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The Income/Salary of a Truck Driver
Truck driving salary remains low despite increasing demand
There is a troubling condition developing in the U.S. economy that has received a great deal of press over the last couple of years—America does not have enough truckers.
Not even close to enough, it seems. There are currently 80,000 unfilled truck driver positions nationwide, and that figure is expected to double to 160,000 by 2030. It is unsurprising, then, that whenever the common American drives on an interstate, he/she passes a truck that advertises, “DRIVERS WANTED—GREAT PAY, GREAT BENEFITS.”
Trucking fleets and transportation/logistics companies are clamoring for more drivers, and their claim that drivers receive “great pay and great benefits” appeals to the layman’s economic sensibilities—the basic principles of economics tell us that with a high demand and low supply of labor should mean a higher average pay rate for truck drivers. In theory, the average truck driver salary should be well above their equilibrium market price.
But just how much money should a trucker expect to earn, exactly, when transportation companies advertise the great pay associated with working in the trucking industry? And given the economic circumstances surrounding the trucking industry, are trucker wages really as competitive as they let on? Let’s take a deeper look behind the dichotomy at play between the status of the trucking industry and truck driver salaries.
Diving into The Truth About Truck Driver Income
When taking a look at average wages, and the true compensation that a laborer is given in exchange for his/her services, one ought to analyze two aspects of their pay—the personal “accounting profit,” which is the measure of the actual gains and losses that a trucker earns on his/her income, and the personal “economic profit,” which takes into account implicit costs of carrying out an action.
In this section, we will look at truck driver wages from an “accounting profit” point of view; that is to say, we will break down the actual dollar-value that the average commercial truck driver is expected to make across the United States.
How Much Money Truckers Earn, State-by-State
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean annual wage for a heavy and tractor-trailer truck driver is $50,340.
That statistic, though, when examined closely, proves itself only a rough projection of how much money truckers make. The Bureau of Labor Statistics lumps many different types of trucking activities into one broad category, combining the wages of the 1.7 million long-haul drivers and local delivery people, alike. The types of trucking that are represented in these figures vary greatly, and so do the salaries, accordingly—the tenth percentile of truckers make a meager annual income of $30,710, while the top ninetieth gross $72,730 or more.
While the mean annual figure of $50,340 helps to get a feel for the overall income for the average truck driver pay in America, it is better to take a look at the income statistics on a state-by-state basis. Below is a table for the mean annual wage per U.S. state.
