How to pay a truck driver by the mile, week by week

Paying a driver by the mile is five lines of arithmetic, not one. Miles times a rate, plus flat amounts for live loads and stop-offs, plus detention, plus any bonus, plus receipts you owe back, minus any cash advance already handed over. That's the week. The hard part isn't the multiplication, it's deciding once and for all which miles count and what a stop is worth, writing it down, and then doing it the same way every Sunday.

Here is the whole thing, line by line, the way you'd figure it at the kitchen table.

Which miles count

Start with the miles the carrier paid you on. On most settlements those show as calculated miles or paid miles — the carrier's practical mileage from shipper to consignee, not your odometer. That number is the honest base for driver pay because it's the number the money came from. If you pay off the odometer, you'll pay for wrong turns, fuel stops off the route, and the driver's run to the motel.

Then there's deadhead — the empty miles from the last delivery to the next pickup. The carrier never pays you for empty miles. Whether you pay your driver for them is your call, and it's the argument that comes up most. The three common rules:

• Pay loaded miles only. Simplest. Works if your freight is tight and deadhead is usually short.
• Pay all miles, loaded and empty, at the same rate. Easiest to explain to a driver, costs you more on a bad week.
• Pay empty miles over a set number, say anything past 50, at the loaded rate or a lower one.

Any of the three is fair. What isn't fair is deciding load by load. Pick one, write it on the sheet the driver signs, and apply it to every load whether it helps you or hurts you that week.

What the per-mile rate covers, and what it doesn't

The rate covers driving. It does not cover the hours nobody drives: sitting on a dock, hooking and unhooking, tarping, waiting on a lumper. That's why flat extras exist. If you fold everything into a higher cents-per-mile, the driver eats the short, ugly loads and gets paid twice on the long easy ones, and eventually leaves.

So keep the rate for miles and pay the standing-still work separately, by the stop code on the load:

Code	What it is	Common pay
PU	Pickup of a trailer already loaded — drop and hook	No extra
LL	Live load, the driver sits while they load it	Flat extra, often $25 to $50
SO	Stop-off, an extra stop between first pickup and final drop	Flat extra, often $20 to $40
SD	Split delivery	Miles for that leg only
SP	Split pickup	No extra

Two places people get crossed up. First, the final drop is not a stop-off. The last delivery is the end of the load; the miles pay for it. A stop-off is a stop in the middle. Second, a live unload is worth paying for too if your freight has them — decide whether your live-load flat covers loading only or both ends, and write that down.

Waiting past a reasonable time is detention. Carriers pay detention on some loads and not others, and the rules differ by shipper. Your driver's detention pay doesn't have to match what the carrier paid you, but most owners tie it to the same idea: two hours free, then an hourly rate or a flat amount, paid only when the driver got the in-and-out times on the paperwork. No signed times, no detention. Say that out loud once and you'll never argue about it again.

Bonus, receipts, and advances

Three more lines, and only the first one is pay.

A weekly bonus is yours to invent: on-time on every load, no claims, no violations, all paperwork turned in by Saturday. Keep it small and certain — $50 the driver can count on beats $200 they have to guess at.

Receipts you owe back are not pay. If the driver bought fuel with their own cash because the truck stop wouldn't take the card, or bought straps, that's a reimbursement. It shows on the pay sheet as its own line, and it is not part of what you report for them at the end of the year. Fuel put on the carrier's fuel card is your expense, deducted on your settlement, and has nothing to do with the driver's pay.

A cash advance pulled during the week comes off the bottom. It was already paid.

Nothing is withheld from a 1099 driver — no federal tax, no Social Security, no Medicare. The driver handles their own. Keep the yearly total of pay per driver, because the 1099-NEC filing rule is $600 for tax years through 2025 and $2,000 starting with tax year 2026. Whether a driver is properly a contractor at all is a question for your accountant, and worth asking once rather than assuming.

A week with four loads, every line

This is an example with round numbers. Driver's name is Ray. His written rate sheet says: 65 cents a mile on calculated miles plus all empty miles, $30 per live load, $25 per stop-off, detention $50 flat after two hours with signed times, $50 weekly bonus for on-time and paperwork in.

Load	Calculated miles	Empty in	Stops
1	412	60	LL
2	268	15	PU, one SO
3	520	0	LL, 3 hours at the consignee
4	196	120	PU

Miles first.

• Loaded: 412 + 268 + 520 + 196 = 1,396
• Empty: 60 + 15 + 0 + 120 = 195
• Total: 1,396 + 195 = 1,591
• 1,591 mi × $0.65 = $1,034.15

Now the extras.

• Live loads: 2 × $30 = $60.00
• Stop-offs: 1 × $25 = $25.00 (load 2. Load 3's delivery is the final drop, so it pays nothing extra)
• Detention: 3 hours at the consignee on load 3, two free, times signed on the bill = $50.00
• Bonus: $50.00

Pay so far:

• $1,034.15 + $60.00 + $25.00 + $50.00 + $50.00 = $1,219.15

Then the two lines that aren't pay.

• Receipts back: cash fuel $71.40 + a strap $18.95 = $90.35
• Cash advance he took Wednesday: −$200.00

Net to Ray:

• $1,219.15 + $90.35 = $1,309.50
• $1,309.50 − $200.00 = $1,109.50

That's the check. For your own numbers, his pay was $1,219.15 over 1,591 miles, about 76.6 cents a mile all in — worth knowing when you price your next load. The driver pay calculator runs the same lines and prints the sheet if you'd rather not do it by hand.

The sheet the driver gets

Hand over paper, or email a PDF, but give the driver something with every line on it. One line per load with the load number, the miles, and the stops. Then the extras, the bonus, the receipts, the advance, and the net. A driver who can check your math never asks you to re-explain the math.

Keep a copy. Twelve months of these sheets is what you'll add up in January, and it's what settles any disagreement in March about a week last spring. A blank weekly pay sheet is fine to start with; the format matters less than using the same one every week.

What to do this week

Write your rate sheet tonight — rate per mile, empty-mile rule, live load, stop-off, detention, bonus — on one page, and hand a copy to each driver. Then figure this week's pay off that page and nothing else. If a load makes you want to bend a rule, pay it by the rule this week and change the page for next week.