I’ve been talking to a recruiter at a trucking company, and she mentioned pay “by the mile.” Looks like drivers are paid per mile. I couldn’t get a solid number out of the recruiter.
This “per mile” bit concerns me. Is there an unlimited pool of miles from which drivers can earn? If I drop off a load, am I going to sit there looking stupid for a period of time until another load comes available?
Please help. This is all very new to me.
You’ll probably be paid by “book mile”, which is the shortest, most efficient highway distance between two points. On a LTL (multi-drop) load, you will recieve a bit more; additional pay may include loading/unloading, fuel bonus, safety.
Depends on the company, but you’ll probably get a per diem minimum when laid over. It’s to the company’s advantage to keep you moving; laid-over drivers cost them money and don’t generate income.
I think you are right to be concerned.
My experience is as a Receiving manager. After I left that job I was recruited by a few of the LTL’s in my area for transfer facilities management. Ultimately I passed on those opportunities but I learned a lot in the interview processes.
I’ve talked to a number of drivers over the years and the ones getting paid by the mile normally end up getting the short end of the stick. The shipping companies and driver recruiting firms make a concentrated effort to make the payment structures difficult for drivers to actually decipher. They prefer to hire drivers that are bad at math. That way they get drivers that end up working at lower wages and never realize it.
One of the common features of by the mile is they have no issues scheduling up pick ups and drop offs that leave drivers sitting around for hours and sometimes days. So yes you end up sitting around looking stupid for no pay.
Trucking companies are the most flagrant violators of labor laws I’ve ever dealt with. The law may require payment for your time but the companies as a matter of policy will ignore such laws. With some companies cooking your logs is expected and not doing so will cost you your job.
If I was going to get into driving I’d be looking seriously at a union position. For all the negatives and fee’s and corruption associated with unions in the trucking industry they are the only ones looking out for the drivers in a sea full of sharks.
Do you have your CDL or are you dealing with a recruitment firm that’s offering training?
Getting paid by the mile… sounds like a great recipe for setting 18-wheelers loose on the roads - no wonder they had to bring in the 55 mph speed cap.
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One of the common features of by the mile is they have no issues scheduling up pick ups and drop offs that leave drivers sitting around for hours and sometimes days. So yes you end up sitting around looking stupid for no pay.
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I was an OTR driver, and don’t 100% share this cynicism.
Yes, you can be screwed by LTL (Less than (full) Load) schedules, but that is more due to ignorance by whoever schedules than some nefarious plot by the trucking company. ie: Person who sets the schedule consults a map and decides that it is reasonable for you to make delivery A in Chicago south side at 7 am and Gary, Indiana at 10 am. Sure, they’re not that far apart…but traffic is brutal, especially at that time of day. And, the dispatcher isn’t taking into account realistic loading or unloading times. So, yeah, with inept management, a driver may be left sitting for a day…but that isn’t making money for anyone and a good system will keep a driver moving and making money for everyone. I worked for a couple of good companies that kept me moving and making money most of the time.
Also, sometimes a layover was fun. Drop the trailer and go off exploring!
ModernPrimate - governing speed is number one to reduce fuel costs - typically the largest expense, and number two to reduce insurance costs - number two expense.
Did you get the part about “book miles”? That means a driver doesn’t get to take a leisurely or fun route and get paid for it. The driver gets paid only for the shortest/most efficient route, per book miles - an industry standard. And will get docked for fuel inefficiency (aka taking a longer route.)
I see.
I didn’t mean taking a longer route, I meant an incentive to push forward in slow or start-stop traffic. Sometimes traffic is like the law of the jungle… the bigger vehicle gets priority. Though I must say that some lorry drivers are very good and have often given way to me.
What does “pushing forward” have to do with being paid per mile? 
It’s per mile. Not per hour.
I think you are not in the U.S? Here in many states trucks are held to a lower speed limit that autos; at least on interstates.
It’s not about speed, mileage rules are strictly enforced these days. I imagine it’s the same in EU, but I’m not familiar with laws there. My impression is the OP is in the U.S. though.
Yes I am.
