What is the REAL average first year income for a new driver

It also depends how much home time you want.

Stay out for an entire year without going home and god knows how much you could make.

Go home every 2 weeks for 3.5 days like I do and the bottom line takes a hit, but waking up in a real bed sometimes is well worth it.

 

Forgot to mention I drove about 115k-120k miles first year (don't remember the number exactly), just to give you some perspective.

 

This idea of pay in your first year should be thought of differently. How much money should a 2-year vocational school pay you during your first year as a student? Ridiculous, right? They don’t pay you to learn in college, you pay them. So apply that same thinking to your first year as a truck driver. You are learning a lifelong skill. The real money comes later, not your first year. But as a bonus, you still get paid even though you are almost worthless at first.

Btw If you go to Melton flatbed, you can earn 60k in your first year. Then it goes up from there. Other flatbed companies pay the same.

 

$70,000+ your first year. They train anyone. I'm not saying they are a great company but you make money and get car hauling experience. Look how small the sleeper is. You have to lay in bed to get dressed.

Precision Motor Transport Group : Luxury Auto Carrier

 

The problem of asking "how much do you make" on the internet is we are all faceless, nameless, BS'ers. We all make more money on the internet then ever shows up in our bank accounts. You can take that to the bank.

The federal government says in 2016 the average truck driver made $43,590.
Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers

Of course everyone here is above average and kills that in their first year. Just who are all those drivers with decades of experience making the lower numbers to come up with that average?

While I have found the Bureau of Labor to be quite accurate over the years, ignore their hourly estimate for truck drivers. A large portion of the industry works on percentage and CPM. The total is real, but the hourly wage is deceptive since many truck drivers don't punch a clock and are financially motivated to misrepresent the actual hours spent. Hourly wage is often less then minimum.

The same thinking should go for miles driven. A new driver hears from the recruiter that the "driver's here average 2500 miles a week." No driver thinks of themselves as average. We are all above average! So when you tune in here, you will hear reports of 3000+ miles a week since we are all above average, of course. When you get into the bowels of the statistics at most of the mega trucking companies, you will find the weekly average for drivers is around 1700-2200miles a week, through no fault of their own. Obviously the recruiter is motivated to exaggerate and so are the drivers that appear on this forum.

 

Below average weekly mileage with a draconian miles to hours left until delivery check against the fleet policy of 50 miles an hour at 6 am. Those running late get a call me message, some of whom will have the last day of employment.

You cannot count on a full year of employment anything when drivers are disposible.

And yes we have a time clock, first the logbooks now the electronic ELD. If that #### does not matter to the government in terms of wages earned, then this whole thing is a .. hunts for words... a .. frivolous exercise.

In my time in order to settle the feast and famine problem weekly is to be a trainer at salary. As long your students pass evaluation with the required skills which YOU will be teaching them, who cares what the miles pay or whatever is. Salary sufficient fat takes care of that. The industry has been obsolete for decades paying the same tired .32 because people are not aware that is what they paid 50 years ago.

Once the industry understands the fixed cost of salary based driving positions, then things should settle down nicely.