Bill Gates (Microsoft) And Jeff Bezos (Amazon) Crushed By Trucking!

If you ever find you're shorted more than about 5% of the miles on a run over 1,000 miles or 10% of the miles on a shorter run,

Why accept that? If the driver did their part delivering the load without adding miles out of route for unnecessary reasons why should the driver not be compensated for them? Why is the driver working for free because the company made a bad deal that cuts into their profit margin? In my opinion, that's just part or business. In other industries we often hear about the labor department investigating wage theft but in trucking you're expected to just suck it up. As a company driver I expect to be compensated for doing my job whether it's hourly or mileage. Would the attitude be the same if you were a cashier at the local Walmart and told to clock out then go back to work off the clock? Absolutely not, in fact Walmart in particular has lost class action lawsuits for just that.

Why accept that?

Well, you have to work within the company's business model. That's how they negotiate prices. If you wanted hub miles, you'd have to fight tooth and nail to get the paid miles of every single load changed.

I would propose instead that you ask the company to pay you 5% more than they would an average driver with your experience. If you're a proven driver, you have leverage. You might get it. Then, when they pay you 5% fewer miles than hub miles, you're still making the wage you want.

You could also refuse to work for that company and go somewhere that pays hub miles. Of course, you must make sure you're getting at least as many miles and at least the same mileage pay as you were at the last place.

I think a lot of people don't grasp piecework, being paid by the unit, in our case, the mile. It's transactional. In other words, everything I do has a cost. Its best to avoid actions that i wont get paid for under that system.

Very little is included in the base cost per mile. The quicker and easier I complete the miles safely, the more my rate increases. It's about the efficiency of your time at work. We're governed by our hos as to how much time, consequently how many miles we can do.

Although most companies would like to have the benefits of an hourly employee yet pay piecework, it doesn't help my agenda. The companies agenda is to make the most profit and or reduce expenses on every decision and action. My agenda is to make as much money on every decision and action as possible. Usually the two agendas sync up, sometimes they don't.

In a nutshell though, if I have to do anything extra besides drive, 1 load and 1 unload per load assignment, I politely bill for it. If I can't get the extra miles added, I'll ask them to kick me some extra in the form of equivalent hourly pay, or a bit extra layover, etc. You'd be surprised at the type of stuff they come up with to get extras paid for.

There's a point where you want to pick your battles but at least with my terminal , they understand that by paying more in the form of extras to a quality driver, they're going to get better performance.

I can't stress enough though, I have to sell the extras, I never demand them. I justify them and make deals on them. I provide service for the cost. It's lucrative with all but one of our staff.

Him and I were never able to come to terms on the extra work on the local dedicated I was on so I stopped doing it and went back otr. Each delivery, every day required dropping and hooking a trailer 3 times. Our handbook says our pay is based on 1. No hard feelings, it's 60 bucks extra per day that he wouldn't pay out. Sometimes you have to consider what it's worth to you. In the grand scheme of things 60 bucks isn't a whole lot, but 6 days a week, it adds up.

The Grey areas are opportunities to make money.

Davy that's exactly my point though. Why is it up to the driver you need to fight for the money you've earned whether it's miles or extra stops. Your agreement with your company is to be paid a certain amount per mile and multiple stops or drops. What they bill the customer is irrelevant to the agreement I have with my company. That's why I'm a company driver, to not deal with that.

There's a lot to consider in the grand scheme of things.

For instance, Rob, did your salary go down when rates declined? Nope. Why not? Because they'll likely lose you to another company if they drop your pay. So, they eat the losses by keeping their best drivers at a higher salary and hope to hire new drivers at a lower rate.

That's one of the many reasons that staying with a company for years will benefit the driver. Over the course of those years, freight rates will go through many up-and-down cycles. On the lowering of freight rates, your pay stays the same. On the upswing, your pay will often rise. So your pay is ratcheting up over time. It will reach a point eventually where the economics simply won't support much of an increase in your salary at your current company. You may or may not find better pay elsewhere, which would take some research to determine.

Rob, I'm not pushing back on what you're saying at all. What you say makes perfect sense, and we all want to make as much as possible. I'm just reminding people to have a look at the bigger picture. We've watched countless drivers quit their jobs over one aspect of their situation without considering the big picture, and sometimes, their impulsive decisions lead them into a worse position.

For instance, if you quit your job because they're not paying hub miles, are you 100% certain you'll make at least 5% more at your next company and you'll enjoy your job at least as much as the one you have now? There are so many unknowns when changing companies. Would the risk of changing companies and starting over again in a new environment be worth it over a 5% difference in pay rates? Or might it be best to stay where you are and find that 5% in other ways?

