Seven Tips For Drivers To Boost Their Pay

Jake Peters, a writer at DriveTeks, posted a comprehensive article at CDL Life last Friday on "How to make more money as a truck driver." The gist of the article is that although truck drivers enjoy job security in this current era of driver shortages, many might feel that they aren't reaching their salary goals. Peters offers several tips to get those drivers going in the right direction, salary-wise.

Seven tips for drivers to boost their pay

I am curious if Jake has ever been a driver. I can think of some very different ways that I would pursue were I wanting to increase my pay. Honestly, my list of seven ways to increase a driver's pay would not even include any of his choices.

The ideas he presents are interesting, but do not seem effective to me. There is nothing like outperforming your peers in this performance based industry.

Some of those make sense. Picking the right state might be one with no state income tax for example. Getting the endorsements and learning the process in the case of the hazmat endorsement could get you higher paying loads. The choice of company could effect it as well. The top performing driver of prime probably makes more than the top performer at western express.

All in all those are good for the top tier drivers to look at, because those decisions will have a small impact, but not as big as just being top tier at a company. It takes a lot of work to be a top tier driver at a company and that needs to be done before you worry about the small effect of lists like that. A poor performing driver at any company isn't going to be able to use a list like that to make a significant difference in thier pay.

I’m going to ignore that list and go with what I’ve learned here. You’ll do well almost anywhere with a good work ethic, willingness to continue learning as you go and applying what’s been learned

I have to completely agree with Old School on this one. In his own list he contradicts himself in a way when he mentions becoming a trainer. There really aren’t that many companies out there that train when compared to the overall number of trucking companies. There are tons of smaller companies out there who pay very well, work in other “technical” types of freight that he mentions but do not train and have more strict hiring standards along with much lower turnover and a high percentage of tenured drivers.