Todd Amen, of Atbs, has his annual gaze on what the drivers did ’24. (Photo: Atbs, Jim Allen \ Freightwaves)
Independent truck drivers on average made a little more money by 2024 than by 2023 but worked more for these additional dollars.
This is the conclusion of Todd Amen, the President of Atbs, one of the leading accounting and financial advisers who serve independent owners. With the income tax day in less than two weeks, Amen has now processed enough tax statements to have a critical data mass about how truck drivers did in a market last year that most people were happy to put in the rearview mirror.
The basic figure: the average driver last year served by ATBS made $ 64,000. This is $ 1,000 more than 2023, less than 1.6%.
But this figure also includes part -time drivers. For drivers who have worked all year, the number increases to $ 86,000, up to $ 1,000 for the year. The 10% higher number of drivers Taxes and finances were processed by ATBS was $ 215,000, said Amen, up to $ 212,000 by 2023.
But slightly higher income was a cost, said Amen. The full -time average driver who is ATBS client led 93,000 miles by 2024, up to 4% more than the previous year.
“So, on average, they work harder,” Amen told Freightwaves in a telephone interview. “They’ve been working more for two years to make a little more money.”
The main winners of the ATBS clientele are the ones who “do things so unique that this is not really the miles,” said Amen. He quoted truck drivers carrying dangerous materials and giant windmill leaves as examples.
Atbs describes itself as the largest business management, accounting and fiscal management company in the United States that provides services to owners-operators.
Amen said that while some of the ATBS clientele consists of company drivers, the vast majority of customers are independent operators.
This position has still announced what drivers have been doing in recent years.
When the double invasion of Russia in Ukraine was combined with the sharp fall of the specific rates of the first quarter of 2022, “tens of thousands of drivers were like, I can no longer make money doing this,” said Amen. “My sense is that half of them went to fleets with their truck because the fleets have long -term hired rates. And things were still quite good at the fleets.”
As the rates continued to fall or let go to low levels, Amen acknowledged that they had no harsh numbers, but “certainly some of these independent drivers became drivers of the company and some left the industry.”
Amen said that the gradual fall of diesel prices compared to the second half of 2024 was a profit for drivers. But it was not enough: his estimation is that diesel prices decreased on average about 7 cents per mile, but the rates dropped 10 cents per mile, “which means it was still a hard year.”
As he pointed out, the rates reserved for the timely market without a benefit from a fuel surcharge must be established at a level that covers the diesel price. But with the volatility of rates and diesel at the same time, this is not always possible.
The fall of rates generally helps drivers “from a cash flow perspective,” said Amen. If a surcharge or fuel rate that is a higher price is established as the pump price falls, “this certainly helps.”
Amen, as ATBS chief, is in a position to see that many of the steps lead drivers to deal with a weak truck market. Its recommendation is a basket of options to be taken, none of them that has any particular magic.
Mostly they are reduced to maintaining the wheels rotating.
“Running more miles, generating more revenue, being more productive is fruitful at a time like this, when the rates do not pay me enough,” he said.
Responding to the shouts of the truck driver on social media to “stop taking cheap goods,” he advised the opposite.
Once the fixed costs are counted through kilometers, defined as truck payments and insurance, as well as the need to compensate the person behind the wheel, drivers must see their costs beyond the variable, which consists mainly of fuel and maintenance dollars.
“If they can run hard and work hard and do these fixed costs, all that they have to pay for the rest of the month is their fuel and their maintenance to function,” said Amen. “This is your contribution margin.” The margin before arriving at Breakeven can be 40%. But then it can increase from 60% to 65%.
“And so there will always be an economic opportunity for those who want to work harder to make more money,” said Amen. “I may need to take this backward load and make 15 cents per mile on my contribution margin.” It’s not much, he said, but thinking about finance in this way should lead to a decision: “It should never be a charge below $ 2 per mile. You have to understand your costs and think about your business.”
Amen recently attended the annual meeting of the 2025 Truck Carriers Association. In discussing the Bob Costello Opening AddressEconomist none of the American Trucking Associations, Amen turned a discussion about the capacity for a rib observation on the role that B1 drivers are playing in truck capacity.
Costello said that Mexican drivers who are classified into B-1, which means that they can move goods between the United States and Mexico, but not between two destinations in the United States, affected the capacity and could be the goal of a repression of the Trump administration.
Discussion with Amen went to Landstar (NASDAQ: LSTR) The capacity data is cited as a barometer of truck capacity. It has been falling for several years and yet the rates are still losing.
“Landstar takes the best of the best,” said Amen. “They have an extremely difficult qualification process.”
But B-1 drivers offering “cabotage” services, between two destinations in the United States, “are in the type of radar market,” he said. Even with all the rules on the movement of goods in the United States, illegal freight transport is “obviously happening.” The end result is that “we have a lot
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