Drivers Guaranteed Pay For All On-Duty Hours - Transportation Bill

Where do people find all this junk? First company sponsored training is not a money making scheme that brings in millions of dollars of revenue to large companies. The average cost per student to train then hire is a 5 figure investment per student. Government subsidies help defray the cost to corporations. In turn the government benefits by adding a tax paying citizen. Before you say that these businesses are making money hand over fist. See how much it costs to operate company sponsored training. If you think private and public training schools aren't taking advantage of subsidies you can get down from mars now

Wow, you guys really "know" a lot about this industry and its inner workings. If things are like you say then you made a dumb choice becoming a truck driver instead of owning a company where you say all the money is.

There is a large group of guys (owner operators) that like to spout "backhaul". "I'll run this load and get a back haul when I get there." In other words i will run my truck for cheap. If that's the case everywhere you go its someones "back haul". Everyone fights each other in this business.

Oh, you mean it's like companies are competing against each other? I never would have guessed. And yes, everywhere you go it is indeed someone's backhaul which they may be willing to do for cheap. It's one of the long list of reasons why I say it's a bad idea to own or lease a truck in this business. The profit margins, if there are any profits, are very thin. Competition is fierce.

if this bill did pass everyone would be IC independent contractor 1099 instantly

See, you say dumb things like this because you're getting too emotional about the subject. That kills your credibility. Your brain stops working but your fingers keep typing. I'm going to go out on a limb and say I don't believe this Bill being passed is going to force everyone to become owner operators, not even over a 10 year period, let alone 'instantly'.

Then i find out that these companies also make somewhere around 300 a day per person in their orientation hotel rooms waiting to get out.

And from what reliable source did you get this tidbit of information from? And what would you say it means? Is all the hiring in the industry just a scam to get $300 for having someone in orientation? Hey, maybe companies secretly want you to quit so they can just keep hiring people and making money off the government in orientation, right? Come on, get real. Think about it.

Do you think in a company with 5,000 or 10,000 trucks there are people sitting around going, "Hey, maybe we can keep this company alive and turning big profits by pretending to hire a lot of people and secretly collecting fees from the government!" Take Swift for instance. They had 4.3 billion in revenues in 2014. Do you think keeping a few extra students in orientation to collect $300 a day is going to be a worthwhile strategy in a company with 4.3 billion in revenues? Do you think this is the kind of stuff upper management is scheming in their meetings?

Listen, you guys can scream to the high heavens about getting screwed by everyone all the time but complaining isn't doing any good and 95% of what you're saying is baloney anyhow. I think the solution to your problem is simple, really. Since you know where the easy profits are then go get em. Why waste your time sitting here complaining that you're getting screwed while others rake in the easy money? Why not go get some of the easy money for yourselves? If I knew there was easy money in owning trucks or being a freight broker or whatever then I'd go after it. If there were jobs that paid nothing I'd avoid them.

The job basically ruins a persons life because you never have personal time with your family whats the value on that.

Again, why are you doing it if it's ruining your life? Because trucking was one of the greatest choices I ever made in my life and I cherish my years on the road. I loved the travelling. That was the main point of doing it in fact. If I didn't want to travel I wouldn't have. We have a fella in this forum running LTL who is home every night and making like $70k/year. He didn't want to travel so he isn't. It certainly isn't ruining his life either. You have choices. Blaming the management of large companies or the trucking industry isn't going to change anything.

Some of these comments are so outrageous it's hard to believe you guys really think this way. I love this career, make good solid money, and have never had a dispatcher who was "dumb".

This whole conversation reminds me of a time in college when I took a friend of mine to a very secluded favorite swimming hole I knew of called "Blue Hole". Here we were at a beautiful location, surrounded by beautiful women enjoying ourselves immensely, and all my buddy can do is complain about the water being too cold!

If you don't like the water quit swimming in it. I'm sure there are some better ways for you guys to make a decent living.

Wow, you guys really "know" a lot about this industry and its inner workings. If things are like you say then you made a dumb choice becoming a truck driver instead of owning a company where you say all the money is.

There is a large group of guys (owner operators) that like to spout "backhaul". "I'll run this load and get a back haul when I get there." In other words i will run my truck for cheap. If that's the case everywhere you go its someones "back haul". Everyone fights each other in this business.

