Should cpm be changed to hourly for all drivers?

Normally if you’re in a day cab your chances of being paid hourly just went up, for obvious reasons.

 

Good heavens no! LOL!

Wasn't it Henry Ford who said "A man will not do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, if he can get out of it."

But the exact same logic applies to shippers and receivers who suffer no consequences for wasting a driver's time and not paying him for it.

The root problem here is that transportation workers are not treated the same as the rest of the workforce. The Fair Labor Standards Act doesn't apply to them. That's the only thing that needs to change. That would eliminate the problem you seem to be afraid of, that your competitors would undercut you.

And the malingering problem can be handled too. Every business out there does it. I used to pay my salesmen straight commission, but they still had to keep time sheets. If the commission earned was less than minimum wage they got paid minimum wage, and then they got fired.

 

One of the biggest reasons I like CPM... Say thus week I run 2500 miles in my 70 hours... But next week I run 4000 miles in my 70 hours... I get paid the same for both weeks, even though I did over 33% more work the second week.

Now That is fine and dandy if the hourly rate is based on 4000 miles a week. But I don't think many companies would do that... It would probably be based on a 2500 mile week, maybe 3000.

I like being paid for "work performed" it gives me some control over how much I make. If I want to run hard, or my dispatcher "needs a favor" I'm rewarded for doing it.

When I was a kid I mowed lawns... I charged by the square foot. The customer helped me measure the yard with a 100 foot tape, and watched me figure the square footage. I had more customers and I made alot more than the kids that charged $5 to $10 per lawn. I charged 15% more per square foot if I only mowed the lawn once every other week, compared to once every week. And most customers liked that.

 

I think we should be paid for everything until you get out that truck. I do LTL and we don't get paid for waiting.

 

No and #### no.
Stick that idea in somewhere it never gets daylight.

If anything a day rate would be more sensible. Hour pay is not much different than piece work pay. Except nobody works hard on hourly pay. Unless it's union workers I am thinking about?
Piece work would be much more efficient in the lumper bussiness. Maybe they would Hussle a bit more lol.

 

Piece work is certainly the way to go, as long as you are the one selecting what pieces you want to work. Company drivers however are in the unique position that everyone else around them is subject to FSLA and has to get paid for their time, even when their employer doesn't have anything productive for them to do. But the company driver does not have that protection, and so when the circumstances are that somebody needs to be made to wait, it's always going to be that driver. He's the one that can be made to wait for free you see.

 

YES !!!

PAYING ALL DRIVERS HOURLY will fix a lot of the problems in the industry and get rid of some of the scams for mileage and percentage ...

 

I had a thought.....there will always be problems in the industry. A person's work ethic is the same regardless of style of pay. The industry to me has provided me a very good living. Trucking is good steady money. It's so many gripes about it because too many people are looking to get rich without doing that much work. It's easy money really. The pay isnt the issue in the industry. The real issue is that you have the wrong people calling the shots, the wrong people running companies, and the wrong people getting CDLs and getting out here driving.

 

Interesting post.

Many want an hourly wage because they “want to be paid for everything they do.” You see the CPM as a way to make more. More than what?
More than AVERAGE. Hourly pay is the way for average to make the same as above average. The top drivers will do 1.5-2X average. For the same hours. A big win for the performance oriented driver.

Hourly pay will usually require more supervision. That’s never a good thing. Back when I was a company schmuck in a company truck, I developed the reputation for getting things done. The upper management started sitting in on phone calls and throwing the critical loads on me. Hot loads paid me $0.88/mile, and they were more concerned with getting it done. The problem was that their company schmucks had a list of designated fuel stops. They asked me what I needed, and I told them, “an open fuel card.”