What happened to wages in the industry?

When I turned 21, I went into law enforcement. It didn’t work out, but I was in great shape and sparred all the time. Started trucking. Driving an old international cabover with spring ride and Armstrong steering. I had never felt so beaten up that all my internal organs hurt. I was pissing blood. Realized really quick that those old hands were really tough. We had one of our drivers get jacked and shot in the head, waiting at a shipper. After that the boss told us to carry. I carried an old Colt Python. Had three guys try to Jack me one night in Jacksonville FL. Glad I had that Python.

 

Are you average or at the top of the pile where you work? What is the average pay and what does the top driver where you work make?

 

This isn't about me. The thread is what happened to the industry wages. You then essentially turned the conversation into "drivers get bad wages because they're bad drivers" and you used LTL to prove your point. I then corrected you that no, LTL linehaul drivers aren't making so much more money than OTR truckload drivers because they're "more skilled and more professional" than OTR drivers. That is a false statement and I have first hand knowledge of that.

The bottom line is OTR wages haven't kept up with salaries at all and the pay and working/living conditions are appalling. And quite frankly the pay and/or working conditions are pretty bad for a lot of local trucking jobs as well.

A fair paying local trucking job should have a starting pay of high $20's per hour with overtime after 40 in the lower cost of living states and mid $30's per hour starting pay with OT after 40 in the higher cost of living states. OTR drivers should be making between low 70's CPM - mid 80's CPM like the linehaul drivers make, with all on duty time including waiting at warehouses paid.

 

The post was about average pay not keeping up from 1980 to 2025. I brought attention to the average driver of 1980 vs 2025. You got butt hurt. Are you average, below average or above average?

 

I never disputed with you about driver pay and the comparisons between the 1980 and 2025 driver. I disputed this quote, from experience, about modern day LTL drivers "being better than average, and the pay shows it":

This whole quote is false and I speak from experience. The funny thing is I never once heard a driver at Estes talk this way about themselves like you're talking about LTL drivers. Nobody thought they were better than anybody else from other trucking sectors. We all wanted to be paid good and to go home at a reasonable time. That's it. Nobody ever talked about how we were "better than average" compared to OTR drivers, and in fact if OTR drivers were mentioned it was in a respectful and appreciative way of them since they're so essential to the country. A decent amount of us came from OTR as well.

 

If you get a few years away from deregulation you’ll see wages are lower. Once they allowed anyone to get authority and run all over the country the race to the bottom began. You can’t squeeze blood from a rock and that’s why wages for regular truckload freight are what they are. You can’t just decide to pay your drivers $1 a mile if your rates and business model can’t support it.

 

$35,000 in 1987 → 2025 | Inflation Calculator

$35,000 in 1987 is worth $99,816.55 today

"$35,000 in 1987 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $99,816.55 today, an increase of $64,816.55 over 38 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 2.80% per year between 1987 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 185.19%."

 

So Estes is below the average LTL company. Noted. That still makes you and your experience below the average LTL driver. Insightful! Are you also 100lbs overweight?

 

Except; I made that in 1974 and hat's AFTER ALL payroll taxes plus other benefits like 5 days bereavement pay. seniority benefits like 1 extra week holiday per every 5 years. no union either, plus if you did a coast to coast and arrived 1 or 2 days early you got handed a healthy tip in cash.
I blame l/o and o/o that haul cheap and are just buying a job. and I'M GOING TO a warm place for this but women joined the work force, Now it takes 2 incomes to equal 1 previously.

$35,000 in 1974 → 2025 | Inflation Calculator

 

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is it's also harder to be productive these days.

In 1980, the HOS were extremely flexible. Even after the introduction of the 14 hour rule in 2004, things were still malleable. Running an ELD and AOBR there is a consitant 3 hour per week difference in the 70. I'd say there is about a 7 hour difference between an AOBR and a paper log book. Say you pull into your fuel stop at 10:52, spend 8 minutes fueling, then 5 minutes parking, then take your 30 minute break pulling out of the spot at 10:35. On a paper log you'd show arriving at 10:45 and off duty at 11:00 and going back on the drive line at 10:45. 15 minutes used on the paper, 23 minutes on the ELD. And that's logging 'correctly'. It was no big deal to push a little past your 14 to get to a truck stop, or to adjust your drive times to compensate for traffic.

Say you had a 2300 appointment at Roundys in Occonomowoc. You'd get to Oak Creek or Johnson's Creek 1700ish, have dinner and take a shower then at 2100 you'd drive the last 45 minutes into your delivery. Bump the dock and go to bed for a couple 4 hours, once done you'd head in the direction of your next load and go back to bed until it was time to head out. Your log book would tell a different story - it would show getting to Occonomowoc at 1700 and leaving at 0700. Not only was this common - it was expected. I was assigned this load in my first couple of months, before I understood how things worked. I didn't understand how I could deliver because it would have been after my 14 and Ops got a little frustrated trying to tell me to cheat my logs without actually saying the words out loud. Over time I figured it out and then squeezed my log book so hard it cried.

My personal favorite was when you'd get to Maine and deliver into the grocery warehouse in Kittery. Afterwards we'd dead head the 150 miles or so up to Verso to pick up roll stock and then head back the way we came. By the time you got back to Kittery there wasn't much sense in trying to push on through Boston, so you'd shut down again in Kittery. That day's log page would disappear and be replaced with one showing a 34 hour restart. If you understood how the AOBR worked, you could do the same thing with it.

Then consider traffic density. When I started in 2010 it was mostly farms between Milwaukee and the Illinois border - now it's all warehouses. Getting up 'early to beat the traffic' around Chicago meant leaving Gary or Kenosha at 0500, now by 0500 traffic is stacked with minimum following distance. Once past Chicago you could set the cruise and roll down to Indy just hanging on to the steering wheel. Not anymore. It's harder to run up the mileage in a 65 mph truck than it was in a 60 mph truck.

Pay structures and rates haven't changed with the evolving environments.