Question about dispatched miles vs actual miles

You're being paid the shortest miles that can be done in a big truck, not practical miles. This is the industry norm. If you stick to major highways, chances are that you'll go over the paid miles.

There are several methods companies use to calculate the distance between point A and point B. PC Miler and Household Mover Miles are 2 of the most popular methods.
Some calculate from city center to city center, others may use zip code to zip code. So if your delivery is 15 miles from the city, you'll eat those miles, or save them depending if you're going thru that city or not.
Your company, broker, or customer tells you how many miles the trip is. It's up to you to decide the route you take.......shortest or fastest.
Now if you are routed a certain way, the miles should be pretty spot on.

And learn math. 90% IS NOT 3-7%

 

Yes, it is a common practice, sadly. You almost never are going to get paid odometer miles. The best you can hope for is practical miles. Carriers using Promiles software at times use that as an option for pay miles. For instance, you take I-80 through Wyoming to LA vs Colorado I 70, that's over 60 miles longer, and you should get paid for that extra distance as going through Rockies while heavy is beyond economical sense. And it seems to be a common practice at all levels: company driver all the way up to independents. Just learn to live with it at least for now.

 

Someone I knew was getting paid zip code to zip code tracked by the qualcomm. This is strictly hearsay mind you , he said " he would go out of route or loop through another zip code on his way to the primary destination and the qualcomm would record and add to his miles and he would get paid for it." Was this guy feeding me BS ? He worked for prime at the time.

 

Pretty much. The miles a truck travels doesn't dictate what the trip miles will pay. All a Qualcomm does is track miles for IFTA proposes and is a communication tool between driver and company.
Besides, lease operators for PRIME are usually paid percentage. Any extra miles he runs, lessens the per mile rate.

 

It's normal. Our company pays zip code to zip code on the approved route. We are always over what we are paid. City limit driving doesn't get paid unless there is a lot of it for some reason.

 

10% over use to be the norm 15+ years ago for extra miles, mine has been in the 3-4% over most of the last dozen years. My last company paid hub/odometer miles with a 10% limit on overage, but didn't tell us what the expected miles were, so we weren't sure if we were over or not.

If I'm not mistaken, Prime pays their O/O-L/O's percentage don't they? So there really isn't a mileage to compare out-of-route miles to if you went that direction in the future.

 

This is correct.

 

Some companies still pay hub, Walmart and Poly come to mind.

 

Your pushback from dispatcher means to stop bugging him or her about the miles loss thing. Code for shut up.

Anyhow.

The others are absolutely correct the loss in miles from the actual miles you will drive versus the PAID miles that the company will be paid zip to zip generally worked out to 9 to 18% losses on the difference between the two for me. As far as Im concerned it's the cost of trying to make a living.

In my early years scratching for miles was really bad. In later years I could care less about miles then. 8000 to 9000 rolled 7000 paid for the week on myself and wife was money hand over fist so much we could not spend it all. We still managed.

9-11 was the ultimate payroll stopper. The people who cut our checks were destroyed in the towers along with all their everythings and ours too. Poof. Scattered all over NYC with mountains of all the other papers that fluttered from the places high in the sky.

6 Weeks without pay, facing 15,000 dollars due and payable repairs to house after a tornado had it's liberty with it plus savings of about 12 to 14K for that time period was cold cash, and that kept everything running with McKesson without a word of complaint at all from us, after all we are now at war and minor things like payroll will be set right in time. (And it was. and how....)

Remeber to always put aside something against the time you only get 1200 miles paid the past two weeks. That way you can maintain your health and not complain to dispatch while making sure that all of your work is duplicated in writing to a large bound journal to show to your DM by trip number paid and unpaid so that they can match records and issue you a comcheck minus taxes withholding.

Do not forget to hold your logs too. Every day you spend 100 miles or more from your primary residence is a day you claim I think 65 dollars now perdeim from Uncle Sam for your keep (Food) we claimed 45 dollars a day for 306 service days in 2001 that year resulting in addition to other exemptions a pretty big windfall that pretty much paid in cold cash refund all of our team expenses for 2001. About the only year of my 30 plus out there in the work force that Uncle Sam was able to cover our keep and expenses and then some.

Double check that first before you go running off in January next year to claim this thing, your company might be claiming the same thing on 10,000 of you drivers. You never know.