Dang JD! You are absolutely right... I would have bet that the city guy could not have made close to the same. The numbers show that he could get very close. I stand corrected. It would still take a couple more hours, but fair enough, for all the reasons you gave.Wow Swampy you went back a ways on this one. Ok I ran some numbers and. think my point is still valid, there is no "apples to apples" comparison and I AM IN NO WAY saying who works harder I'm just comparing money and hours. I am having a little trouble finding the mileage pay for line haul so I used $0.59 per mile and $23.68 per hour, feel free to correct me on those numbers. My earlier post referenced a 648 mile road run, I'm not sure who originally posted that but I'll use it as that would (or should) be considered a "good" run pretty much anywhere in the system. Here we go, on that run 648 miles times $0.59 is $382.32, then as I remember how meets work (again feel free to correct me) you get a half hour to build your set in the morning, 15 minutes TO at the meet point (assuming this is a meet), a half hour to drop out at the end of the day and 15 minutes to fuel. That's an hour and a half at $23.68 an hour, which is $35.52 plus $383.32 for a grand total of $418.84. For a city driver to make that he would have to work 14.46 hours at $23.68 an hour with time and a half after 8. Now how many hours did the road driver work to complete that run? I would guess close to 13 as an average, maybe a little less some days and more others. So he works an hour and a half less than you would. But in my opinion there's more to it, number 1, I don't want to work 13 hours EVERY day, 2 your job is more flexible, you can say hey I have a doctors appointment next Tuesday and I need to go home early, the road driver has to try to switch runs or take the day off you don't. If something goes wrong on his run and he's 200 miles from home he's in a hotel, have you ever had to get a room in the city because you couldn't make it back? You have short and long days, his are all long. Again I'm not judging who works harder I'm just saying I don't think the compensation is that unbalanced when you factor in all the other stuff that goes with it, there's more to compensation than just money.
I'll also agree that I don't want those hours confined in the truck all day OR those hours humping freight...