Roehl Transport has announced a pay bump for accident-free company drivers. The performance-based plan will increase pay for qualifying drivers by $2,000 to $3,000 annually. The new program begins Feb. 1.
“At Roehl, safety is synonymous with professionalism, and our drivers are leaders in safety, productivity and pay. So this increase to our accident-free pay reinforces our commitment to rewarding our professional truck drivers,” said CEO Rick Roehl.
The Marshfield, Wisconsin-based truckload carrier also announced that it has added more than 100 driving jobs in Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota and Wisconsin. The jobs are weekly local routes, approximately 400 miles, without a requirement for weekend work.
“We know that truck drivers are looking for local driving jobs because they want to be home more,” said Roehl. “So we created additional positions that get drivers home every day.”
The company previously announced a peak season pay increase of 2 cents per mile. The extra pay began Oct. 18 and runs through Jan. 31.
Other fleets have increased pay recently as drivers remain in short supply. COVID concerns and early retirements have reduced CDL issuances this year, driver schools continue to turn out fewer graduates during the pandemic and the Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse has put 46,000 drivers out of work with only 10% completing return-to-duty requirements.
Last week, Schneider National (NYSE: SNDR) announced a 4 cents per mile increase, Frozen Food Express announced increases of 20% to 25% for linehaul drivers and Anderson Trucking Service implemented a 12-week guaranteed-pay program for new drivers.
In recent weeks, C.R. England, Covenant (NASDAQ: CVLG), Stevens Transport and Heartland Express (NASDAQ: HTLD) have increased driver pay.
Founded in 1962, Roehl is a top-100 trucking company with a fleet of 1,900 tractors and 5,200 trailers. The company generates revenue of nearly $500 million per year, providing TL, logistics, brokerage and warehousing services across the U.S.
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Adam w
Pay raises have been seen going up across the big companies of trucking, as someone that has worked for a big company for a few years and will be leaving it soon. I can tell you why experienced drivers are leaving the big companies or leaving trucking all together, you can up pay all you want, it’s when you take the elements freedom of the job away that’s when you lose the good “experienced “drivers ,for example driver facing cameras looking at a driver and that driver now having fear of loosing their job because what that camera can see , on board so called “safety systems “ that sometimes sense things that aren’t there and apply brakes and in wi in winter I don’t like the truck braking on ice because it thinks it’s going to hit an overpass or an Orange barrel. Pay is only one thing the big companies are focusing on changing to bring drivers in , but a cheap company fleet truck with an automatic is not going to get a drivers with 10 years of experience Excited . So by doing this all of the companies listed have subpar equipment to many insurance safety gimmicks, what is going to happen in trucking is the real drivers are going to work for smaller companies that have a little more freedom and less pay so they can feel human , instead of like a machine, the pay is not the issue it’s companies that think high pay mean someone will work for them , however what is going to happen is a crazy cycle in which you have less experienced which statistics show more wrecks which means higher insurance rates which is what they were trying to avoid in the first place, so what I’m seeing is the company doing what they want at every turn and hardly ever asking a driver their opinion, if these companies could get their arm chair ceo s away from their bottom line and focus on some driver surveys they wouldn’t have the insane turnover . But the industry keeps going the the office and the government think it should go so I can see why they want driverless trucks because soon nobody would be able to put up with the micro management, it’s truly funny to see all these companies confused on why drivers won’t work for them , if they would simply ask some questions from their drivers im sure their drivers would give them the answers . The trucking industry is in a period change from a job that had freedom and a sense of pride from strong independent people to codependent drivers that can’t use a gps let alone a map , it’s going to be interesting to see how much stress can put on drivers until they can’t take it no more , bottom line companies concerns and drivers concerns are very different, get closer to aligning those and you will have better places to work.