So, you get a flat rate per mile, say the trip you have to do today will pay $100, by book mileage, regardless of how fast you do it.
If you take 10 hours to do that trip, you are getting paid $10 per hour. Do it in 8 hours and you’re getting $12.50 an hour (and get to watch an extra two hours of Nascar on TV).
Paying truckers by the hour would be a pretty silly way of doing it if you want speedy deliveries…
My brother was an OTR trucker in the US midwest for a year or so back around 2005. He was paid the going rate per mile by an outfit that was good enough to keep him moving almost all the time.
In the first year he worked about 340 12-hour days and made about $45K gross. Since he effectively lived in the truck all year he had very few outside expenses. Rather than eat truck stop food (expensive & crappy) he tended to hit grocery stores for real food.
In talking with other truckers he believes his experience was typical.
Bottom line: barely minimum wage when you consider the total hours worked. No chance to have any kind of a life other than working. And you’re alone the whole time. Alone isn’t unsupervised; there’s somebody at HQ who is on your ass all day to get wherever ASAP, regardless of weather, time of day, traffic, etc.
Exactly. It’s the exact opposite of what he’s saying, despite him trying to claim it’s the exact opposite of what I’m saying. It’s really not a difficult concept. :rolleyes:
I read the thread title as “mate.” Thought it was about the consequences of long separations.
He would not be able to put in 340 days of 12 hour shifts under the current rules without violating the 60/70 on duty hours rule. You can work 60 hours in 7 days or 70 hours in 8 days and then you have to take 34 hours off before you can repeat the cycle. From the link below:
There are daily limits as well. Here is a brief summary of the Hours of Service rules:
The thing to keep in mind about getting paid by the mile is that you cannot make up for a poor mileage per hour route by driving longer hours. You get a route where you cannot cover a lot of miles during your hours of service and you are screwed.
Not long after I became a magistrate, I had a rash of lawsuits come before me in which long-haul truckers were suing their bosses either for stiffing them on their wages, charging them for things they weren’t actually responsible for, firing them for no good reason, etc. The impression I got is that it can be a pretty cutthroat business and that nobody ever gets rich driving a big rig.
Dallas: Several of those rules are relatively new.
Also, it was standard in the industry to keep two sets of books, each of which showed everything nice and legal. But when you were sleeping in one book you were working in the other book and vice versa. That is much less true now as most trucks have GPS devices which report back to HQ who keeps one consolidated set of (supposedly) honest books.
The other thing is/was that the quantity which was limited was hours driving. Hours waiting or loading or unloading didn’t count. So if you had a 10-hour duty day limit, that meant you could spend 2 hours loading the truck, 10 hours driving, 2 hours waiting for a loading dock position, then 2 more hours unloading and still have only “worked” a 10-hour day in terms of the legalities.
Add all that up and it was a recipe for 1-2 days off per month and 4-6 hours sleep per 24 hours most days.
I think the reality is a little less grim now, at least for the companies which track their trucks & keep honest books. OTOH, the drivers also cover less mileage in a day, so they bought & paid fot that decent amount of sleeping time directly out of their own pocket.
Yeah, the rules are new. I was not attacking your information, just adding to it.
The separate logs, called Liar’s Logs were quite common. As you say, it is a lot harder to get away with now. Many of the weigh stations where you used to have to stop and have your log checked now have ‘weigh in motion’ available so that the truck doesn’t even need to stop or slow down, just use the right hand lane. But you are then tracked from weigh station to weigh station and a violation will be discovered, by computer.
More common is the GPS so that the truck can be more acurately tracked for time of delivery. This also rules out log cheating and inhibits speeding.
But the subject of this thread is pay per mile. All the new advances in tracking increase honesty and inhibit ‘creative’ logging. If the OP is going to get a known route the company should be able to tell him how much he will be making.
The fact that his contact was evasive might be a warning sign right there.
Most major trucking companies have GPS, speed governors and satellite transmitters on their trucks so that they can track where and how fast their drivers are traveling at all times. Since the company pays for the fuel and the insurance, it’s in the interest of the Company to regulate the speed. This is how they keep the driver from speeding to rack the most miles in the shortest amount of time.