Has anyone heard of any companies raising their pay

[Michael P.Dorsey]

I know aqbout Fikes and Baylor, any others?

[Rhett Butler]

Hi Michael ~

Most companies are actually reducing what they offer new hire drivers regardless of experience. I've been looking for about a week, have 30 years experience (7 verifiable in the past 10) and most of the offers I have received range from $.35 - $.37 per mile. With my experience I should get offers of $.41-$.44/mi. Local companies here in Phoenix want to begin drivers at $.31-$.33/mi regardless of experience. I'm talking the Knight, Swift and other local companies, not local driving jobs.

I just completed orientation with Marten Transport where I'll start at $.41/mi and they have a floating scale which means 1-150 mi gets 20% of the line-haul from point of pickup to delivery, 151-200 mi =$.10, 201- 250 mi = $.05, 251-300 mi = $.02, 301-500 mi = $.015 and 501-700 mi = $.01 extra per mile added to the base rate. Anything over 701 miles is paid at base rate of $.41/mi.

Detention pays $20/hr and extra stops pay $20 each. Freight layovers pay $100 per 24 hour period but the breakdown pay is only $25 the first 24 hours and $50 for the second & third 24 hours. If it'll take more than 24 hours they either give you another truck or put you in a loaner. Either way they would rather you run than sit (don't earn if wheels don't turn).

Gordon Trucking (my previous employes) pays dry van .$36/mi and refer .$37/mi with $.02 when refer is running on the load. Never had any issues getting detention or layover pay from them, usually got a message from dispatch adding it to the trip without asking about it. Unfortunately your truck gets lost in "black holes" while waiting for repairs. I got a lot of breakdown pay waiting at a terminal for a service! Last service I did with them took 5 days at Freightliner in Pacific, WA (which they also own) though they did put me in a loaner for 3 of those 5 days.

Looking for a job? Drop me a line in a month and I'll let you know how well Marten is running me and shoot you the info. So far they have impressed me. They were going to fly me to Memphis, TN for a tractor but instead are renting me a car to pick the truck up in Ontario, CA. Several drivers they flew to WI to pick up trucks at the main office, a few others went to TX, IN and OR to get their units. A little short of trucks in Phoenix.

[Michael P.Dorsey]

Not looking, making decent rate .44 cpm, I think I top out at 47, just want to see if the industry is changing their thinking or trying to go for the bottom of the barrel driver at .25cpm range, ptc, pascal, training school wages.

[Rhett Butler]

Cool. I know there a lot of companies paying "slave" rate since freight is beginning to pick up and the bottom feeders all left when the economy took a dive. Funny you don't hear as much crap on the CB these days except from base stations and drivers that couldn't make it!

[David Naus]

It's not easy to make enough revenue for any trucking business out there, This is exactly what I discuss with my clients and prospects when I'm with them. They want to do better for their drivers but it's about the money. So,  this is why I help them get some of that money back to their bottom line and for a large company it can be in the $ millions each year. That would pay a few drivers.

http://www.fueldirect365.net/603669/trucker