I want people to understand the big picture of what it takes to make top money in this industry. There is some give-and-take involved. Sometimes you accept an inferior position on one aspect of your job in order to get further ahead in other ways.

Davy said two things that are key in understanding this:

1. I think a lot of people don't grasp piecework, being paid by the unit, in our case, the mile. It's transactional. In other words, everything I do has a cost. It's best to avoid actions that I won't get paid for under that system.

2. There's a point where you want to pick your battles

Not understanding piecework is a huge problem for many drivers. My dad was a steelworker for 18 years and was paid by the piece, and he explained how it worked when I was a kid. The key is to align yourself with the interests of the company. They're hiring you to produce something they can profit from. If you focus on efficiently producing things of value to the company, you and your company will make a lot more money together.

Unfortunately, people get hooked on thinking their time is valuable because they're used to being paid in units of time. I always tell people, "If you think your time is so valuable, go to your bank and ask them if you can sit around for a few hours and let that count toward your mortgage payment. You'll find out quickly that no one values your time except you."

Paying someone by the hour only happens because a company can't find ways (or doesn't look for ways) to break down your time into units of production.

Truck drivers who value their time instead of their production do not last long in this industry because they demand better pay for things that do not benefit their company. Instead, they should find ways to efficiently produce things of value to the company, and then negotiate better pay for their productivity.

I've given a few examples of why Davy's point about picking your battles is so critical. Not everything matters equally. Figure out what matters when it comes to producing the largest paychecks possible and minimize the rest.

Let me add a third item to that list, which hurt me early in my career but became a huge advantage once I learned:

3. Learn to speak professionally with the office personnel

When I say "speak professionally," I mean not only your tone and attitude but the content of what you're saying. A person should not approach management with demands if they can not financially justify those demands. You must understand what makes a driver valuable to a company, demonstrate that knowledge, and give solid financial reasons why you deserve what you're asking for. Prove to them you've earned it, and do so with a professional tone.

This is a really fun conversation. I hope it helps newer drivers understand the bigger picture when it comes to maximizing their pay.

What they bill the customer is irrelevant to the agreement I have with my company.

On the one hand, this makes perfect sense. A deal is a deal. I can't argue with that.

On the other hand, it concerns me to see people think this way. You're separating your profits (your pay) from your company's profits when you should be aligning yourself with how they make money.

If your company isn't billing their customers enough money to justify your salary, you're a goner. You just don't know it yet. They're already thinking about how they can get rid of you, the same way you'll look for a new job if your company can't pay you enough to make ends meet.

I like to see employees and management understand each other and align themselves together. The agreement between employees and management will end in failure if each side only considers its own needs. You must find ways to help each other succeed. That's the entire point of the partnership in the first place - mutual benefit.

So, as an employee, I can say to management, "Hey, a deal is a deal. Pay me. I don't want to hear your problems." That's legit on the surface, but at the same time, it should raise red flags as I'm saying it. If management is struggling to profit from my work, I want to know about it because it's an unsustainable situation. I will look for ways to keep my salary and put us back on a mutually beneficial course before they decide I'm no longer worth the price.

Employees and management have a "frenemies" relationship. You're best friends because you help each other make money, but you're enemies because those profits are split between you. So you work together to make money, then you fight over who gets what portion of the profits.

Understand this dynamic and you'll not only become a more valuable employee but a much better negotiator.

I am really enjoying this conversation. Rob has asked some thought provoking questions. I have met Rob. I know he is an efficient truck driver who really works hard. He has a driving job that pays by the hour. He's a heck of a guy who would never take advantage of his employer, but I would be willing to bet he knows a few slackers on the payroll there who do take advantage of their hourly wage, not working as efficiently as Rob does. That is what humans sometimes do.

As a former employer, I could give countless experiments I have tried to help my employees be more efficient, and my business more profitable. I had one guy in particular that I really appreciated. He was talented and skilled at what he did. He was not efficient though. I thought I could provoke him with a financial incentive. I offered him a challenge. I gave him a task to complete, and I told him how much I would pay him to complete it. This was a two week project in my estimation, and I was willing to pay him X amount of money to complete it. That amount was typically his monthly income.

He jumped at that opportunity. I was thrilled. He finished the project a few days early just like I knew he could. He took his pay which was more than twice what he had been making, and then told me he didn't want to continue the experiment. He didn't like working that hard!

