I run LTL as a local city driver at ABF Freight. I’m still a rookie driver and haven’t completed my 1st full year yet. I ended up at $58,668.55 for 2022. That includes 9 weeks of training pay at $17 an hour. I did not start making full rate until the 2nd week of May. We use the Samsara ELD and I don’t know how or if we can access our total milage and hours. I run roughly a 1000 miles a week so that puts me somewhere around 35,000. My road time varies daily depending on my dispatches so I wont even try to guess an average for hours plus we also work the dock and yard jockey.
A full year should land me in the 75-85k range at our current rate. 2023 is a union contract negotiating year for us and we are currently paid quite a bit less then the non union LTL drivers. A rather large hourly raise is in the proposal and is likely to go through so that yearly number should jump by another 10k or more.
Refers to carriers that make a lot of smaller pickups and deliveries for multiple customers as opposed to hauling one big load of freight for one customer. This type of hauling is normally done by companies with terminals scattered throughout the country where freight is sorted before being moved on to its destination.
LTL carriers include:
Grossed $76,000 with 2 solid months taken off.
2022 was my first full calendar year.
It is great to see my fellow drivers doing so well. Especially the first year drivers who were able to exceed expected first year averages. Keep up the great work!!!
I'm extremely happy with my final numbers this year. I worked with Cowan until 6/4 and had orientation with Barr-Nunn on 6/24 so there are a couple unpaid weeks. I recently hit my 5th year of driving. Roughly 3.5 of those years were OTR. Currently I'm driving regionally with a full weekend off from 12:00 (noon) Friday to 00:01 Monday morning.
Usually refers to a driver hauling freight within one particular region of the country. You might be in the "Southeast Regional Division" or "Midwest Regional". Regional route drivers often get home on the weekends which is one of the main appeals for this type of route.
OTR driving normally means you'll be hauling freight to various customers throughout your company's hauling region. It often entails being gone from home for two to three weeks at a time.
I think I’m on pace to gross about $80,000 my first year with this company. I’m ten months in with them and get a .04 per mile raise at one year. Every .01 CPM raise I get translates into roughly $100.00 per month. So I’ll get roughly $400.00 more every month after March 12. I’ve had to take more time off than I wanted to tend to medical issues, but I have still have driven a lot of miles. I got my first truck on March 12, 2022 with 473,000 miles. I drove it until it had 556,000 miles. Then I got my new truck with 773 miles and now have 38,000 on it. If my math is correct, that makes about 120,000 miles in ten months. Not too shabby for an old fart.
Drivers are often paid by the mile and it's given in cents per mile, or cpm.
I would just like to add this: How many jobs pay as much as driving? The numbers in this thread are way above the average income in America. And the income amounts stated here can be achieved without a college education. In fact, many, many college grads will not earn as much as a truck driver. There are college grads who are truck drivers and there are various reasons for this. But one of the reasons may be because they can earn more as a driver than in their college degree field.
I’ve often thought that being a truck driver is equivalent to going to college. Freshman year, sophomore year, junior year, senior year. A seasoned truck driver has at least 4 years under their belt. It really takes that much time, effort and study to become a top notch driver, in my opinion. And the very best drivers involve themselves in “continuing education” during their entire career. If a driver doesn’t learn something new everyday, he’s probably not paying full attention.
Great numbers everyone.
We use the Samsara ELD and I don’t know how or if we can access our total milage and hours
We also use Samsara. We use a computer in the office to log on/off duty before going out to our trucks. On that screen there's various tabs like HOS and Safety. Under safety it shows your past 8 days but you can change that to different dates, in this case January 1st to December 31st. It'll show all your miles and time spent on each duty status as well as any safety events (speeding, hard brakes etc.) The webpage is cloud.samsara.com/driver just enter in your normal log in information that you use in your ELD.
And the very best drivers involve themselves in “continuing education” during their entire career. If a driver doesn’t learn something new everyday, he’s probably not paying full attention.
Completely agree Bruce. Every day on the road we deal with new situations. The moment a driver feels like they know it all and become complacent that's when accidents happen. I've heard that statistically new drivers are the safest on the road. It's still very new to them so they're over the top cautious. As you gain experience, usually the 3 to 5 year range you become complacent and take more risks because you're comfortable.
I made 86K. I had some issues this year outside of work with may have contributed to the lackluster year and the last quarter definitely didn't help. I'm expecting a better 2023 with the more senior guys sampling the retired life with this furlough.
