Occupation / job
Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
How many people are qualified for this, and how many are doing it
The pay figure above only describes people who got the job. This is the part it leaves out.
There are 3,800,000 active interstate commercial driver's licence holders (2024). Federal employment records account for 2,062,040 people working in Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers — 54.3%.
The remainder is a ceiling, not an unemployment rate. Holding the credential is not the same as wanting a job with it, and the remainder also holds everyone who moved into management or teaching, retired without giving the credential up, or works self-employed in a way the employment survey misses. What the pair does establish is that the pay figure above is a survivor's figure, and roughly how many people it is silent about. Everything else that gap contains
Denominator: active interstate commercial driver's licence holders = 3,800,000 (Standing count of people holding the credential, FMCSA figure for 2024) · FMCSA, Non-Domiciled Commercial Driver's Licenses and Commercial Learner's Permits, 90 FR 46520 (29 September 2025) · view
Who this suits
The $58,640 midpoint sits $4.14 an hour above the $50,020 typical American job. That is a 17% premium, and premiums are rationed: whatever rations this one is the thing standing between you and Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers.
With 2,062,040 employed, this is one of the biggest occupations in the country. Work at this scale is always available and rarely scarce, and the wage on this page is what that combination produces.
Driving suits people who are comfortable alone for long stretches and who can hold a schedule as the primary measure of whether they did the job.
We carry no verified training length for Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
Between $47,960 and $69,120 there is $21,160, a ratio of 1.4x. Tight distributions are predictable, and predictable cuts both ways: little risk of being badly underpaid, little prospect of doing much better.
At $47,960, or $23.05 an hour, the bottom quarter of this work lands within $2,060 of the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint — an unusually solid floor.
Avoid it if long periods alone, irregular sleep or time away from home are dealbreakers.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 2,062,040 people employed as Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.
What the spread tells you
The quarters are $47,960 and $69,120, a ratio of 1.4x. In a distribution this narrow, the biggest single lever on your pay in Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers is the cost of living where you do it.
The middle half of this field earns between $47,960 and $69,120. That is $21,160 of range, with $58,640 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Getting to $69,120, the 75th percentile, is worth $10,480 a year more than the $58,640 midpoint and $21,160 more than the $47,960 a quarter of Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers settle for.
$58,640 sits almost exactly in the middle of its own range — $10,680 above the bottom quarter, $10,480 below the top one. A symmetric distribution like this is the case where the median genuinely does describe the typical person.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $23.05 at the bottom quarter, $28.19 at the midpoint, $33.23 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $58,640 figure is what employers pay employees. It is before tax and before deductions, it excludes the self-employed entirely, and it says nothing about anyone who does this work on their own account.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers, the hourly figure is $58,640 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else