Bipartisan lawmakers have introduced a bill that would give America’s 2.19 million truck drivers the right to overtime pay.
A 1938 law guaranteed most American workers minimum wage and time-and-a-half pay if they worked more than 40 hours in one week. However, that law excluded truck drivers.
The bill introduced Thursday in both the House and Senate would nix the clause in the 1938 law that exempts motor carriers from providing overtime pay.
In a larger study of the American freight industry, the Biden administration urged Congress to enshrine drivers with overtime pay, according to the February 2022 document. A Democratic lawmaker introduced a bill to guarantee overtime pay for truck drivers in April 2022 but the legislation did not move forward.
In the most recent effort, two Democratic senators and a bipartisan team of two House representatives are pushing for the bill. It still faces a long road ahead, which includes committee review before potential votes in front of the full House and Senate. Control of Congress is currently split, with Republicans holding the House majority while Democrats run the Senate.
Bill would furnish truck drivers with more pay but squeeze employers
A group of academics wrote for Overdrive magazine last year that passing this bill would likely benefit truck drivers and challenge employers. Truck drivers, under current federal regulations, operate under strict hours-of-service requirements; they are not allowed to drive more than 11 hours in a 14-hour window and are capped at 70 hours of work in an eight-day period. They’re typically paid per mile.
Meanwhile, large trucking employers see massive turnover rates, which they typically attribute to larger lifestyle problems in the trucking industry. Others believe that this turnover rate, which averaged 94% at large truckload carriers from 1995 to 2017, is because drivers aren’t paid enough.
“There’s a retention problem,” Michael Belzer, Wayne State University professor, told FreightWaves last year. “It’s simply because you don’t pay these people. After you’re paid for working 40 hours when you really worked 65, you get to be unhappy. And that’s why they quit.”
Studies suggest that increasing pay for truck drivers reduces crash count. Reducing uncompensated work, like the hours that drivers often spend unpaid waiting at warehouses to get loaded or unloaded, also is a boon for safety and overall supply chain efficiency, studies suggest.
Trucker, safety advocacy groups embrace the bill, while American Trucking Associations slams it
Groups such as the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, Teamsters union, Truck Safety Coalition and the Institute for Safer Trucking supported the bill in statements Thursday.
“Unbelievably, trucking is one of the only professions in America that is denied guaranteed overtime pay,” OOIDA President Todd Spencer said in a Thursday statement. “We are way past due as a nation in valuing the sacrifices that truckers make every single day. This starts with simply paying truckers for all of the time they work. With this discount on a trucker’s time, ‘big trucking’ has led a race to the bottom for wages that treats truckers as expendable components rather than the professionals they are.”
Meanwhile, the American Trucking Associations believes that the law, if enacted, would bring about “supply chain chaos and the inflationary consequences for consumers.”
“This proposal is nothing more than a thinly-veiled attempt to boost trial attorneys’ fees,” ATA CEO Chris Spear said in a Thursday statement. “It would reduce drivers’ paychecks and decimate trucking jobs by upending the pay models that for 85 years have provided family-sustaining wages while growing the U.S. supply chain.”
According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers earned a median annual salary of $49,920 in 2022. Data from the ATA, a lobbying group made up predominantly of large trucking companies, found that average pay for truckload drivers was about $70,000, before benefits, in 2021.
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Rhett C Butler
The biggest issues with turnover rates begin with inadequate home time and detention pay.
How many of you get home Friday afternoon/evening, get 34 hours off and are expected to be ready to go Sunday morning….even though you were told 2 days home time? Sorry, that’s not “2 days home time”. Home time should be 2-24 hour periods.
Drivers are often denied detention based on “contract stipulations” or a time frame when they begin collecting, typically after 1 or 2 hours. Companies begin collecting detention after 30 minutes…..which is what it should take MAXIMUM to pull pallets off a truck.
Overtime would only apply to drivers making hourly pay anyway. It’s not going to effect the driver being paid mileage. Most companies that pay hourly already are paying overtime, however, they also penalize, discourage and otherwise preach not allowing overtime by cutting routes.
Don’t expect the government to be any help. They create more problems than they fix by claiming to be “helping”.
Kenneth Biscombe
The pendulum needs to shift where professional CDL class A drivers are treated with greater respect in terms of adequate compensation for time wasted waiting for shippers and consignees to load and unload. Carriers have become too complicit in the abuse of drivers. The drivers are the ones that the industry cannot do without yet they are treated with contempt and disdain.
Carey White
I’ve been a truck driver for 20 years now, and it has gotten to the point where companies will not allow you as the driver to make a decent living doing this job anymore, a truck drivers quality of life is completely totally destroyed and non-existent in this industry, also inflation is litterly mudering truck drivers financially to add to the nonsense, I’m done with trucking preparing to go into a totally different industry now !!!!!!!!!!!!
Roger Wharton
What I would like is the hours of service change on days when not loading we could drive up to 13 hours and 1 hour on time for a break and fuel that way we can get products to the warehouses and besides anything over 2 hours at a warehouse we should get that detention cause it is taking our time away from us for getting it on time the next day or even the same day 😀
Joe
As a small trucking company of 3 trucks and 3 trailers, my question would be where am I supposed to get money to pay higher wages? With Freight Rates low, Fuel Prices high and many brokers stealing an unfair percentage of freight pay , we are treading water now and just trying to stay afloat. We are investing the most, taking the greatest risk and making the least of any component im the trucking industry. The broker or direct customer tells us what they are going to pay us while everyone else in the industry sets their price. So many think that putting the old school Owner Operator out of business by starving them out will somehow be better for trucking but I assure you, this is far from reality. This would cripple America. If you want ideas of how to improve trucking, talk to the small fleet owners (1-10 trucks). That’s where you’ll get “Real Talk.”
Robert Benoit
I’m not surprised that Chris Spear would slam the Bill giving drivers Overtime pay. Is he even a trucker? Seems like he is a pencil pusher that doesn’t have truckers interests at the top of his list. Todd Spencer does though, which is why I like him and I’m not even a member of OOIDA. I’m not paid by the mile, I get 72% of the freight charges my company bills the customer so I probably make a bit more. However, the push for more money should be used with caution. Since we are not paid by the hour, we are not entitled to overtime. I’d prefer it to stay the way it is. At least where I work. I’m making darn good money. We need to push the customer to pick up more of our costs, TOLLS, and for us in refrigerated, REEFER FUEL. That’s what we need plus more on the Line Haul.
John Ross
I drove for a local company for 18 years always paid overtime. Since being a road driver paid by mileage. This would increase safety. With electronic logs everyone knows how long we’ve been driving. Thank You
Ryan C
This will NOT reduce crashes. As a driver, you know how many times you have multiple drops in your day, HOURS of driving apart from each other? And when you sit at one of those drops for 4 of your hours or longer, you’re hauling ASS to the rest of them hoping you don’t run out of time, trying to BEAT your clock. That’s where the accidents happen. These people don’t have a clue.