TRUCK DRIVERS PAY

How many of you work at a job where you are told you have to go, go, go?  You have to get the job done even at the risk of pushing the safety envelope.  It has to be done yesterday.  Oh, and by the way, we are going to pay for each item that you get done and not pay you for anything else.  The copy machine broke down?  You know, the machine no one wants to use because it is old and breaks down all the time; sorry. Go home, and we’ll call you when it gets fixed.  

Oh yeah, you live 500 miles from work and you can’t go home? 

Here is a break room with a vending machine and a cot for you to sleep on, where you spend 36 hours waiting for the copy machine to get fixed.  Welcome to a day in the life of a typical truck driver.  I think the time has come to change the way a truck driver is paid.  Let’s look at the 3 ways a truck driver can be paid.

PAID BY THE MILE

Most truck drivers are paid by the mile.  This is the most efficient way to pay a truck driver because it gives a driver the incentive to work.  If you don’t keep the wheels turning, you don’t get paid. It is a “performance based” pay.  The problem comes in when a lot of people, i.e. politicians, get on a big kick about safety in the trucking industry.  We pay truck drivers by the mile and then wonder why a truck driver would run so hard, possibly endangering the motoring public.

Pay by the mile is just what it sounds like; wheels not turning…no pay.  Truck drivers do lots of tasks every day that they do not get paid for. Vehicle inspections, counting freight, fueling, traffic, waiting to get loaded/unloaded. The list goes on and on.  Sit for 16 hours at Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis Mo. and get nothing for your time.  Oh yeah, now that it is midnight, you must have that delivered 500 miles away by noon the next day.

Don’t get me wrong, a typical truck driver does not make minimum wage by a long shot.  But how many of you would like to do work you don’t get paid for?

PAID BY THE HOUR

Some will say that the best remedy for this pay situation is to pay a truck driver by the hour and be done with it.  Sounds good, but there are problems with this too.  As of today, most truck drivers do not load/unload their own trailers. Sadly, some facilities are what we call a “Driver Unload Facility”.  This is a place that has ordered all the goods on a particular trailer, but for some reason, they do not want to unload the stuff they ordered.  They want the driver to do it.

This would not be as big a problem if the driver is getting paid by the hour, but a truck driver will tell you, “I was hired to drive a truck, not a forklift.”  It is not that the task is beneath him; it is just a very inefficient use of a truck drivers D.O.T. regulated time. (And many times it is just a scheme to get you to pay a lumper service to unload your truck) But, if a truck driver is getting paid by the hour, a company will start to require that the driver be the one to do all the loading and unloading of his trailer.

A truck driver today can work up to 14 hours with only 11 of those hours behind the wheel.  If a truck driver spends 5 hours on a loading dock, then he only has 9 hours of drive time left.  Not a pay problem for the truck driver, but not a good use of time for the trucking company.

PAID BY SALARY

How many ‘Professionals’ do not get paid by salary?  See my article on ‘Professional Attitude“. The average trucking company in the United States will refer to their drivers as ‘Professional Drivers’.

So why not pay them a salary?

This would pay a driver for everything he does, he would not loose anything by sitting for long periods of time, and it would force trucking companies to negotiate with shippers/receivers about wait times. Problem is many truck drivers would get lazy.  They will know that working harder does not get them any more money. A salary base pay would also pay more for the drivers who do not work very hard and pay less for the drivers that do.

MY SOLUTION

I would like to see a combination of all three.  I would pay a salary based on the average annual pay of drivers for the company, a monthly or quarterly mileage bonus to give an incentive to work hard without hurting yourself or the motoring public, and an hourly bonus for ‘extras’: loading/unloading where there is no other option, D.O.T. inspections, scheduled maintenance when away from home.

I understand that trying to change the way an industry has paid its workforce is an uphill battle, but if politicians and company officials are truly concerned about safety, then we must begin to address the issue of how we pay our Professional Truck Drivers.

Click here for my post on the 4 Simple Steps to Being a Great Truck Driver.

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