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

I have to disagree with this. Sure you might get shorted some of the time, but overall I think it would tend to balance out. If you go to a drop that is 10 miles past the zip code mileage, but your next pick up keeps you going in the same direction, you will gain those 10 miles back.

No, because your mileage for the next trip would start at the far end of the zip code. So you're gonna drive another , say, ten free miles in that direction. Drivers lose EVERY time with these mileage arrangements. That's their purpose.

the drivers lose nearly all the time with swift... as they do mileage based off google maps. Google maps does NOT take restricted roads into account w3hich means you have a longer route.

Honestly there have been less then a dozen times its come out in my favor and it was less then 10 miles each time. Here is an example; the load i am on now is 378 loaded miles, shortest legal distance is 423 miles. It adds up very very quickly and the longer the run is the more you can be shorted. Also keep in mind Swift (i use them as an example as it who i have the most knowledge of) always routes the SHORTEST route possible which means higher possibilty of truck restricted routes as well as shortest does not often mean fastest. I will happily drive 30 miles out of route to save 30 minutes of time and eat that mileage, however when the payed miles are 50 miles short of even the shortest legal run it ends up cheating the drivers out of thousands of dollars in the long term.

Also not it had got so bad with Swift they are currently in the middle of a lawsuit brought to them by specifically the lease ops and owner ops for shortage of pay and fuel surcharge for this very practice.

Brett, great point, and this is the exact reason I always paid my roofing guys by the square. When I first started it was hourly and it seemed nice (except when I would leave to do estimates or any other errands just to return to guys sitting on the ridge like a row of pigeons then hop to it when they see my truck, and all that time I'm just wondering how long they had been there and seems less was done than before I had left). Then got the news that most roofers were getting paid by the square so switched over to this system and what a difference. Also a great way to weed out the lazy guys and see who really was about the money :) From then on if I hired someone new and they didn't like the thought of production pay, I usually wouldn't hire them, unless they were new then it was to their benefit to be paid by the hour until I thought they were ready to produce a good amount. Once they were switched to pay by the square most watched their weekly pay almost double and they loved it. My thoughts, "go ahead and sit on your a$$, we both will be slack on pay this week" worked everytime lol

Can you teach me? :-D

The top performers are the ones bringing home the bacon. The biggest problem is that very few want to work that hard. My dispatcher sent me a message the other day telling me how wonderful it was to have a savvy veteran on his board. He said he wished I could teach a class to his other drivers on how to manage their time. You'll find very little wasted on duty time on my logs.

It sounds like someone isn't doing their job. Idf if it's your dispatcher failing to put you in for layover and detention or someone in payroll. I doubt it would be the company as a whole because that company would quickly go out of business due to a lack of drivers willing to drive for them.

I would hate to have to be CEO of a trucking company. You have to not only keep your customers happy but you have to keep drivers happy too.

Well you guys are spouting the typical "truckers against trucking management" and "business owners versus employers" stuff which, as usual, holds very little water.

I have noticed that any such comments along these lines hold close to NO water with a sizeable contingent here, almost regardless of the details. It's all just whining to some.

But there are rather common business practices in the trucking industry that would be almost unheard of and unanimously condemned anywhere else. For example. I would say 60 to 80 percent of my paychecks are in error, and that error is ALWAYS in favor of the company. I'm talking about expenses for which proper forms have been sent not being reimbursed, empty miles for a run simply not paid, dispatcher approved layover time not paid, 4 days spent filling in on a dedicated run , paperwork scanned immediately and three paychecks later I have yet to see a penny from it, trailer spots and pickups not paid, sent to a shipper on a Saturday, a shipper that is closed all weekend, and paid nothing for the time spent waiting to find a drop location nor for the miles to take it there, miles sent to a Hazmat pickup despite not having Hazmat not paid. Detention pay...forget about it. I know drivers with 7 years in the company who have never received it. I have sent in mac14s as one of the steps in qualifying for detention pay...almost invariably the company simply denied receiving them. Layover pay....50 bucks ? For being on call and available for dispatch, while securing/guarding a few hundred grand in company equipment and customer freight for 24 hours ? Breakdown pay....fifty bucks for twenty four hours spent at a company location at least nominally overseeing necessary work done to company equipment, and maintaining availability for dispatch ?

