How Are Truck Drivers Paid? Mileage, Hourly, and Percentage Pay

Truck drivers in the United States are paid one of three ways: a set rate per mile driven, an hourly wage, or a percentage of what the carrier collects for the load. Which model applies depends on whether the driver runs long-haul or local routes, works as a company employee or an owner-operator, and what kind of freight is on the trailer. As of May 2024, the median annual pay for heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers was $57,440, but the spread around that number is wide once pay structure, experience, and bonuses come into play.¹

Cents Per Mile

Most over-the-road drivers are paid a set rate for every mile they cover, known as cents-per-mile or CPM. Rates generally run between about $0.40 and $0.70 per mile. New drivers start near the bottom of that band. Experienced drivers and those hauling specialized freight sit near the top. Your rate is fixed by your contract, so the variable that moves your paycheck is how many miles you run in a week.

The tricky part is that the miles you get paid for rarely match the miles you actually drove. Carriers use routing software to calculate “paid miles,” and those numbers tend to be lower than your odometer. There are three common methods:

Household Goods (HHG) miles use the shortest legal route between two zip codes and ignore city-level routing. This produces the lowest count.
Practical miles account for truck-restricted roads and preferred interstate corridors. This is closer to reality but still typically comes in 3% to 5% below what your GPS shows.
Hub miles come from a hubodometer that measures actual tire rotation, capturing every movement including fuel stops and yard maneuvering. This produces the highest figure.

Most major carriers pay on practical miles. The gap adds up to thousands of unpaid miles a year.

Deadhead Miles

Deadhead means driving without a loaded trailer to reach your next pickup. Under a CPM contract, many carriers pay your full rate for deadhead, though some pay a reduced rate. Under percentage pay, empty miles typically generate nothing, because there is no freight bill to take a percentage of. Some percentage-pay carriers offer a small stipend, often around $0.20 per mile, once deadhead exceeds a set threshold. When comparing offers, ask exactly how deadhead is handled. The answer can shift take-home pay meaningfully.

Hourly Pay

Local delivery routes, less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers, and specialized sectors like oilfield transport often pay by the hour instead of the mile. It fits work where drivers spend large parts of the shift in city traffic, making stops, or waiting on a job site. Hourly rates commonly run from around $20 to $35 per hour, with variation by region and freight type.¹

On-duty time is more than driving. Pre-trip inspections, loading and unloading, fueling, paperwork, and dock waits all count. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration requires most commercial drivers to record hours on an Electronic Logging Device, which captures driving time automatically and helps document non-driving on-duty time.²

Why Most Truck Drivers Don’t Get Overtime

One of the biggest surprises for hourly truck drivers is that many do not qualify for federal overtime. The Fair Labor Standards Act generally requires time-and-a-half after 40 hours in a workweek.³ An exemption applies to any employee over whom the Secretary of Transportation has authority to set qualifications and hours of service.⁴ That authority comes from federal motor carrier safety law, which covers commercial vehicles in interstate commerce.⁵ In practice, if you drive a vehicle rated above 10,001 pounds gross vehicle weight across state lines, federal law does not require your employer to pay overtime. Some states have their own overtime rules that may still apply, so where you work matters.

Percentage of Load Revenue

Under this model, your pay is a percentage of the gross revenue the carrier collects for each shipment. It shows up most often with owner-operators leased to a carrier and with company drivers hauling specialized freight. The split depends on which side of the arrangement you sit on:

Owner-operators leased to a carrier typically receive the larger share, often 70% to 90% of linehaul revenue, because they own or lease the truck and pay for fuel, maintenance, and insurance out of their cut.
Company drivers on percentage pay usually receive 25% to 35%, because the carrier owns the truck and absorbs operating costs.

When freight demand is high, percentage-pay drivers earn more per trip than they would on fixed CPM. When the market softens, per-load earnings drop even if the miles stay the same. Specialized freight such as oversized loads, hazardous materials, or refrigerated cargo commands higher gross revenue and cushions percentage-pay drivers against market swings.

Fuel Surcharges

Shippers commonly add a fuel surcharge on top of the base rate to offset diesel prices. If you are an owner-operator leased to a carrier, whether that surcharge reaches you depends on the lease. Federal leasing rules require the lease to specify who is responsible for fuel costs, but they do not require the carrier to pass through any specific portion of the surcharge to you.⁶ Before signing, check whether the lease guarantees a full pass-through. That one clause can be worth thousands a year.

Access to Freight Bills

Because your pay scales with the load’s revenue, you need to verify what the carrier actually charged. Federal truth-in-leasing rules require the carrier to provide the documents needed to confirm every charge on your settlement statement.⁶ A carrier that resists sharing freight bills or rate confirmations is a warning sign. You have a legal right to those numbers.

