Profile For Banks

If it's what I'm thinking of, it's kind of like a dome light and it turns on when the headlights are turned on. It's supposed to be an aid to help see inside the cab when it's dark without the blinding feature that comes from traditional dome lights. As far as I know, it can't be turned off.

Zip ties are used to keep the latch that secures the chassis to the container from moving to the unsecure position. If the latch isn't secure, nothing stops it from moving to the unsecure position and the container falling off. Not locking it in place is negligent, dangerous and stupid.

If the company makes a profit in a fiscal year, do they share the profit with the drivers? Of course they don’t. They expect the driver to goose step along with them on their mileage discrepancies. “Dear Driver: Share our losses but not our profits.” Not a very well defined system and one weighted heavily in the favor of the company.

Very well said. You summed up my stance on this nicely.

Found it

2022 numbers for me there:

110,345 paid miles

123,447 actual miles driven

I've never paid attention to gross pay, only net. I saw almost $59K over 276 days driving.

99.4% of the trips I was underpaid anywhere from 6% to 13% of the actual miles. A trip could be from one side of Kansas to the other on I-70 (423 miles) and it was a given that I would get paid for 378 miles. This was every trip losing a minimum of 6 to 13%. Some trip were worse.

The outrageously big trucking company I work for assigns me loads and let's me know how much they will pay me for them.

That's your experience and as you've stated it's not the norm. You're on a dedicated account that works differently than most in the OTR field. Same as you, my experience is to get paid for every mile I drive (on route or detoured) and for every task I complete, but I know that's not the norm. I'm talking about your everyday driver that gets forced dispatched all over the place and has no idea what they're doing next week.

After it's all said and done, I discover I actually drove 1,438 miles. Did the company steal from me?

How often does that happen for your everyday OTR driver? I'd wager not often. If I remember correctly, it was Packrat that brought this up initially. If it was him, he said he's come out ahead on mileage pay a handful of times and it was miniscule, compared to how often the company comes out ahead. I'll see if I can find it when I have a chance.

Now, I might consider it theft if they were charging the customer more miles than they are paying the driver.

That's not my problem. What you're charging for a service has nothing to do with my pay rate. If I'm being paid CPM, I expect to be paid for every mile I'm dispatched. I'm an employee, not an owner. Accepting to be paid for less miles is a business expense. If I work in an office and the computers are down, can they not pay me because I got nothing done? Of course not. I'm there like I'm supposed to be and I'm compensated as such.

If I'm in construction and the owner of the building and the contractor agree on a price below market value, does that mean I should be paid less or for just some of my work? No. I agreed to do a job for a specific wage.

In turn if the customer agrees to pay a price 10 times the market rate, I should still get the wage we agreed to and the rest is the spoils and fruits of the contractor that negotiated it and has a lot invested in the business.

I'm still genuinely curious as to why, not too long ago, Brett Said

I can say this: your attitude is much appreciated by some. In fact, the higher-ups could never pull off this caper if there weren't enough workers like yourself.

I've got news for any men who think this way. It is not ok to allow another man to take advantage of you.

It's not ok for another man to steal the fruits of your labor and force your kids to grow up with very little. Men are meant to be fighters. We're providers and protectors. Stand up and be men and fight!

But in this industry, you're supposed to shut up and take it because that's how the industry is or it makes it hard for the company if they have to pay you for the work you do... Won't someone think of the corporation? I'm still waiting to be told the difference.

As old school pointed out

Davy, you blame the small percentage of people consistently getting bonuses on corporate malfeasance and theft. Those are the words you and Banks are throwing around.

I do consider it theft to not pay for all miles driven if you have a cpm pay structure, but I don't consider not paying bonuses theft because it's a bonus, not a wage.

If I pay you to paint a room at the rate of $100 per wall and you do it and ask for your pay, is it ok if I hand you $300 because nobody is going to see the 4th wall and you were already here doing it anyway. And my excuse is "that's painting and that's how it's always been, pick battles you can win. You made 300 dollars in an hour to paint the room, doesn't matter what we agreed to that's a fair amount. Painting doesn't leave a lot of room for profits, that's all I can pay"... Who would be ok with that?

I've been on a bunch of job interviews in my life and I've never asked "do you have enough profiles to pay me for my work".

It's not a crazy request.

Davy has had way too many driver managers. That's always going to cause problems. I've had only one in nine years.

Just out of curiosity, which experience is more common yours or Davy's?

We are all different and our preferences are different

That's been my point all along. You have to determine what compromises you're willing to make and live with them. What makes one person happy won't necessarily work for somebody else.

Banks makes comments about the trucking companies making big profits while keeping the drivers held down.

That's not what I said. I said the customers take the lowest bid and the trucking companies race to the bottom, and it comes out of the employees pocket. It's the truth. They only pay you some of your money and pay you the rest for safety and staying under the preferred mpg threshold. That tells me they have the money and they can pay it, but they choose not to and use it as an incentive.

I also said that they pay practical miles instead of hub miles was a tactic to keep profits high because it is. It's wage theft. A driver is doing work and not being compensated for it. The revenue and percentage breakdown isn't the drivers fault. They didn't negotiate the price and there's an agreed upon wage and Those miles aren't anything to scoff at. That's an 40-80 miles they're not getting paid for. It's a substantial amount of money and time invested. If an employer asked an employee to do that amount of work and refuse to compensate for it "industry standard" wouldn't an acceptable excuse.

FedEx has been turning away business because it's unprofitable. They are very smart to do that.

