There is always a huge debate regarding truck driver pay, and for very good reason. There are a lot of job duties that drivers are responsible for but do not get paid for directly. There are conflicts of interest in getting paid by the mile when laws clearly limit the amount of work a driver is allowed to do. We go through a lot of training, are required to qualify for a federal license, must pass DOT physicals including pre-employment and random drug tests, must pass stringent background checks, are held to higher driving standards, are kept away from our homes and families for extended periods of time, must live in a space the size of a walk-in closet, and deal with incredibly difficult traffic, weather, and road conditions on a daily basis in order to get the job done. There are a ton of sacrifices that truck drivers make to move this country forward. Are we getting paid fairly for those sacrifices?
Getting Paid By The Mile A Big Issue
Truck drivers are usually paid by the mile, and often times get paid little or nothing for a lot of their job duties, including fueling, scaling, detention at customers, DOT inspections, getting repairs done, sitting in heavy traffic backups, waiting out bad weather and road conditions from snowstorms, filling out paperwork, and a host of others. Trucking companies would argue that these other duties are taken into consideration when mileage pay is calculated. Drivers usually respond by saying “Baloney! If I’m doing work for the company I need to get paid for it directly.” It’s hard to argue with that. But the question becomes “How do trucking companies pay drivers for everything they do without subjecting themselves to fraud or excessive collateral expenses?”
For instance, what if you paid a driver $10 every time he scales a load? Many drivers will scale loads that are too light to require scaling. So then a company would have to monitor weigh tickets and set gross vehicle limits in order for a driver to get paid for scaling a load, right? Where do you set the weight limit? How many more office personnel would be required to scrutinize every weight ticket and determine if a driver deserves to be paid for it? Who will resolve disputes and give drivers special approval for special circumstances? There’s a lot of issues to deal with, even with such a simple idea.
Another example – detention time at customers. Wow is this a big point of contention. There are piles of issues to work through, including:
- How much time should a driver sit without pay?
- How would you prove how long the driver sat somewhere? Maybe have each customer sign the times on the bills? What if the customer refuses to sign? What if they try to lie about how long you sat? What if they try to blame the driver for the delay somehow – like saying the trailer needed to be swept out but the driver took a long time doing it? How do you prevent drivers from paying off customers to sign that they’ve sat longer than they actually have?
- Does a trucking company force its customers to pay for this? If so, what if the customer refuses and decides to go with a different trucking company to haul their freight? Should the trucking company pay the driver out of pocket for an expense they have no control over and have no way to get reimbursed for?
- How do you handle customers that have freight that is by its nature difficult and time-consuming to load?
- What if you go to pick up a load that’s a drop and hook but it’s not ready yet?
This is just a small sample of the issues to deal with regarding detention time – the list could easily fill a novel-size book. Detention time is an incredibly complex issue and it’s only one issue of many that drivers are angry about.
Drivers Are Limited By Law But Encouraged By Incentives
So the DOT limits the number of hours a truck driver is allowed to work, and yet trucking companies encourage drivers to do more work by paying them mileage pay. So on the one hand you’re told by your company “Work more and we’ll pay you more” and on the other hand you’re told by the government “If you work more than we feel you should then you’ll be fined”. That puts drivers in a tough spot. continue to page 2 –>
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Local drivers should be paid by the hour with overtime…and many ARE paid this way. Over-the-road drivers are a lot more complicated. On the one hand, it certainly isn't fair for drivers to sit for countless hours through no fault of his own without being paid for it. I know from experience that getting detention or layover pay from a large trucking company is a roll of the dice. Sometimes you get it…sometimes you don't. On the other hand, if OTR drivers were paid by the hour with overtime, there would certainly be attempted fraud by some drivers to get pay they haven't earned. Perhaps a fixed salary could be a solution. Even this would not be without its problems, but it seems more fair than the current system. Like any other job where the employee is on fixed salary, if the company feels that the driver is not earning the salary, terminate that driver and hire someone who will do the job. If the driver is not prepared to do the workload required by the company at the agreed-upon salary, don't accept the job… or quit.
You make some very good points Rick. The salary idea is interesting, but I think it has the same major problem as hourly – the drivers are going to feel like the more work they do, the more they're getting ripped off and the more the company is making off them. The less they do, the more free money they're getting. I can imagine a driver sitting empty after delivering a load and hoping and hoping that they don't come up with another load that day so they can sit for free and collect a salary, then being disappointed when the Qualcomm beeps and they have to run another load. The best possible solution is to get the driver's interests to be the same as their company's interests – to run hard and be productive so everyone makes all the money they can legally make.
I agree with you about local drivers – except again you still have the problem of milking the clock. I wonder if Sysco, for instance, pays by the hour, salary, or by the amount of freight delivered? To pay by the amount of freight delivered again aligns driver interests with that of their company, but you have the concern that the driver will be in too big of a hurry to get home and take chances or be really upset when sitting in traffic or at the dock. It's all a compromise.
