The best way to be paid.

The bonuses are a fantasy. I do not recall off time paid. ever. UNLESS it is related to a extreme breakdown.

You do not have paid holidays, they are working days just like always. Just plain working days. Trucking does not stop because it's Christmas.

Your miles do not take into account feast and famine, good miles one week bad miles the next and combined with the possibility due to inexperience you are dismissed for a while for doing some damage or hitting someone.

You are not paid anything for pretripping, that's a ordinary and required task as part of your work.

There is no salary unless specifically written as part of your employment such as becoming a trainer. Then whatever they pay you each week for as long you are such is one net pay after taxes.

You are focusing too much on gross. You should consider your own expenses in the truckstop. Example showers 10 dollars, parking 10 dollars per 10 hours or whatever it is, food up to 60 a day etc. Plus your own vices, smoking, casinos, whorehouses etc. Expenses expenses expenses. Your house hold bills and family issues come dead last.

My post is to be taken with a grain of salt. The industry has changed or is changing as I write this since my time out there.

I prefer to run very expensive loads for top class shippers capable of paying very well for that work which is seriously intense. With first class million dollar loads (Some haul 25 or more millions on those trailers...) the payroll takes care of itself.)

Now, to answer your question HOW to be paid.

When you hook onto a trailer load with that 5th wheel, you are paid over the satellite with option to direct deposit x dollars or take it in cash x dollars after taxes etc which is laid out for you within 5 minutes of hooking up, specifically for that load. That way you can run it like a business, match your expenses to maximize your profit on that particular load.

 

4, hourly

 

I don’t know, but I do know that when I was OTR, a typical scenario would be to spend 130-140 consecutive hours out and gross $1300 or so. So basically $10 an hour or less, which sucks in my opinion especially when you factor in the cost of living on the road, etc. Which is why I’ll never do it again...

I run linehaul now and make around $1300 for 62 hours. Quite a difference plus I’m home every day and off weekends...

 

The days of running hard are over if you have not noticed, it does no good to a driver. What we would like is to be paid fairly for all that we do. We are on duty from the time we get into a truck until we get out. We are responsible for keeping that load safe even when we are sleeping, that is 24 hours a day until we go on home time and even then we can get a call to take a drug test....That is a lot of free work and time we sold our souls for. They are stammering for 15 a hour pay to work at jobs they go home every night....uh

 

Scrap all that.

The pay system in trucking date pretty much back to the 1930's era. It's obsolete.

If it was me, I would pay all drivers a fixed salary regardless of miles run, not run, etc.

I was paid salary as a trainer once upon a time, or twice etc. Those were the best stress free times ever. Money was not the problem and can focus on the trainee. I think it was a little over 2K gross weekly with netting close to 1600 after taxes etc.

After teaming, wife and I ran some cross country loads that approached 6000 paid miles per week at .70 something to the truck. (Actual ground miles were about 20% more roughly...) with that kind of payroll, it's difficult to go back to overnights or short hauls.

 

That extra pay for what you better be doing to keep you safe is nice but the pay is all wrong, you are a guard, a eyes of the communities, a diplomat, a safety minded worker, add all that up and the companies should be paying you much more for your service. If they are not they are treating you as a number and really do not care. If you want change, which some in our government are trying to do you have to speak up and come up with positive ideas, like on our Hours of service, they force us to drive when traffic is bad, clogging the roads worse, most of these shippers have done the same load thousands of times so they should know exactly what it takes, we have technology now that those long lines to get in are a bad joke, they could send a text saying your door is open at a certain time and you just go in, check with guard, dock the trailer and with your electronic gizmos send the bol and wait for the signed copy to be received back, then you on your way again. We are working without using the tools that are a viable and clogging the crapper up. This is supposed to be a advanced country, do we act like it?

 

I'm not a fan of any of that.

Pay the drivers a percentage of the load and detention pay after 2 hours. Give you're drivers access to what the load pays the truck minus fsc.