And on and on. I am told that these and other variations on the theme are very likely to be found at my next company too. And the one after. Most of these issues are eventually resolved but only after sometimes lengthy calls to dispatch and payroll, pleading my case for money that I rightfully earned, and that after getting through the almost always lengthy hold times. And usually on the first call to each, action is simply avoided by payroll saying talk to your fleet manager @ that, and the fleet manager saying get with payroll on that.

This is not accidental, these are for by far the most part not 'mistakes'...if they were I'd have had at least one in my favor in 100 weeks. They are deliberately shorting drivers on pay and hoping they don't have the intelligence to decipher their paycheck and spot the 'errors' , the assertiveness to speak up about them, the tenacity to stick with the tedious process of having them corrected, and the composure to clearly, politely and succinctly state ones' case while doing so. ( I actually prep for these phone calls...write a little script of sorts...because I (a truck driver) have to be every bit as on top of these numbers and policies as the (accountant or bookkeeper) in payroll is, or I'm gonna get snarkily dismissed.

A driver is lacking in any of the above, and the petty theft is successful. If that's not business owners against employees, I don't know what is.

I'd say they are doing their job, and that job includes withholding portions of employee pay and returning it only if the driver discovers the ''error'' and can correctly state his case for the money. Like I said, it happens too often, at least 3 of 5 checks, and is always in favor of the company. It could only be the result of purposeful action.

Disclaimer: I'm sitting at a truck stop on my 10 hour, writing on my smartphone. I can't really do the research to back up the following claims. I'm writing this adding in lots of basic information. People with business experience can skim.

The trucking business is super competitive. Other competitive industries are airlines, supermarkets and cellphone service providers. (Think: is there any real difference between Verizon and AT&T, Delta and Continental Airlines, or even Celadon and J B Hunt? They all provide the same services, only each is different from the other.)

Super-competitive businesses all work on a Return On Investment (ROI - official term) of just 1-2%. Invest $1000, get back the extra $20 in a year! Woo hoo! That's the money so the share holders get to "stuff" into their pockets.

CEO's? Here's a secret: they get paid on production, just like you do! (Then who pays for their Armani suits, Mr Errolv? Huh?) If you look in an annual report, it's all there in black and white: the corporate officers do get a nice piece of change just to be in the corner office, say, $1 million. Then (here's their CPM) they get bonuses and stock options. Both of these ensure the Boss is interested in running a profitable business.

Brett mentioned $billions in revenue for a trucking company. Billions! That's money out the wazoo! No, revenue is not profits, it's what comes in at the cash register. (You pay $2.19 for a bag of chips at the checkout.) Revenue is what pays drivers, fixes the trucks, payd the rent, taxes, building, electricity, loan interest, etc. What's left over is that 1-2% profit.

Trucking companies have three groups of people to keep happy. Investors want more than 2% ROI if they can get it. The company wants customers to do repeat business. And the company wants happy drivers, so the drivers don't just up and switch to another company, as in the grass is greener at Fast Xpress Trucking.

So far as us drivers are concerned, each company is more interested in retaining good drivers, actually helping all drivers improve, and yes, weeding out the lazy and not-so-good ones.

The talk here about $300 to keep students in school, or any policy that rips a driver off for work done, is just truck stop BS from dissatisfied drivers. If you haven't noticed on TT, the real pros - moderators and others - are happy with their work, more or less happy with their pay, and are always looking forward to the next good load.

I think people are missing what the bill says. It is NOT changing trucking to hourly pay it is simply adding hourly pay to the on duty not driving line.

That means you will STILL lose money by staying on duty as you will not make as much from on duty time as you will from driving time. Its simply saying you will get payed while working at all times instead of not getting anything for things like sweeping a trailer scaling a load going pretips and things like that.

Smart drivers will not spend any more time on the on duty line then they do now simply because it will still hurt the paycheck.

The talk here about $300 to keep students in school, or any policy that rips a driver off for work done, is just truck stop BS from dissatisfied drivers. If you haven't noticed on TT, the real pros - moderators and others - are happy with their work

Good example of the attitude I was talking about. Any information that does not paint the tireless, noble, hard pressed trucking company executives, their underlings or their policies in a favorable light....it's ''truck stop BS''. Negative information about your fellow drivers...the lazy, lying whiners...that's very believable though. It's a wonder those heroes in the corner office put up with us at all.