What Truckers Make: A Comprehensive Guide to Truck Driver Pay
If you are curious what the pay is like in trucking, you have come to the right place. I have driven over the road, regional and local trucking jobs hauling several types of freight. I will go over the details of each driving job and the approximate figures I brought in personally.
Truckers Like to Brag About How Much They Make
If you go to any online trucking forum you will hear guys bragging about how much they make and more often than not this may not be the full accurate picture. For instance, they may be owner operators with a lot of extra expenses that come out of that weekly check. Or these truck drivers may be getting paid through a 1099 vs a W2 which will give them a large paycheck but in reality, they will make less because they are on the hook for extra payroll taxes.
What I Made Working for Schneider as a Trainee
My first job as a truck driver right out of trucking school was with Schneider. I was flown out to their tanker training facility in Houston Texas where I spent a couple of weeks taking their driver training course. Afterwards I went on to become an over the road trainee for them for a month. The pay was not great during this time. It was only $80 a day. Better than nothing but there were a lot of really long days to make that money. This is the price for being a trainee at about any major motor carrier, however. The job was not worth the pay, but the experience gained was invaluable.
What I Made Working as a Local Tanker Driver
My second trucking job was for a local tanker position hauling chemicals for CTL transportation. I would report at work as early at 4AM which was ridiculous because that meant I had to get up at 3AM to be there on time with the commute. We usually did two runs into Georgia from Florida going to various chemical plants, papermills or water treatment facilities. The day usually ended around 4PM. So, it was a 12-hour workday. The pay system was a mystery there. I never knew how much I would make until my physical paycheck was handed to me each Friday afternoon at the office. It was never explained to me. I can tell you though it was for a ridiculously small amount for the long days of work put in. In the range of $400 to $700 a week. The work weeks were over 60 hours usually. If you do the math on that it really was not worth it. The experience gained though would allow me to move on too much better paying trucking jobs in the not-too-distant future.
What I Made as a South-East Regional Driver
My third trucking job was what I would call my very first real trucking job. The reasons being is it covered the entire Southeast portion of the country hauling dry van and was a pretty well-known company. The pay however left a lot to be desired. The equipment was pretty awful. The truck would not even idle, so it was a sweat box when trying to sleep. The customers were not the best either in most instances. But I got some incredibly valuable experience. I was home weekly which was one bright spot. For the amount of work involved however it should have paid a lot more than the average $650-700 though. After working there several months I decided I had enough and would take a break from trucking for a while.
What I Made Trucking for Amazon
Fast forward a few months after sitting at home disgruntled with my first three trucking jobs. I came across a unique opportunity to run for Amazon as a CDL driver. I jumped on it right away and was assigned an older 2012 freightliner with a manual transmission. They then just threw me to the wolves with no training. I installed the Amazon Relay trucking app and started running loads with little explanation of what to do. I had to learn from trial and error. Fast forward over 2 years later and I knew the entire southeast Amazon warehouse network and could do the job like an expert. The pay while not great was consistent, and I averaged around $1250 a week before taxes for working 12-hour days 5-6 days a week. I was home every other day with the job. Sometimes this home time only lasted 10 to 12 hours on average before I had to rush back to the truck and run another 2 days. The job was worth my time and the experience gained was invaluable as I learned a lot about trucking running for Amazon. But after 2 years I had enough and the whole position was getting too repetitive, so I put in my 2-week notice. I craved something new and exciting and really just needed a break.
What I Made Running OTR Flatbed
Over the road was calling my name. I knew this is where the big bucks were plus, and I wanted to run all new lanes. I was tired of driving in the Southeast, so I applied for a flatbed position that ran from the east coast to the west coast and back that was based out of Chicago. At first, I was a little skeptical because the stated pay rate was high, and I mean really high. They promised $2400 to $3000 a week. After flying into Chicago and going through their one-day orientation I was assigned a brand-new Mack Anthem Truck. It was like a dream come true. It was shiny new, and I even had to rip off all of the plastic off in the cab. After settling in they promptly started dispatching to pick up my flatbed trailer and then had me run all over the area to pick up freight. A week or two passed and I received my first paycheck for around $2800. It was pretty impressive for a single week’s worth of work. Many more weeks would pass by, and the pay averaged around that but there would be weeks where I would earn over $3000 with the best one being for $4200. For 1 week of trucking! Here I was making up to three times the amount of what I made running for Amazon and driving around the same number of miles each week. I found my dream trucking job finally. The lanes I ran out west contained a lot of open highways with light traffic also. This was just icing on the cake. No longer was I stuck in jam packed bumper-to-bumper traffic on the east coast. That is not to say I did not experience a lot of traffic congestion in California where I drove in every other week. This job had a lot of responsibility. I had to secure the freight properly as well as make sure the trailer weight was legal. We were picking up to three loads on one side of the country to deliver to the other every week. So, in many ways the pay was earned. Driving around LA and the Bay area was also a stressful experience. Overall, though the pay, lanes and customers made it worth every minute. The customers I dealt with while flat bedding were nicer on average than their dry van warehouse counterparts in my experience. The freight was always different which made the job a lot more interesting than bumping docks at various warehouses in my previous trucking jobs.
My Trucking Income Summary
Trucking pay is determined by several factors. I have scanned through thousands of trucking jobs over the years and no 2 jobs are the same and this goes for the pay also. Be careful which companies you decide to run for because they will advertise a decent weekly figure but will make sure you run 70 hours a week to make that amount. If you are going to be running that much, I say you might as well be making the money to make it worth it. This is where running over the road freight in a high demand market will usually pay off. The companies are making a lot more and can pass these profits down to the driver. Demand to be paid what you are worth. Driving a truck is a tough and dangerous job that requires a lot of skill and an insane amount of time invested as well as lifestyle sacrifices. There is good reason a lot of trucking companies have trouble finding drivers. Simply many are not paying enough for what the job involves. Luckily, there are companies out there that are willing to pay you for what you are worth. Try to land on with one of these if at possible.