Oh, you mean it's like companies are competing against each other? I never would have guessed. And yes, everywhere you go it is indeed someone's backhaul which they may be willing to do for cheap. It's one of the long list of reasons why I say it's a bad idea to own or lease a truck in this business. The profit margins, if there are any profits, are very thin. Competition is fierce.

if this bill did pass everyone would be IC independent contractor 1099 instantly

See, you say dumb things like this because you're getting too emotional about the subject. That kills your credibility. Your brain stops working but your fingers keep typing. I'm going to go out on a limb and say I don't believe this Bill being passed is going to force everyone to become owner operators, not even over a 10 year period, let alone 'instantly'.

Then i find out that these companies also make somewhere around 300 a day per person in their orientation hotel rooms waiting to get out.

And from what reliable source did you get this tidbit of information from? And what would you say it means? Is all the hiring in the industry just a scam to get $300 for having someone in orientation? Hey, maybe companies secretly want you to quit so they can just keep hiring people and making money off the government in orientation, right? Come on, get real. Think about it.

Do you think in a company with 5,000 or 10,000 trucks there are people sitting around going, "Hey, maybe we can keep this company alive and turning big profits by pretending to hire a lot of people and secretly collecting fees from the government!" Take Swift for instance. They had 4.3 billion in revenues in 2014. Do you think keeping a few extra students in orientation to collect $300 a day is going to be a worthwhile strategy in a company with 4.3 billion in revenues? Do you think this is the kind of stuff upper management is scheming in their meetings?

Listen, you guys can scream to the high heavens about getting screwed by everyone all the time but complaining isn't doing any good and 95% of what you're saying is baloney anyhow. I think the solution to your problem is simple, really. Since you know where the easy profits are then go get em. Why waste your time sitting here complaining that you're getting screwed while others rake in the easy money? Why not go get some of the easy money for yourselves? If I knew there was easy money in owning trucks or being a freight broker or whatever then I'd go after it. If there were jobs that paid nothing I'd avoid them.

Im not saying they want them to quit. I am saying that they are getting money from the government from the people who are at orientation because i asked why there are people here for 3 weeks before getting the boot and i was told that was why they keep them here for so long because they make money to have them there. But I think my portion of this is getting twisted. All i wanted to say in this was that i felt the reason the turnover rate is over 100% is because drivers are paid so little for the hours put in and that companies can probably afford to pay more than they do.

Do the math you will most likely put in 70 hours a week most weeks and you may get to that magic number of 1000. But you do realize you are essentially working almost 2 full workweeks to earn that 1000. That is crazy to me.

I'm talking about the "On-Duty" sitting around time maybe hybrid model. I don't want to just sit somewhere and get paid, I want to drive but here is a perfect example of not getting paid. I drove a little over 200 miles into a rural area from Chicago. It took me about 4-1/2 hours based on where is was located. I got to location for delivery and it took me three hours to get live unloaded. Then I spent another 1-1/2 hours getting to next location where I'm suppose to pick up my next load. I get there only to find out the next load will not be ready for another 7 hours. I had been calling my dispatch since my first stop trying to find out what I'm picking up and where and of course the dispatcher I'm suppose to speak with is always too busy to talk to me so the other dispatchers just keep telling me to go to next location and call us from there. They knew the load wasn't going to be ready and I'm a Home daily driver. I'm suppose to drive 200 to 300 miles and back every day. Obviously, dispatch says they don't have anything else and in 7 hours I can go ahead and get going. Never mind how you are suppose to manage your time. I think this is where the abuse of driver comes into play. I'm a former white collar guy who just started trucking to make some money and get insurance while I'm pursuing my other late in life options. As a white collar guy I never realized how badly or poorly truck drivers (maybe it doesn't only apply to truck drivers) were treated until I became one. I've heard terminal managers talking about recently hired drivers who have already quit saying, "think about how much free money we made of that guy". Its a little insulting and very demeaning. Anyway I think getting paid a minimum for any down time is a great way to make companies or maybe the dispatchers be more accountable. Hey my time is valuable, I became a driver to drive not sit around and make an hourly wage to do nothing. Now that I've been driving for 7 months I can really see some of the abuses. Anyway I'm hanging in there to get my one year experience then look for a better place. I'm sure every company doesn't have the mind set of how do we screw everyone but there are some that do. I think the hourly thing would especially help the drivers who perform shorter run work. Happy Easter.

I am on my way out the door, wish I had more time to respond since there are several different topics in this thread.

