Driving and Wages

You agree to what you consider a fair shake when you hire on. If it's not what you think it should be, don't hire on.

Simple

And when does residual income NOT make sense?

 

You will most likely get screwed. Carriers can say they'll pay you $1/mile but it's no good if you only get 500 in a week. Same goes for percentage or any other pay they claim you'll make.

Interstate transportation is scummy and it survives on taking advantage of new drivers. Do your best to get a local job as soon as you can so you can get paid by the hour.

At least if things are slow and there's no hours you can be home instead of living in a jail cell on wheels at random third world-like truck stops full of nasty degenerates for zero pay.

 

Trucking is a great paying job if you enjoy it. Terrible paying job if you hate it.

You hear stories about how trucking was life changing and people decided to live in a truck full time and save 10’s of thousands a year.

You hear people saying “if you break it down by all time spent away, truckers make less than minimum wage’

You’ll see people doing local dump trucking gigs for 18/hr saying they’re living the dream.

You’ll see LTL fellas complain about a slow year and only making 97k.

Some folks will take a pay cut to drive a fancy truck and live out their childhood dreams and you’ll see some drivers in multi-colored century classes just to make a little extra money.

Some folks couldn’t be paid enough to deliver to grocery warehouses at 1am. Some folks can’t be paid enough to throw a tarp.


In short, there are so many variables that there’s not really an answer. Overall, when people are saying they’re making over the median HOUSEHOLD income on average, it’s probably a pretty good paying job. Someone out there probably just did 7 days of 12 hour shifts in a steel mill to make less, so the grass is always greener.

 

Also, when you factor in the feasibility of becoming a business owner in trucking, it’s another benefit. A lineman or union rail worker is making a killing, but they’re probably not as likely to be owning their own electrical or railroad company one day, so the ceiling could potentially be lower