Salaries of truck drivers can vary greatly for truck drivers who have a class A after training or school.
CDL is a classification of all different types of driving.
CDL class A classification applies to vehicles with a total weight of more than 26,001 pounds and towing them all from 10,000 pounds.
It is obvious that, as for other professions in the labor market, a truck driver with experience can earn more than someone who has no experience or just learns to drive a truck.
Interestingly, the general driving experience or off-road driving experience is required for CDL Class A truck drivers with a given qualification.
Frequently, truck drivers are interested in driving a lower class vehicle without a Class A CDL, which may benefit from the overall driving experience of the truck.
CDL Endorsements for Class A
Another important factor for the salary of class-A truck drivers is the availability of different CDL approvals, which can be obtained together with the official license of the DMV licensed driver.
Qualified A-class truckers receive 4 basic wages to earn more money:
- Hazardous Materials / Hazmat = H Endorsement
- Tank Vehicles / Tanker = N Endorsement
- Double / Triple Trailers = T Endorsement
- Air Brake Restriction = K Endorsement
CDL A Endorsement Salary Comparisons
In order to get an overview of the types of wage increases that can be expected with different CDL approvals, we have compared actual wages.
The total salary difference is about $6,000 a year.
Although this may not be accurate because many CDL A drivers get paid per mile.
So approval of hazardous materials or a tanker can significantly increase the salary of the truck driver.
Demand for staff in the Hazzard-approved area tanker is usually greater than for Class A drivers because of their low potential availability.
Calculations show that salaries on CDL tankers are 11% higher among vacancy announcements compared to simply CDL Class A.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is also another useful source of information about salaries and perspectives of career growth in the field of cargo transportation.
But the disadvantage of the Bureau of Labour Statistics is that they provide an overview of freight work yet do not have salary rates for individual areas or CDL approvals.
At the same time, we get a meaningful overview of the salary of the tractor driver, which is $38,770 a year, i.e. about $18.5 per hour.
Currently, as stated by BLS, the general job market has more than 1,604,800 jobs for truck drivers.
Better news for those who are interested in the truck driver’s profession is the statistics of extraordinary growth, which is forecasted to be 21% over a period of 10 years.
It is expected that this growth will result in 330,100 jobs for truck drivers on U.S. roads, thus increasing the need for truck drivers.
Class A CDL Job Availability and Demand
If the growth rate of 21% for a freight job vacancy does not convince you that the freight industry is in high demand, we have considered other ways to analyze the freight market.
In general, the Wanted analytics company monitors the market of vacancies in the field of cargo transportation, the complexity of recruiting truckers and the number of vacancies.
An article titled “Work for truck drivers is getting harder and harder to get” has recently appeared on the market and has reached a new record of drivers’ work.
In three years, the number of jobs increased by 22,31%.
Overall CDL A Salary Growth Rates
After examining the growth in the number of jobs that will be available in the freight industry and considering the rapid collapse of the labor market analytics, it is logical to ask whether wages will increase.
Look at the national wage trends that the labor exchange provides.
Some growth can be noticed if in October 2018 the index was at the level of 1.20.
Then it was growing at a fairly rapid pace to the level of 1.50 index, which indicates an increase in the salaries of CDL truck drivers of class A.
Therefore, qualified truck drivers are much in demand in the labor market.