First to the original topic about being paid for on duty time versus millage. I work for a union company and this is how it already is for us. About the only time I do not get paid for is my pretrip, paperwork, and breaks. Brett is right going to hourly would probably reduce productivity so I get paid CPM. But if I have to wait at the terminal for a load, wait for a truck repair, set on an impassable highway, or spend too much time in a hotel waiting to be dispatched I get paid for my time. At full scale it is around $21 per hour. I log ALL my on duty hours because I am getting paid. That being said since we are on paper logs of course there are drivers who do not log the way I do.

As far as the companies being able to pay more than they do I will say I both agree and disagree with what Brett is saying. Since we normally try to talk about things we have direct experience from I will. The OTR company I started with was known for being able to put extra money on your loads and I had it happen quite often. How often? If you are a good driver that runs and they want to keep you from leaving they will put extra money on every load. Does that mean they are swimming in cash? Not by a long shot. Trucking is a touch competitive field with low margins. But if they have extra money to throw on loads with little to no negotiations then there is extra money there to pay the driver.

There is a horrible trend going on in the business world that is increasing an already out of hand income inequality. Employees are taking pay cuts while the CEO's pay is going up even higher than it ever was. It happened to my wife, who is a nurse. And now it has happened in trucking. During the down turn of 08 the teamsters negotiated a pay cut, or what the company likes to label a "give back". In fact there were a couple of them that ended up totaling 15%. While still working under this 15% pay cut 3 of the top CEO's in one of the companies have received pay INCREASES this year worth a combined 14 MILLION.

Brett I totally get where you are coming from and for the most part agree. But the trends that are going on in our country these days are sickening. The hospital my wife used to work for is now in the process of trying to go union because of everything that has happened in the last few years. This was once the best hospital to work for and one that my wife said she would never leave. That was until greed took over and everything changed. On a side note a nurse in that hospital was recently fired for her efforts to move the union forward. So much for her "right to work".

I do not think all the trucking companies are swimming in money. Not even close. But I do think a great number of them can be paying more than they do. In fact I hear adds all the time about the pay going up.

Guess I had more time than I thought. But one last note to go along with what has happened in trucking at least with my limited knowledge and experience. I worked in the flooring industry for some 15+ years, managing a store the last 5. In all those years I only increased my freight factor one time, and that was around 2010 I believe maybe even a little later. So while everything in our country was going up in cost, my price to get it delivered to my store had seen little to no increase. We have talked before about all the things that we able to make this happen but an essential pay cut for the drivers must be included in those figures.

Woody

All i wanted to say in this was that i felt the reason the turnover rate is over 100% is because drivers are paid so little for the hours put in and that companies can probably afford to pay more than they do.

Do the math you will most likely put in 70 hours a week most weeks and you may get to that magic number of 1000. But you do realize you are essentially working almost 2 full workweeks to earn that 1000. That is crazy to me.

All of that is perfectly reasonable and I agree with it in fact. I've said forever that I don't think trucking is worth doing unless you love the travelling lifestyle. That's where the perks come in. Nobody complains when they get to sneak in a quick weekend in Vegas on the way through. Nobody complains when they get to watch the sunrise over the high desert in New Mexico, or hang out at the ocean during a run to Ft Lauderdale. There are so many priceless perks to this job - the scenery, the experiences, the interesting people you meet - it's amazing. But you earn every nickel.

And I have no problem arguing that drivers are very much underpaid today. They are underpaid. You're making the same as I was in '93 but adjusted for inflation that means today's wages give you half the spending power we had 20 years ago. You're leaving your home and family, risking your life every day, putting in double the hours most Americans put in. It should pay $75,000 to run OTR in today's world.

But it doesn't.

That's why I feel the perks of the travelling lifestyle is what makes trucking worthwhile. If you don't love that aspect of it I would say there are better careers out there for sure.

Hey my time is valuable, I became a driver to drive not sit around and make an hourly wage to do nothing. Now that I've been driving for 7 months I can really see some of the abuses

When you think about it, you're obsessing over the way the pay is distributed. Right now you're getting paid by the mile. The other stuff like fueling, getting maintenance done, and waiting on customers isn't paid.

Let's say for argument's sake you'll make $42,000 this year.