They're taking advantage of this slow economy and uprooting everything to restructure it and make it more efficient. FedEx also pays us 2 bonuses a year based on their profits. My last bonus in January was about 1600.

There's very little "extra" money in trucking that can go to the driver under the current conditions of the freight market.

That's not the employees problem. Knight had enough money to pay 5M to the David Jackson so he could leave, but they can't pay a driver those extra 40 miles that they actually worked for. Not going to convince me that it's because they can't afford it.

I actually think this whole conversation is really about the economics of trucking.

I've never claimed to be an expert on the economy of trucking, but what I do know is that in this country you get paid for all of the work you do, unless it's trucking. Then you're expected to work for hours and drive a few miles for free because "that's trucking". No, that's theft.

Now, some of you want your pay broken down by the duties you perform, instead of being paid by the mile. You want to be paid for each thing you do:

It's doable. At the very least, drivers should be paid hub miles and not practical miles. At some point in the past, practical miles made sense. It was efficient to pay center zip code to center of zip code when you had to look at a map or an atlas. Today, it's easy to know how many miles are between point A and point B, even with the preferred route. There's no excuse for this other than trying to keep rates low and profits up.

Come up with a payscale that's fair and that keeps each driver's pay very close to 16% of revenues

Regarding hiring a person to handle all of this, that's also not necessary.

The pay structure made sense a decade or two ago, but with the advancements in technology is not hard to do. Today, paying drivers for work done is as a simple as a few key strokes. If a company can track mpg for every truck to issue garbage fuel bonuses, they can do this. The difference is that paying the driver doesn't benefit the company. Getting an extra 100 miles on a tank of fuel does so they figure it out.

2100 miles (35 hours) drive time 5 pre-trip inspections - 2.5 hours 4 times fueling - 1 hour 17 hours detention time 14 hours layover 8 hours breakdown 5 hours paperwork 5 pickups 5 deliveries 3 times strapping cargo (1 hour)

That's 32 CPM on straight mileage pay. Must be 2010, so I'll use pay rates from 15 years ago. Did you make these rates deliberately low to make me look crazy?

5 pre-trip inspections - 2.5 hours. Flat rate of 5 dollars per pretrip for every day on duty driving. 5 pretrips doesn't take 2.5 hours.

4 times fueling - 1 hour- 7 dollars per fuel of at least 80 gallons. Protections in place to prevent abuse. That makes it 3 fuels for 2100 miles, max.

17 hours detention time shipper or consignee should be paying detention, which would bring up revenue substantially. At some point appointments and drivers time should be respected. Even you have to admit that sitting somewhere for 17 hours is absurd. Stay on duty for all 17 hours and watch heads explode.

14 hours layover- layover is off duty. Nobody gets paid for being offduty.

8 hours breakdown breakdown pay wouldn't count against revenue because it's unforeseen. Driver should get paid for it, but it's an unexpected expense all the way around. Counting the drivers pay is like counting the repair against the revenue of this specific shipment. Nobody does that.

5 hours paperwork...

5 pickups

5 deliveries

3 times strapping cargo (1 hour)

An allotment of 13/hr for on duty not driving. How long is the driver spending at the shipper and consignee before detention pay goes into effect?

Keep in mind this is 2010...2 dollars per mile and a pay rate of 32 cpm.

Driver can make 25 cpm (not a huge dropoff) and detention pay, which the company will also profit from.

Still 16% and the driver gets paid for everything they do. It's not impossible, but corporations try to make it seem like none of it can be done. I still think it's interesting that UPS employees, auto workers and all these others deserve much more and CEOs are greedy and evil until we get to trucking. Then it's "that's how it is".

The problem is that this industry is a race to the bottom.. Customers want the lowest bidder and companies want the highest profit, so the employee pays them both.

Don't be shamed into thinking that it's wrong to get paid for ALL of the work you do and convinced that it makes you a "terminal rat". And at the other end of the spectrum, if you're happy with the relationship you have with your employer then stay. I'm not paying your bills. It's a personal choice and there's nothing wrong with either.

My true colors have always shown. I treat you how you treat me. I've carried on many long, complex conversations over the years without any insults or fighting whatsoever.Banks could have made his points without the "silly" or "stupid" comments, but he chose not to. He wanted to make it personal. Ok, let's do that. It's not what I prefer, but here I am if that's how you want to play it.

I welcome anybody to go to the Union thread and tell me if this true. I'm willing to bet that nobody feels, but Brett, feels this way.

Ya know, it's funny how many people are offended nowadays by a man who is willing to stand up for himself and those he loves.

It's the Internet. Nobody is offended.

I mean, look at the Kyle Rittenhouse situation.

Here we go on a tangent that has absolutely nothing to do with a drivers compensation.

Banks, you've called my comparison between CPM and salaried workers "a silly comparison," and you've also called me stupid.

As Bruce pointed out, I never called you stupid. If anything you've insulted my intelligence on more than one occasion by saying things are too complicated for me to understand.

The bottom line really is simple: Getting paid by the mile for OTR and regional drivers is the best way to pay drivers for all involved. It's fair because you get paid for

As many here have already pointed out, it's best for the company. I think it's funny you'll cheer for managers getting fired and say it's great for employees because men get paid blah blah blah, but with this industry "that's just the way it is". When does the fight for change start here? No advocating for the people behind the wheel? Are you going to continue to sell this idea that nothing can be done because throwing people a few bucks for tasks or sitting at a customer for hours on end will cost too much? I agree with bobcat. True colors showing.