A federal minimum compensation standard of $1.00 per dispatched hub mile, loaded or empty, paid to the company driver. This is a floor, not a ceiling.
Mandatory Minimum Company Driver Pay, explained by David McCown. Runtime 3:46.
This is bigger than wages. Today, many companies build their entire business model on extremely low driver compensation. When you can pay drivers next to nothing, the incentive is to hire the cheapest labor available instead of investing in qualified professionals. That pushes experienced drivers out, fills seats with undertrained ones, and puts everyone on the road at risk. Low pay is not just unfair, it is a safety and quality problem for the entire industry.
McCown Co. proposes a federal minimum compensation standard for company drivers of $1.00 per dispatched hub mile, loaded or empty.
The amount must be paid to the driver and may not be diluted through unpaid repositioning miles, shortened mileage calculations, percentage arrangements, or other compensation structures.
Carriers remain free to pay more based on experience, endorsements, safety record, equipment, responsibilities, and job demands. The $1.00 standard is a floor, not a ceiling.
AFFTRA legislative proposal. This is not current federal law.
Paying drivers like the professionals they are makes the whole system safer and stronger.
No. The $1.00 driver-pay floor applies to company drivers. Owner-operators are protected through the $5.00 carrier freight-rate floor because they receive the carrier revenue rather than a separate employee-driver wage.
Yes, provided the driver's total compensation for covered dispatch miles is at least equivalent to the $1.00-per-hub-mile minimum and all compensation is accurately disclosed. No alternative formula may be used to pay less than the federal floor.
The goal is not to eliminate trucking jobs. It is to ensure those jobs are filled by qualified professionals and that freight is priced high enough to compensate them properly. A business model that works only by underpaying drivers is not sustainable.
It is a clear, enforceable federal floor that ends the cheapest-labor business model. It is deliberately a minimum, and the market is expected to pay well above it for experienced professionals.
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