truck pretty hard to impossible to do. But I know we argue that around here too, so could we stay on the topic of pay.

 

Perhaps you can Enlighten us as to how it's a workers Paradise when you can't even afford a mortgage on a home without renting all the rooms in your house so you can afford your payment.
If affordable, it must be in a bad area or a trailer. The home my grandparents paid $34,0000 for in 1962 sold for $2,000,000.00 ten years ago. Kinda hard to pay that mortgage off on truck driver wages.