Loaded and Rolling: Driver pay data highlight earnings gain

Driver pay data highlight earnings gain

The National Transportation Institute (NTI) recently released Q4 2023 driver pay data that shows driver earnings continue to climb in spite of the freight market undergoing a correction. Drivers’ base mileage pay brackets saw a shift, with the 40-to-50-cents-per-mile pay bracket falling 5.2% year over year as fleets raised wages to attract and retain drivers. The 50-to-60-cents-per-mile bracket saw a 6.1% y/y increase.

Fleet wage growth also saw changes with cap pay. The report noted, “From 2020’s Q4 to 2022 Q4, drivers with 1 year and 3 years of experience saw the biggest per-mile wage gains. Since late 2022, however, the trend shifted. Cap earners, those with the most experience and highest base pay have seen the biggest percentage wage gains through 2023.” The report adds that new drivers to the industry with one year of experience are now earning more per mile in Q4 2023 than drivers in 2020 who had the most experience and base pay.

Amid overabundant trucking capacity evident in the current glut of drivers, the report noted that recruiting momentum in the forms of sign-on and referral bonuses saw declines. The average dollar amount for those bonuses in Q4 2023 fell the first time since Q2 2022, while referrals saw their first decline since Q3 2023. Referral bonuses fell $29, while sign-on bonuses fell $53 from Q4 2022 to Q4 2023.

ATA survey: Carriers spend $14B per year on safety

New data released by the American Trucking Associations shows that the trucking industry invests $14 billion annually in technology, training and other costs to improve highway safety. According to the survey, which is still accepting submissions, the $14 billion was “over 40% higher than our last survey conducted in 2015. ATA surveyed a variety of motor carriers — from fleets with just a few trucks to carriers with more than 10,000 power units on the road, running the full breadth of the industry. In total, companies responding to the survey accounted for almost 170,000 drivers and nearly 160,000 trucks.”

This comes as federal data looking at truck fatalities from 2017 to 2021 saw a rising trend after fatalities declined from 2019 to 2020. Reviewing the data, David Taube with Trucking Dive writes, “But truck crashes only involving property damage fared better in 2021 than incidents in 2018 and 2019. And from 2019 through 2021, the industry posted a decreasing rate of injuries in trucking crashes per 100 million miles traveled.”