How much do truck drivers make?

The honest answer is a range, not one number. Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics' employer survey (updated to May 2025), most heavy and tractor-trailer drivers earned between $40,140 and $79,380 a year — the middle eighty percent of the wage distribution across an estimated 2,062,040 wage-and-salary driving jobs. The median sits inside that spread at $58,640. Where you land in the range depends on the freight, the schedule, and your experience — and the documented high side runs past the top of it, which is covered below.

What does BLS say drivers earn?

How do drivers clear $100K?

Two things are true at once. The BLS table above is the federal employer survey — and there are things it does not report. By its own scope definition, the OEWS survey “covers wage and salary workers” and “does not include the self-employed” — so owner-operators' earnings, good and bad, are outside these figures entirely. And its published table reports percentile boundaries, not a maximum — the 90th-percentile figure is a line one in ten drivers earned more than, not a ceiling on what any employer pays.

What carriers publish about their own pay tells the rest — quoted here with dates, as their claims, not as statistics:

• Private fleet. Walmart's own driver posting (fetched August 2, 2026) says regional drivers “can earn up to $110,000 in their first year” at $0.55–$0.69 per mile — and the same posting requires 30 months of recent Class A experience, plus a hazmat endorsement either at hire or obtained within 120 days. That figure and that experience requirement come as one package.
• LTL line haul. Old Dominion's March 2021 hiring announcement put average annual pay for its line-haul drivers at $99,000 — the carrier's own figure, now several years old, quoted with its date.
• Union freight. The Teamsters' own highlights of the 2023–2028 UPS contract put the average top rate for full-time UPS Teamsters at $49 per hour — a top rate, the contract's own term, not a first-year figure.
• Endorsements. Note the condition inside Walmart's six-figure posting: a hazmat endorsement, at hire or within 120 days. If the high side is where you're headed, the free hazmat practice test is where that endorsement starts.
• Owner-operators. Outside the BLS data entirely — the survey covers employees only, by its own scope definition. An owner-operator's number is revenue against real costs, and no primary source publishes a “typical” owner-operator take-home, so this page doesn't print one. Run your own math with the cost-per-mile calculator.

Why is the BLS range a baseline, not your first-year number?

Four reasons to read the table carefully. It lags: May 2025 data is published the following year, so current freight-market swings aren't in it yet. It has no experience breakdown: a 20-year veteran and a first-year driver sit in the same distribution, so the survey cannot tell you a first-year number — which is why the $40,140 10th-percentile figure is the lower-end planning reference, not a first-year wage and not the median. It is one occupation code: SOC 53-3032 puts every heavy and tractor-trailer driving job into a single distribution — the survey doesn't break pay out by type of freight or route here. And it counts employees only: OEWS surveys employers, so self-employed owner-operators' earnings are outside this dataset entirely.

Note the conditions attached to the examples above: Walmart's $110,000 posting requires 30 months of recent Class A experience, and the UPS figure is an average top rate — the contract's own word — not a starting one. A recruiter promising a brand-new driver those numbers in year one is quoting someone else's seat: weigh any first-year offer against the percentile table, not against the ceiling.

Is trucking work actually growing?

Per the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, employment of heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers is projected to grow 4% from 2024 to 2034 — about as fast as the average for all occupations — on a base of 2,235,100 jobs in 2024. The bigger hiring signal is churn: BLS projects about 237,600 openings every year on average over the decade, most of them replacing drivers who change occupations or retire. Openings for new entrants exist in nearly every market, every year; the projection says nothing about the quality of any particular seat.

What should I do with these numbers?

Use the range as your map: the 10th percentile is the lower-end planning reference, the median is the middle of the employee market, and the documented high side comes with its conditions printed right on it — experience requirements and top rates. Weigh a training contract or first-job offer against that map, not against a billboard. And run the other side of the ledger first — the cost calculator shows what the license itself costs, and the step-by-step guide covers getting from zero to that first paycheck. The knowledge tests are free to start practicing right now.