I agree. It's a tough call. Either way, someone is probably going to feel like they're getting the short end of the stick. The HOS rules make it even more complicated. Making it still more complicated is the large trucking company's claims that they want their drivers to run legally, yet they will often penalize drivers for refusing to take a load… even if they cannot do it legally.
WELL I REALIZE I HAVE BEEN OUT OF THE BUSINESS FOR OVER 20 YEARS , BUT IN MY DAY , YOU GOT A GOOD PERCENTAGE OF THE LOAD THAT COVERED ALL OF THAT EXTRA WORK. TO ME THAT SEEMED FAIR ENUF. I PERSONALLY THINK 80/20 SPLIT WORKS GOOD, 80% TO THE TRUCK 20% TO THE BROKER , DRIVER TO GET 50% AT LEAST OF THE TRUCK, EVEN IF YOU SPLIT THE OPERATING COSTS
I think the key part of what you said was "to me that seemed fair enough". I think no matter what system you use it's going to be a compromise and nobody will be 100% thrilled with it – which usually means it's a decent compromise. I'm not sure about the exact percentages, and I certainly can't speak for the owner-operator side of things, but percentage works out similar to mileage pay – the harder you work, the more you make. That's what the companies are hoping for and I think that's what's best for the drivers also. At that point it's just a matter of agreeing on an acceptable percentage and things should work out fair for everyone in the end – and that's all you can really hope for. Great response Jim.
I run for a major US based company. I agree with being paid by the mile, however, there are some issues. Biggest issue to me is "Driver Assist" or "Driver Load/Unload". The main irritation is that the company will pay me only $40 to unload(and break down the pallets, if needed) while if lumpers are avaiable, are willing to pay upwards of $150-$300 for the same work! Because of this I do very little "Driver Unloads"! Alot of time it's not worth the $40 to get hot, sweaty and tired…I just sit in the truck and let the lumper do what he's getting paid for. Companies worrying about driver health issues, obesity and being generally out of shape should take note. Equal pay for equal work! I'd be more willing to do the work if the company was willing to pay me a decent wage.
AJ, you knew why they did this, but you didn't know you knew! You said it yourself:
Amen, brutha! That's exactly why your company offers you very little to do it yourself – they don't want you to do it! Good drivers are very hard to find and the last thing your company needs is you being too tired to drive, out of hours, or injured because you were unloading the truck. They can find a million people to unload trucks – but it's not nearly as easy finding a good driver. Plus they get to write-off the expense, they get reimbursed for it by the broker, and they don't get the added healthcare costs or worker's comp issues if you get injured.
So rejoice! You don't have to unload. But if you feel driving isn't enough of a challenge for ya, then take up flatbed. Then when it's 3:00 a.m. in early February and it's 5 degrees out and you have to get all bundled up to go tarp and strap a load for two hours you can reminisce about the good ole' days of sleeping while others dealt with loading and unloading freight
I ran skateboards for many years…so I know of what you speak! Nothing like tarping and straping a Colorado Alfalfa load at zero dark:30 in the middle of Jan to make you wish for warmer pastures. Point I was trying to make is that when I ran flats, and back in the "early" days where I could play lumper and get paid for it, my health was considerably better due to getting the exercise involved with the task. Now days, major companies(mine included), hold seminars and safety/health meetings every few months to get drivers to become more active or loose weight. I believe that the overweight/health problems could be alieveiated by paying drivers a reasonable pay rate to unload at. With the HOS fiasco…hours spent unloading would at least show a little profit to the driver. It should be a drivers option as to unload or not.
I see what you're saying about the driver being able to unload and the benefits – but I think companies are far more concerned about their drivers being exhausted or getting injured, and very few drivers actually want to unload trucks – ever. I used to go jogging when I was on the road like 5 days a week. I also finally learned that you can lose weight by controlling calories alone – you don't even need to exercise to lose weight – see Weight Watchers. 1500 calories per day and I lost 25 pounds in two months with almost no exercise.
The other problem is that even if you let it be the driver's choice whether they want to unload or not, will the driver's company be given the choice whether or not to pay worker's comp and healthcare costs if the driver gets hurt? Will the company be given the choice regarding whether or not the driver can bring a lawsuit against them? Nope. So the company has to protect themselves at the same time.
First of all driver unload or assit is the way that the co. your delivering to saves money by not having to pay for its dock help,even to the point of the break down requirements of pallets in order for them to fit them in there racks,for there convenience,with your labor.As far as pay goes Mileage pay or percentage work is good for an owner operator,but only if its fair and just,one should not be getting the short end,with the price of fuel ,ins ect The rate should be brought way up to reflect the costs of modern days and locked in as a minimum,aka regulation, two dollars a mile+ stop pay-.Company drivers should not be behind the wheel for under 60,000 a year.Road and regional drivers should be paid on a 14 hr day @ minimal $20.00 per hr.Time is money for the rest of the working world why not for us? Ive been trucking 25 years or more and make less now than 20 years ago perspectivly.I could go on and on about the lack of fairness in this industry and the deteroration of it as well