Pay and Working Conditions in the Long-Distance Truck and Bus Industries: Assessing for Effects on Driver Safety and Retention

By: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education and Transportation Research Board and Committee on National Statistics and Consensus and Advisory Studies and Committee for a Study of the Impacts of Alternative Compensation Methods on Truck Driver Retention and Safety Performance

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Synopsis: For-hire trucking—as opposed to in-house private carriers that transport the goods of their parent company—is a large and heterogeneous industry with considerable variability in carrier sizes, operational structures, and freight markets served. For this sector, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration should explore opportunities for leveraging research and data collection that may be planned and programmed for other purposes to help regulators, researchers, and industry examine the potential effects of driver compensation and work conditions on the safe driving behavior and performance of long-distance for-hire truck drivers. This is among the recommendations in TRB Special Report 355: Pay and Work Conditions in the Long-Distance Truck and Bus Industries: Assessing for Effects on Driver Safety and Retention, from the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The report examines—in response to a request from the U.S. Congress—the impacts of various methods of driver compensation on safety and driver retention, including hourly pay, payment for detention time, and other payment methods used in the industry.