Recent data from the American Trucking Associations found that the average truckload driver made over $69,000 including salary and bonuses in 2021 — an 18% increase from 2019.
At the same time, however, driver compensation — that is, a lack of it — ranked as the No. 1 issue among company drivers and third among all drivers, according to the latest annual survey released in October by the American Transportation Research Institute, which works closely with ATA.
Drivers also ranked detention/delay at customer facilities among their top concerns. The U.S. Department of Transportation estimated in 2018 that time lost waiting to pick up and drop off freight costs commercial truck drivers over $1 billion in annual pay.
Many of those drivers believe that the best way to address both issues is for the government to step in and require that trucking companies pay their drivers overtime.
| Rank | Company Drivers | Owner-Operators/Independent Contractors |
| 1 | Driver compensation | Fuel prices |
| 2 | Truck parking | Truck parking |
| 3 | Detention/delay at customer facilities | Driver compensation |
“The big guys get away with cheap labor because they don’t want to pay overtime. The big box shippers get away with detaining drivers because nobody charges them. The big carriers don’t charge the shippers because they don’t want to lose the freight,” Lewie Pugh, executive vice president for the Owner-Operator Independent Trucking Association, told FreightWaves.
“We spent years trying to figure out how to get people’s attention on this, and with trucking being so diverse — what you haul might take 15 minutes, what I haul might take four hours — we decided the simplest thing is to remove an exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) so that truckers could get paid overtime. Right now, they’re working 70 hours a week or more.”
Overtime pay legislation pending
OOIDA is a principal backer of the Guaranteeing Overtime for Truckers Act, legislation introduced in the House in April and in the Senate in September that would repeal the motor carrier exemption in the FLSA that excludes company drivers from overtime protections. Pugh estimates that roughly 10-15% of OOIDA’s membership consists of company drivers.
“If this legislation were to pass, the big carriers would be able to pressure shippers and receivers to load their drivers who are on the clock sitting at the loading dock,” Pugh said. “And raising driver pay will raise the rates, which will have a downstream economic effect whereby the smaller owner-operators will be able to raise their rates as well.”
A third-party logistics executive also sees benefits to providing overtime to truckers. “While this wouldn’t help us directly, we care about the drivers we use and whatever affects them positively would affect us,” Dimitre Kirilov, president of consumer services at Montway Auto Transport, a Chicago-based 3PL, told FreightWaves. “Transportation touches everything — we all pay the bill at the end of the day.”
OOIDA and other backers of the legislation seem to have firm support from the Biden administration. Repealing the trucking industry’s FLSA exemption was highlighted in the U.S. Department of Transportation’s supply chain vulnerability report released in February.
DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg himself said that driver recruitment should not become a “leaky bucket” if new drivers end up leaving due to a pay gap with other industries. “Rather, we make sure that the working conditions and the compensation reflect the fact that those jobs are absolutely essential,” he said.
And the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration recently contracted a study with the Transportation Research Board, as required by the infrastructure law passed last year, on how various methods of driver pay — including getting paid by the hour — affects safety and driver retention.
Opposition to overtime pay is fierce
But getting the legislation passed will be an uphill battle. ATA is actively lobbying against the bills, arguing, among other things, that mandating overtime would require the industry to revamp compensation models that have been in place for decades but “likely resulting in no net change in the total compensation to truck drivers,” according to the group.
Instead, the threat of wage and hour litigation “will inevitably force employers to manage driver workloads with a focus on limiting liability and economic downside rather than on safety, efficiency, and levels of service for freight customers,” ATA contends. “Such a change would limit trucking capacity nationwide, drive up freight costs, slow the movement of goods, and threaten highway safety.”
Jim Mullen, who served as acting administrator at FMCSA during the Trump administration, acknowledged that driver pay remains an issue but that getting rid of the FLSA is not the way to go.
“There are some segments of the industry where drivers are being taken advantage of, and that needs to be corrected,” Mullen, now head of his own consulting firm, Mullen Consulting LLC, told FreightWaves. It’s been a problem for some time, and you would hope that the marketplace would eventually correct that.
“But as far as eliminating the exemption under the FLSA for interstate trucking, it’s a good concept in theory. In practice, it would create a rather large shift for both drivers and carriers in how they look at the labor force.”
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Nate
I think $80,0000 a year is reasonable for company drivers. CPM wages should be outlawed an hourly pay a mandate with overtime after 8 hours. ELDs should permanently remain. At the current rate of pay in trucking I’m parked homeless in a van next to a College by a park. The cost of living is outrageous such as housing.
Jean Babbitt
If you look at the Fair Labor Act,the reasoning behind not having drivers described there in was because the ICC was there to control it.
The ICC is gone with the Clinton administration, The time is overdue for this.Also as a note to Mayor Pete,trucking is a skilled trade.