I had an interesting discussion yesterday with the one and only lease operator on our dedicated fleet. He likes to talk. He insists he's leasing because he makes more money than the company drivers.
He came on board while I was on my year long medical leave due to my vision issues. When I came back he expressed his pleasure at meeting me. The reason he gave for being glad to meet me was, "You are legendary around here - everybody speaks highly of you." I think he thought he might impress me yesterday when he announced to me, "I made $210,000 this past year."
Of course he looked puzzled when I said, "You know you can't B.S. me that easily. We both know you produced $210,000 in revenue, but that's a far cry from how much money you made. I know you're smart enough to know that number. So, tell me what you actually took home before income taxes."
He blurted it out quickly. I knew he had it established. "Well, because of all my write-offs I actually made $68,000." I made him grin uncomfortably when I said, "Write-offs are just expenses. That's what they are. What you need to do is learn to control those expenses if you want to earn more than these company drivers."
"Oh, I'm definitely earning more than the company drivers," was his response. I didn't bother to give him my numbers. I took some extra time off this year, and ran mostly on re-cap hours. I just barely broke through into the six figures level. I am very happy with my position here at Knight. The pay is great and the account suits me well. I'm eight years in here. That includes the one year I was out medically.
I will reach my million mile status on this account this year. That will be accomplished all with the same company, same dispatcher , and same account.
In addition to my income, Knight has a performance based program that grants company stock to drivers with an excess of 500,000 miles. That and the company dollars contributed to my 401K are just cherries on top for me.
I had an interesting discussion yesterday with the one and only lease operator on our dedicated fleet. He likes to talk. He insists he's leasing because he makes more money than the company drivers.
He came on board while I was on my year long medical leave due to my vision issues. When I came back he expressed his pleasure at meeting me. The reason he gave for being glad to meet me was, "You are legendary around here - everybody speaks highly of you." I think he thought he might impress me yesterday when he announced to me, "I made $210,000 this past year."
Of course he looked puzzled when I said, "You know you can't B.S. me that easily. We both know you produced $210,000 in revenue, but that's a far cry from how much money you made. I know you're smart enough to know that number. So, tell me what you actually took home before income taxes."
He blurted it out quickly. I knew he had it established. "Well, because of all my write-offs I actually made $68,000." I made him grin uncomfortably when I said, "Write-offs are just expenses. That's what they are. What you need to do is learn to control those expenses if you want to earn more than these company drivers."
"Oh, I'm definitely earning more than the company drivers," was his response. I didn't bother to give him my numbers. I took some extra time off this year, and ran mostly on re-cap hours. I just barely broke through into the six figures level. I am very happy with my position here at Knight. The pay is great and the account suits me well. I'm eight years in here. That includes the one year I was out medically.
I will reach my million mile status on this account this year. That will be accomplished all with the same company, same dispatcher , and same account.
In addition to my income, Knight has a performance based program that grants company stock to drivers with an excess of 500,000 miles. That and the company dollars contributed to my 401K are just cherries on top for me.
Who knows Old School, maybe that guy will learn a thing or two. I do have to say that him bragging about a 210k gross to the truck is really pretty weak and he definitely needs to rethink his decisions lol. I’ll have to sit down and break down the numbers for the year. I track all my loads and settlements but my wife runs the books and the budget beyond that. Once I have a chance, I’ll post in here as well.
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How did everyone come out in 2022?
Personally I grossed $98,408.43. I also took 2 weeks of unpaid time off due to family medical issues. Slightly less than the last couple years but still very satisfied none the less. According to my ELD I logged 78,641 miles with 1461 hours of drive time. Up until October I was paid hourly and mostly 4 day work weeks so I ran less miles by choice, 2023 I'll likely have a bit more after switching to mile/stop and a 5 day schedule. Despite being governed at 70 and running closer to 70 I averaged 53.82 MPH (miles divided by drive hours) just including that since people often think being governed a couple mph more would be a drastic increase in pay. 2023 I'm expecting to be closer to $115k.
I have 5 years of experience and work for the private fleet of a grocery chain in the midwest.
How did you do for the year? Please include how long you've been driving and the type of work you do so those entering the industry have a better idea of income potential.
HOS:
Hours Of Service
HOS refers to the logbook hours of service regulations.