What does it matter how they distribute it? What if they said, "Ok we'll pay you 8 cents per mile less but we'll pay you hourly for all of your 'on duty, not driving' time" and it still came out to $42,000. Would you still feel cheated or would you feel like you were being paid for everything you did? You made the same amount of money doing the exact same work but on your paycheck it's broken down differently. Should that matter?

What I did was look at the body of work I did and the wage I made for it over the course of a year. If I drove 115,000 miles putting in 63 hours a week and made $50,000 I'd ask myself if that was worth it or not. If so I kept doing what I was doing. If not, I looked to improve my situation somehow. But I never cared how they distributed the money. I understood that the mileage pay included all of the other little things that came with doing the job.

That's a good example of keeping your mind focused on what's important out there. Trucking bombards you with stress, long hours, and endless challenges. There is no shortage of things to worry about every minute you're out there. So worrying about whether you're getting paid hourly or mileage pay or some hybrid system isn't worth the energy it takes. It doesn't matter in the end. Look at what you're making in a year and look what it took to do that. Was it worth it to you? That's what matters in the end. The rest is just trivial details.

In all those years I only increased my freight factor one time, and that was around 2010 I believe maybe even a little later. So while everything in our country was going up in cost, my price to get it delivered to my store had seen little to no increase. We have talked before about all the things that we able to make this happen but an essential pay cut for the drivers must be included in those figures.

I totally agree. In fact, I was typing that exact same thing at the same time you were (my previous comment above). Drivers aren't being paid enough today. I agree. But you just made my point for me exactly about the companies themselves. In general, the lower wages that drivers are making over time is not going into the pockets of the trucking companies and their executives. It's simply being lost to a decline in freight rates because of the hyper-competitive nature of the industry, which was by design (deregulation of trucking in the early 80's). You can ship freight at about the same cost you could years ago because drivers are still making what they were years ago. Drivers wages have declined when adjusted for inflation and overall so have freight rates. The net profit margin for the industry has remained around 3% for God knows how long.

Now if you want to get on a soapbox with me about management abuse, it's in the tech industry. That is where all the money is being made and hoarded by corporations and their management. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, was granted like $547 million in stock options in 2014. Yap, a billionaire being granted another half a billion per year. They have like $250 billion in cash sitting in off-shore accounts. Google and Microsoft aren't far behind. Those numbers and that type of management is utterly absurd and I wish someone would figure out what we can do about it.

Hey, here ya go. This is a graph I posted in another forum thread:

All I have to say is Arrow trucking. Christmas 09 when that went down I told the owner of a small outfit I worked for. Its not right to shut off fuel cards and forced drivers to get out of their trucks. The owner said," They had every right to do that." Needless to say my trust level in him diminished. I have seen drivers die on the job and companies refuse to get the body back home and hold the last paycheck to boot. If you put your faith into management most companies will leave you high and dry. I am glad you enjoy sunsets in New Mexico but some of us want to make a paycheck. Tooting the horn and scenery are not perks because can make the most wherever I am.

See, you say dumb things like this because you're getting too emotional about the subject. That kills your credibility. Your brain stops working but your fingers keep typing. I'm going to go out on a limb and say I don't believe this Bill being passed is going to force everyone to become owner operators, not even over a 10 year period, let alone 'instantly'.

I am sorry if I am dumb to you Brett. If you have not noticed companies are pushing percentage and 1099 more than ever. I am not emotional about it either. If you a driver accept unfair conditions it's nobody's fault but yours. I get evil remarks when asking about jobs. I have my usual round of questions because the ads are so vague I have to ask them so I don't waste their time and mine. (NO I DO NOT ASK HOW FAST THE TRUCKS GO)... Now I am the bad guy for job hunting again because I cant stand the job situation.

This whole thing proves the only evil to trucking is the drivers itself. We constantly berate one another thinking we are getting the upper hand when your bringing everyone else down with you.

Wow, you guys really "know" a lot about this industry and its inner workings. If things are like you say then you made a dumb choice becoming a truck driver instead of owning a company where you say all the money is.

To start out you need real good credit to get a newer truck. Even if your FICO is in the mid 700's you will need at least 10% down on a 130k rig. $13,000 at least without insurance. Next you will have to compete against low rates to just get running. Oh wait I can lease the company has it all figured out all I have to do is run. Yes I can rent a truck from a company and "Be my own boss" whatever.

You want trucking truth

Trucking is a low intelligence job for low intelligence people. So calling me dumb is not the first time and will not be the last time.