Metal Charlie
Anytime you rely on the government it’s not a good starting place, quote they should do something, I believe you are responsible for what I am doing for myself and those around me, so if you want more money find a job that’ll pay you more money
Rsm61
If it’s enough for the individual, then it’s enough. I know people who would drive for less, and those who would want more. There’s no “perfect” wage for any job.
Stephen Webster
The C T A in canada is opposed to overtime after 9 hrs of driving or 10 hrs on duty
Huron Easy Share a nonprofit that helps disabled injured sick truck drivers and often vets is pushing for 11 paid sick days a yr medical transport and care for driver that get hurt or sick in the U S or canads. This should include all drivers that come in as foreign drivers ( stidents) A number trucking companies in ont are paying about $28 to $31 on payroll cd or $36 to $40/ hr for leased ops after truck expenses that have 2 or more experiance. Large trucking companies are paying foreign student nee drivers $17 to $23hr on pay after 1 yr $30hr to a corp account that self insure. To buy a semi detached home in ont and wife to stay home with 3 small children the O T R drivers needs to make at least $110,000 cd or $85,000U S plus medical or about $375 cd / day or $286U S per day
Any lesx and construction or being a fireman or a O.P P officer or some factory jobs would pay more
A local factory that builds house trailers is paying $30cd / hr plus upto $10,000/ yr to a max of 3 yrs off the pricr of a new moblile home in ont.
Ronald Lee Kuehne
I have spent a lifetime with trucking. From the 80’s through the post 9-11. Ending in 2010 due to several federally medical issues including blindness. ALL Seafood, Grocery, Dry Goods, Meat in particular (You could wait three days at say Garden City Kansas while they cut to order your specific trailer reefer load of meat into 550 boxes onto the floor about 50000 pounds worth.) pay zero.
Wife joined me as a full CDL A Trucker team. We ran high dollar pharmacy drop hook overnights anywhere east of Denver out of Memphis for McKesson. We also hauled Blood Plasma fresh from LA to Avenel NJ twice weekly round trips straight through. 6300 miles actual per week. Ran about 210,000 miles together that year. OR… 306 service days times 24 hours away from home at work logged in the 18 wheeler for a gross filed wages of 68,000 dollars jointly between myself and wife.
That worked out to .34 cents a mile for me, same for wife. Or put another way 7420 hours worked in 2000-2001. Wages came out to about 4.52 a hour for me and same for wife Gross Pay. There was no money in trucking then. I ended the 2001 after 9-11 at 49 cents a mile which is the absolute top pay in the entire industry that year. No waiting anything. Strictly drop hook go.
I recall breaking my back working for Sysco, Americold, Hunts Point and Assoicated Grocers and all sorts of places around the USA UNPAID. Take you 24 to 30 hours to wait for a dock (Walmart Denver made me wait 19 hours to dock, then charged us 60 dollars to unload over 9 hours destroying the next preplanned load east.) Americold Salinas CA pulled us in (Me and Wife) to ready wait at their loading dock in the summer of 2001 ready to go at a moments notice when load is put in a precooled trailer being held at negative 25 degrees.
That was a 84 hour wait to load. Then three days to get to Denver. (About a thousand miles paid) and another day to unload. 6 goddamn days for less than a minimum wage fast food earner. I think we were given that problem load as a punishment because the San Fran Ternimal of FFE that year contained a countrys worth of solo drivers on call up and down the west coast that could have loaded it instead of wasting a valuable blood plasma team. We had savings and ate the losses.
ECK Miller out of Rockport IN made me sit in the 1995 time for days waiting on a phone call to see about getting a load. This is in a flatbed in the heart of Steel Mill and Aluminum country. Punished. Starved out actually. I finally ran out my savings and Maryland awarded me for cause leaving that company against them for 7 months unemployment. In turn that company quit specifically hiring any more drivers from Maryland and specifically under Indiana Law blacklisted me legally. So I was out of trucking almost three years running locally in a paving truck. The economic losses were horrendous during that time.
Wages? HA> Overtime forget it. Feast and famine. I am extremely seasoned and particularly bitter and angry at the lack of good money to drivers since Deregulation. Yes I was around truckers before Deregulation and in those days in the 60’s and 70’s everything was regulated including money and wages. EVERYONE who worked hard had so much money they could not spend it all every week. Deregulation killed it in the late 70’s
The Trucking Industry made sure to take advantage of tax help from the Government (The People) by gaining approximately 7000 dollars a head per immigrant driver who was able to get a CDL in the USA and drive at 24 cents a mile. Wages none of us would touch or accept as having seen that failed from top pay in the 70’s to absolute starvation wages in the late 90’s
I can go on. But inflation between the 80’s 30K annual wages with no bills or anything to worry about to 70,000 in 2001 with two drivers and everything paid off was no money. Fast forward to 2010, I was a crew boss at a auction house responsible for 30 CDL drivers at minimum wage of 40 dollars a truck sale day once a month. As long as gasoline, withholding and lunch costs were less than 12 dollars total work was profitable.