I was trying to force some efficiency upon him. That is how many trucking jobs work. The driver develops his own efficiencies and therefore becomes more valuable. There are always drivers who can't seem to grasp the concept, and they usually don't stay truckers for long. Piecework is a valuable teacher in my opinion. It allows each individual to be creative and productive by their own standards. It really enforces responsibility and learning to be efficient. Not everybody gets that. My former employee decided he would just go find another job if that was the way we were going to do things. He moved on and so did we. I missed him, but found someone who understood the principles of efficiency.

Allow me one more story to illustrate how paying by the mile forces efficiency into the job. We see these companies like Convoy concentrating on software that makes the dispatching of loads more efficient. That software has little or no effect on the driver's behavior. Therefore, efficiency is lost. So, what happens next? Those same software geniuses decide they need software to eliminate the driver. That hasn't proved effective either. Many of those companies are failing also. Many of them have gone broke and dropped off the radar very quietly.

Continued...

We had a customer in Connecticut who was difficult to deal with. None of our drivers ever wanted to take that run. I did it regularly because it was a perfect load to set you up for a three thousand mile or better week. Most of our drivers would get held up there and want "detention pay" for their trouble. I only recall requesting detention pay once from that customer. That was at the beginning of my going up there from Louisiana.

I worked on developing a relationship with the fork lift operator. He was sort of a tough guy from the streets of the Bronx. He enjoyed his authority at his job and he exercised it regularly if he thought it annoyed you. Once he had warmed up to me a little, things always went well for me. He knew I would be there when he needed me, and he liked that. It actually made his job more efficient if I showed up when he needed me. I learned that early on, and each time I went there I would call his cell phone a day ahead and ask him what time he wanted me there.

Now, listen to what happened one morning. I was told by him to be there Monday morning at 0700. I got there Sunday night and slept on the premises so I would not be in need of any excuses about traffic delays or whatever might happen to make me late. When I get there I notice another flatbed driver is already ahead of me. They are asleep in their truck. Oh well, I figure I will just have to wait in the morning until they get unloaded.

I purposely wake up at 0600 and start getting my bungees loose and untarping my load. I want to be ready to roll when the forklift boss tells me he's ready. The other driver still has his curtains pulled shut. At 0700 the man strolls out to me and tells me, "Back in the building." He is ready to unload me. I pushed back a little with, "Hey, this guy was here before me." He doesn't care. He tells me, "I don't know who that guy is or what he has for me. You called me and I told you when to get here. C'mon man, we've got work to do."

I had learned how to be efficient at this receiver. The other driver had not. I got to move on with my work with no delays. The other driver got held up. He even made things worse for himself when he decided to approach me with a good cussing about cutting in line. Mr. Forklift boss got all up in his grill and sent him back to his truck telling him he made that call and he would make it again because I was the one that was ready to go. That driver no doubt had to argue with his company for "detention pay." I didn't because I didn't need it. I was rolling down the road making all kinds of money because I knew how to keep myself moving.

Rob asks a great question when he asks...

Why is it up to the driver you need to fight for the money you've earned whether it's miles or extra stops.

An efficient driver seldom has to fight for money. It is very seldom I request detention pay. I already know I can make more money by being efficient. So, everything I do out here is aimed at being efficient. Whether it is in the relationships I develop or just in good old fashioned elbow grease. I have learned to be efficient because the job demands it. That is both the beauty of piecework and the curse of it. People either get it or they don't. Fortunately there are enough different ways of paying truck drivers that most of us can find one we can work with. I just happen to enjoy the challenges and the creative ways this job triggers my mind into working.

Hopefully I didn't come off as combative or a downer to Rob. I just have extensive experience with piecework, most of my working life was either paid piecework or I owned the business. I also paid most of my crews piecework, and most subcontractors are the same.

On a purely idealistic level, in its own place, it makes sense that we shouldn't foot the bill for the employers risk, but it's a give and take. Brett and OS said it better than I could.

I personally love the art of negotiation with it. It works for me, its kind of like being in between an employee and a business. Brett mentioned getting paid by what we produce, and that's the heart of it. I look at a completed load as a product. The more and quicker loads I safely produce, the more money I make.

I care about time only in the sense of how much can I produce in the short amount of time I have. It forces efficiency to the top of my priorities. When we were running doors and baseboard, on production scale, we would look for where we could systematically save minutes of time. The pay is that tight, the bids are that tight.

