"TMC Drivers"...

Yes I included the bounce (non-paid) miles in my calculations.

It will be up to you which is better for your situation.

Whichever you choose good luck and be safe.

 

On percentage pay you do not get paid to bounce empty unless it is over 150 miles.

Average is a tricky thing to pin down because a cross country haz-mat load may pay the truck $3000, while a short overnight load may only pay the truck $600.

Now let me break that down. A minimum line haul load might pay the truck $600. This will probably be 400 loaded miles, and probably 100 empty miles. All of this depends on the area of the country that you run in. You can easily do this run in 24 hours, so you can do 5 of these loads per week. You will deliver and re-load every weekday, and take a load home on the weekend for delivery Monday. Now with 5 of those $600 value loads per week you earned $3000 for TMC, and TMC will pay you your percentage rate of that $3000. You can earn between 23% and 32% depending on how many points you earned the previous month. I will pick 28% for this examply because I never earned below that expect one month other than my first. So 28% of $3000 is $840 so that is your gross pay. Of course Uncle Sam is going to take about $300 of that, plus your state taxes. Health insurance and other deductions will bring your take home pay down towards $500 for that week. This is about the minimum that you will earn for a typical week, while most weeks are much better. Now there may be a few weeks you earn less than that, but it is rare. Usually if you get a really low paying load it will be balanced out by a really good load.

In the above example you had a 2500 mile week. I had weeks as low as 1600 miles and as high as 3200 miles.

Good and great.

Well I have mine on the side of my truck. I got that done just 6 months ago after I switched trucks and I haven't heard about them cancelling that policy.

I believe that the mileage pay has been changed some in the past year so I may not have it quite right, but it is a similar structure to our percentage pay in that the points you earn affect your mileage pay rate. $0.30 is the floor rate and it can never go below that, but you can earn up to an additional 3 or 4 cents per mile after the first month I belive. I do know that with almost two years at this company my mileage rate would be $0.42 per mile since I earn enough points to get all the bonuses.


You will not have to make a decision about percentage or mileage pay until you are done with your trainer. You are given a sheet to keep track of all the loads you do with a trainer and which would pay better mileage or percentage. I kept track and I did better on percentage except for a couple of the winter months like Dec 07 and Jan 08 where mileage would have served me better. You can switch back and forth twice per year if you desire.

Hope I made sense it being 2am and all after a hard days work. Hope this is the info you were looking for.

 

We also discussed percentage or mileage pay on this thread:

http://www.thetruckersreport.com/truckingindustryforum/tmc/49104-percentage-or-milage-pay-whats-better.html

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When you are dispatched on a load the qualcomm load screen will display all the information about the load, and included is the rate that the load pays to the truck. You get to do the math for which percent of that you will earn. You can keep track and verify that your paycheck is correct.

 

Percentage seems to be where it's at, mainly during the Feb-Oct months, would it be preferrable then to use one of your swaps for winter driving? I'm scared ******less of the winter driving still (only been through cone college as of now tho).

 

I`ve always preffered percentage over mileage.As long as you trust your company to provide proof of actual rates and you are not working for a company that cuts rates,you will do better on percentage.Even better if you are free to find your own haul.
I work for mileage pay now but wouldn`t hesitate to go back on percentage.