Only one company in the December of 2001 that hired me JB Hunt of North Little Rock Arkansas sent me to get rolls of paper in southern arkansas my first day. In a older 1984 cabover no less. Working condions was a step down. HOWEVER the minute I hooked to that trailer and put in the loaded call on satellite, the JBH Company made a instant payroll direct deposit to my bank and to my cash card exact net wages About 310 some dollars for the next 3 days work after taxes and withholding to me.)
Suddenly I could send money home to wife, have a exact amount needed to do three days driving and eating and the rest went to savings. A first. Unfortunately later that month I had to quit because again there was no money in it. Food costs retail in the truckstop has tripled in 30 years and truckstops closed resturants and started maintaining bad fast food places with no places inside to sit and rest to do paperwork in the old tradition. So there was no point. I was blind for the first time soon after anyway. Ive been blind four times since. Surgery took care of it each time at about a total cost of 180,000 or so. Paid for by Medicare. (Disability)
There is no money then, ever and even now there is still no money in the industry. I stand against the shippers, brokers, trucking companies and the Government who all colluded to keep costs low by shafting the socalled professionals with very low wages in inflationary times of peace and even war. You had to find very specific kinds of freight like Blood Plasma, Medical Drugs and high dollar stuff around the USA to make money handover fist. Then again if you lost a two million dollar load of painkillers or your life… you are responsible for it all.
There is no money even in that. Thank god I am not able to continue trucking under the ever increasingly strict federal rules and laws. Some of which destroy good drivers before they have a chance to discover for themselves after 7000 dollar trucking school, 1000 to get through orientation and another 1000 for savings until paid first time in actual paycheck should they survive all that on 300 dollars a week of training with a trainer for months. Thats a form of cost savings to the company. Incessant training. I can show a holding of CDL for 36 years in my lifetime and have experiences that no longer are on paper or computer records and are still treated as a high school kid who just got a fresh CDL yesterday at wages so low there is no way to make a good live on it.
Raising a family with wife and children plus a house and land and bills? Nope. If a trucker was smart they made sure that never happened as I did. No family, no children, no bills and a small home paid for outright. Cash. Utilities paid a year in advance. Then we go trucking. All thats left is a little bit of taxes and daily food. Thats it. Wages covered that at least.
Thats not being human to live. And countless future generations are unborn in my personal life not to have children. Ever. Because trucking is not a economic powerhouse as it was in the 70’s I am having a 56th birthday today and I have spent most of today counting losses in 36 years of holding a CDL. I dont have that any more. I have absolutely no desire to get it. Even if I wanted to I would be rejected by Insurance because of Chronic Pain Managment history among other things. So there is no point. What a loss to the Nation. I’ll die a trucker. But have nothing to do with today’s overregulated, non paying and personal liabilities and enforcement too strong to accept as part of trucking anymore. I reject it.
They can repeal all that overtime act since the 1934 ICC law. They can and should. But four Generations of truckers since then in the tens of millions will spin in their graves because of all these enormous economic and human toll of not paying them or me properly because of that goddamn act. And the cooperation among the shippers, recievers, Companies and Goverment to contain costs. Which usually means keep wages dirt cheap or none at all.
I cannot go into a grocery store today and assess 12 pallets worth of food items being stocked by the stockboys on minimum wage. I know exactly how many hours it will take me personally to unload that from a tractor trailer into a food distribution (About 7 hours on up… unpaid) and if none of it was rejected for damage etc… you got very little wages overall on the trip to it.
Yes I am embittered. You could as a Nation cut me a ten million dollar check as to every single individual who ever drove a tractor trailer going back to 1934, it will not ease or assausge the losses and pain accumulated on no money over all those lifetimes. So Go and repeal it. Pat yourselves on the back.
Serves us all right with robot trucks and no human drivers in the near future because humans cost too much.
I noticed
I noticed FBI is calling businesses saying your not to do business with that motor carrier. They a subsidiary of Estes. You will be sued for doing business with them.
Sheldon
Can someone explain to me how paying a driver properly more money will affect “safety” as the opponents are trying to point out?
*40+OT vs 70/80 hours per week = less driver fatigue
*having loads ready to go = less driver fatigue
*driver getting paid better = less of drivers rushing to get to stops
****big companies have big safety programs = drivers operate safely regardless of pay**.
Sounds to me like the big carriers are on a keep them poor track! Well, its time for drivers to be treated like the professionals they are.