Accessorial Pay and Bonuses

Base pay is only part of a settlement statement. Several line items compensate for tasks and delays outside of normal driving, and most require documentation of times, locations, and circumstances to show up on your check.

Detention pay covers excessive wait time at a shipper or receiver. Most carriers give a free window, commonly two hours, then pay a per-hour rate that typically runs $15 to $50 depending on the carrier.
Layover pay is a flat daily fee, often $100 to $200, when you are stranded for a full 24 hours because the carrier has no load ready.
Stop-off pay is a flat fee for each additional pickup or delivery beyond the origin and final destination on a single load.
Breakdown pay compensates for time lost while the truck is out of service for repairs. Not all carriers offer it.

Bonuses fill out the rest of the picture. Safety bonuses often follow a clean Level I roadside inspection, commonly $50 to $100. Quarterly safety milestones reward a full quarter without a preventable accident or moving violation. Fuel efficiency bonuses pay when engine data shows you beat the carrier’s miles-per-gallon benchmark through practices like reduced idling and consistent cruise control use. Retention bonuses reward one-year, two-year, or longer tenure.

Sign-on bonuses look larger than they are. The advertised figure rarely pays as a lump sum. A typical structure pays a small amount up front and spreads the rest over 12 to 18 months of continued employment. Leave early and you usually forfeit the balance. Many sign-on bonuses also carry clawback provisions, meaning if you quit or are terminated within a set period you may owe back some of what you already received. Read that language before you sign.

Taxes: W-2 Employee vs. 1099 Owner-Operator

How you file depends on whether the carrier issues you a W-2 or a 1099, and the difference matters.

If you receive a W-2, your employer withholds federal income tax, Social Security, and Medicare from each paycheck and pays the employer’s share of payroll taxes. Under current law, W-2 truck drivers cannot deduct job-related expenses like meals, fuel, or equipment on their federal return. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act suspended that deduction through 2025, and the same limitation applies to 2026 filings.

If you receive a 1099 and operate as a self-employed driver, you report income and expenses on Schedule C and pay self-employment tax on net earnings. The self-employment rate is 15.3%, covering 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare.⁷ That replaces the payroll taxes an employer would otherwise split with you, so the total bite is noticeably larger than a W-2 driver pays on the same income.

The trade-off is deductions. Owner-operators can deduct legitimate business expenses including fuel, truck payments or depreciation, insurance, repairs, tires, tolls, permits, and the Heavy Highway Vehicle Use Tax. One rule catches drivers off guard: semitruck operators must deduct actual vehicle expenses and cannot use the IRS standard mileage rate, which is 72.5 cents per mile for 2026.⁸ That rate applies to passenger vehicles and light trucks, not commercial rigs.

Per Diem for Meals

Drivers who travel away from their tax home overnight can deduct meal costs. If you are subject to Department of Transportation hours-of-service limits, you can deduct 80% of your meal expenses, rather than the 50% that applies to most other workers.⁹ Instead of tracking every receipt, many drivers use the IRS per diem method. For the period beginning October 1, 2025, which covers most of the 2026 tax year, the transportation-industry per diem is $80 per day within the continental United States and $86 per day outside it.¹⁰ You still apply the 80% limit, so the effective domestic deduction is $64 per day. If your carrier pays a per diem allowance as part of your compensation, that payment is not taxable income to you, but you cannot also deduct meals separately for the same days.

How Hours-of-Service Rules Cap Your Earnings

Federal hours-of-service rules put a ceiling on every pay model. Property-carrying drivers can drive up to 11 hours after 10 consecutive hours off duty, and all driving must occur inside a 14-hour on-duty window that starts when you begin any work activity. Over a rolling stretch, you cannot exceed 60 on-duty hours in 7 consecutive days or 70 in 8 days.²

For mileage-paid drivers, every non-driving minute on the clock, whether waiting at a dock, sitting in construction, or completing a pre-trip inspection, eats into paid miles you could otherwise run. For hourly drivers, the 14-hour window caps the length of a shift. When you look at a carrier’s advertised rate, run it against these caps to see what the weekly paycheck actually looks like.

1
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers: Occupational Outlook Handbook
2
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. General Information About the ELD Rule
3
U.S. Department of Labor. Wages and the Fair Labor Standards Act
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 213 – Exemptions
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 49 USC 31502 – Requirements for Qualifications, Hours of Service, Safety, and Equipment Standards
6
eCFR. 49 CFR 376.12 – Lease Requirements
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC Chapter 2 – Tax on Self-Employment Income
8
Internal Revenue Service. IRS Sets 2026 Business Standard Mileage Rate at 72.5 Cents Per Mile
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 274 – Disallowance of Certain Entertainment, Amusement, Recreation, and Travel Expenses
10
Internal Revenue Service. Notice 2025-54: Special Per Diem Rates