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.
Brett percentage isn't that great ! because you don't get paid for sitting waiting on a load,and alot of companies out there take advantage of that ! I've worked for several and have put in as much as 6-8 hrs.per day,not getting paid for waiting to get loads. and in the oil/gas industry i was told when I get to the customer not to charge them untill after 4 hours sitting waiting to unload,when the load paid the driver 27 % or about $ 58.00 to the driver.
and the company I'm with now tells you to be at the shop at 8:00 so you can be at the customers at 9:00 and
when you get to thier location your time does'nt start till 9:30 or 10:00 . thats time you don't get paid for !
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
considering the vast majority of companies used the mover's guide and the miles are way off the milage pay is not fair. I don't understand why you wouldn't even look at the pay for european drivers with a combination of hourly and milage, with overtime on the hourly. That is a much more fair way to pay. I have looked through your different article and it's striking how many times you decide against the drivers best interest. Are you being paid by any companies through advertising?
Ya know, that's interesting about the way they pay European drivers – I've never even looked into that. I'll have to take a look and see how they approach it. Ultimately though, it's going to be a combination of competition and legislation that determines the method of pay for drivers. Companies must be able to compete with each other, and they're going to do whatever they can to cut costs. So the idea of "they should do it this way" will likely have to be guided by some sort of legislation here in the US, not by morals and not by the way companies outside our own country are doing it. People want change, but they tend to freak out when you mention legislating anything. Unfortunately that's the only way you can get change in some circumstances.
And often times when it seems I'm going against a driver's best interest, there's more to it that you may realize. I'm a realist – I was a hard-working company driver for 15 years but I've been a small business owner outside of trucking for a number of years now. So I understand both sides – that workers want fair wages and fair treatment, but a company has to do whatever it possibly can to make a profit. Often times when someone disagrees it's because they've never owned a business before – they don't understand the realities of having fierce competition all around you trying to wipe you out every chance they get. Companies do not exist as charities for workers – they must be profitable or die trying. That's the reality that drives working conditions – competition and legislation – not morality or charity.
Great Topic!!! My business partner and I are in the beginning stages of starting a small trucking company. Our original plans were to have owner operators lease on to our company, run under our authority and we provide them with a trailer. However, we started out purchasing two trucks and two reefer trailers and plan to hire two company drivers. Since my ex husband was an owner/operator and a company driver, I saw how many companies cheated him. So its important that I'm extremely fair to my drivers. We've decided to pay company OTR drivers on a percentage bases (70/30 split..with 30% to the driver). I'm trying to take into consideration everything that a driver must do while on the road. My only concern is will the 70% be enough to cover fuel, ins, tolls, equipment capital, highway road tax, truck & trailer repairs, etc). My biggest concern is the cost of fuel. Should I deduct the cost of fuel off the top and then do a 70/30 split? I really want to do whats fair to the driver, while making sure I can pay the bills and make a profit.
I have to agree with point Brett Aquila brings up on detention, and it ultimatly being in control of by the shipper, and all shippers would need a guideline on delays, and it would require regulation.
The problem I see is simple disagreement on the shippers part, they will think it would be an expense not called for.
As most of us that have driven, we've seen that, most shippers have nothing to brag about in efficiency in shipping depts. There are those, large shippers, that do get a lot done, some with too few assets, but even those intentionally keep costs down by limiting worker/loader manhours regardless of loads to be handled on daily basis. IMO, other than knowing saturday will be slow than monday and spring is more intense than Christmas/ will be buisy, the Big shippers do not vary scheduled manhours on an intense level.
Detention
This is the only real limit to productivity of the CDL driver. Weather does not affect daily opportunity all year round.
What regulation would need is a required notification of loads over, say 400 miles to be on a "18 hour awareness report". This could generate via software as interactive software to billing/shipping andwould be a requirement as a licenced shipper. The driver checks in, has a stamped "arrival" slip, this arrival time is handled at the dock mostly now and only regarded, not by management, but by a "dock supervisor". So in effect, management is unaware of much of the delays and are not "responsible" so do not see any benefit possibilties as those shipping point managers are out of the loop… responsibly. Without being made to "be aware", productivity will never be ramped up and the excuse of managing loader manhours will always be the excuse.
It's no pretty thing managing a loading scheme for dock loaders as we've all seen,, but most loaders would like to be aware of numbers of loads to be handled the day before, AND have enough labor on hand to get the job done, without OT. It is not always how many doors do we have/what assets in forklifts and forkdrivers and lumpers that limits getting more loads out the door with what we have on hand at this jucture.
Again, much of the accounting on shippers part can be handled in software, and efficieny on loading would be seen more readily. Profit then can be honestly seen and a uniform cost analysis on loading time and manhours could give a number that can be relied apon. This would give a applicability to a surcharge on loading. If an efficient loading system handles the loadouts, then the Govt. could reimburse the shipper a nominal amount. This amount would go down for inefficiency to nothing. Rather than penalize, reward for keeping trucks moving.
Shippers would have to be more efficient, driver dispatchers would have to be more efficient and both would be in a position to create more income. Less fuel used, less trucks on the road, fewer drivers aaannnnddd all the associated costs. One would have to believe shippers and recievers would like more timely departures and arrivals, yes? Then how can they continue to make the excuse "if we only had a "good" driver" the load would have made it on schedule? By demonstrating lack of and being held responsible for, efficient manhour use… with a carrot.
Since loading a truck(Van palatized), takes ave. about an hour or less, the ave load has about 15K$ shipper product, the Driver wage (if efficient)= 150-200$ a day, Fuel cost(if efficient)= 100 gal.<>=300$<>, tractor cost + 60 cents a mile x600 miles a day with payment and or maint.,… shipper costs on labor and forklifts are the least expensive portion of an individual load I believe. These numbers change with time, but are representative of how much goes into a "load"… so a little "help" in regulation could go a long, long ways.
I've been paid both ways. The best way I see pay to be implemented is a very simple formula. Drive by the mile, pay by the individual job you do. Set up extra duties by a commission basis. You do the job and you get paid the same amount for it regardless of the time spent doing it. pallet loads vs floored loads would pay more for the load on the floor. Set a minimum gvw pay for having to scale. DOT inspections pay depending on the type being done. Breakdowns are easy. From the time you call in for road assistance to the time the repair facility calls your company with the final bill. Traffic delays are just something you'll have to deal with. Weather delays would send that person into an immediate 10 hour break then pay by the hour up tp 11 before requiring another 10 hour break. Fueling a basic 1/2 hour. Detention time is/should be monitored by qualcomm from the time of arrival/scheduled arrival until the person sends an empty call in.