I just had a deal I made with one our load planners through my DM. He put a 2 stop live unload 241 mile load on me, a real money looser. So I called and asked if they needed help with it. If not that I'd prefer something else. The load planner said that he could really use someone good on it, and would give me a 1500 mile load to TX if I did it. I said no problem, I'll be happy to help, just go ahead and dispatch me on the tx load if you would. I also gave him my cell so he get in touch directly. Also in doing so, my DM approved a very generous amount of breakdown pay for the last couple of days. These are the kind of deals I like making. It leads to checks bigger than my cpm would indicate.

I'm also enjoying this discussion. It's rare on the internet in general for people to have a civil discussion that doesn't resort to name calling

For instance, Rob, did your salary go down when rates declined? Nope. Why not? Because they'll likely lose you to another company if they drop your pay. So, they eat the losses by keeping their best drivers at a higher salary and hope to hire new drivers at a lower rate.

Admittedly, my job is different than a typical OTR job so we don't have many of the same challenges in regards to freight rates fluctuating. An overwhelming majority of our business is to Grocery Stores our parent company owns. We in turn grab backhauls in the same area our stores are going to our warehouse or LTL freight that gets reloaded the following day that we deliver after our store deliveries. For most it typically doesnt add too many miles or time to the day, so we're just utilizing unused space in our trailer so in turn we're able to haul it much cheaper than most. Most days we're shipping between 150,000 to 200,000 cases to our stores. We're able to raise our prices we charge the stores which gets passed to the customer. That is an added benefit of my situation and why it differs from OTR.

Paying someone by the hour only happens because a company can't find ways (or doesn't look for ways) to break down your time into units of production.

Not always, there are OTR and regional jobs that pay hourly. Grumpy old man had that with Wolding, I believe RD has that at Barr Nunn, and I've seen tankers for Liquid Trucking out of Plattsmouth NE advertising hourly make up to 96k. The 2 members here mentioned do tend to run more regional. I'm unsure the area Liquid Trucking runs.

He has a driving job that pays by the hour. He's a heck of a guy who would never take advantage of his employer, but I would be willing to bet he knows a few slackers on the payroll there who do take advantage of their hourly wage, not working as efficiently as Rob does.

thank you for the compliment, I actually switched over to hub mile/stop just over a year ago after we opened our freezer. Due to only shipping ice cream, pizza and bakery it's resulted in more trucks having alot of small stops so its more money when its a frozen load. I don't get them super often but its opened up routes other guys were taking that pay decent. For example a 500 mile run with 3 stops to Minneapolis i can get that done in 11 hours easily and pays $400. Today i had 406 miles with 5 stops in 10 hours made $415 after factoring in pre/post trip pay and time spent washing my truck. We went from about 17 drivers being mile/stop to 72. Hourly I would make $29.70 with Overtime after 40. On a normal day if I break it down to an hourly rate I'm between $37 and $38 an hour on mile/stop but I'm also picking different routed than I otherwise would.

When I was hourly I didn't mind doing deliveries to the food warehouses like Sysco because I knew I'd sit there for several hours. Now I avoid those places the best I can because it just doesn't pay as well as I'd like. We still have those deliveries to make so drivers need to take them regardless, but I try to stick with just store deliveries and definitely prefer drop/hook backhauls but it isn't always possible. We definitely have some hourly guys that milk the clock by going 62 instead of 70 with no traffic, pulling over to take a nap but still taking their hour paid break later, hanging out after store deliveries or backhauls just to get extra time etc.

We also have mile/stop drivers that take advantage of it. The last couple months they finally cracked down on it after 6 months. Some guys would take it upon themselves to stop at stores and just cleanup pallets. Most times they'd take a short route then add 6 or more stores by cleaning up @ $31.97 each. Most often they'd choose small stores that had only 1 or 2 stacks so they could do more stores. I frequently addressed it with management that in my opinion it was theft but I couldn't bring myself to do it as well as it felt wrong. Instead, if I take a shorter route and want extra money I'll call dispatch before leaving the general area I was in and ask if any backhauls popped up or if they're aware of stores needing a cleanup and get their permission. Due to my willingness I'm often times one of the first calls when they do have something pop up. Today for instance I was going to come back empty from Northeast Iowa. I was asked to drop my empty near Mason city and bobtail home. 20 extra minutes to my day earned an extra $40. The downside of paying us mile/stop is many guys don't put things where they actually need to be and when scheduled for a cleanup they don't do it or only grab 1 stack. Those guys that got busted adding alot of stops? Most switched back to hourly so they can manipulate it still.