2026 Commercial Trucking Salary Guide
National wage benchmarks for CDL-A and CDL-B drivers, sourced directly from BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics - plus an honest look at the roles across dispatch, safety, and fleet operations that don’t have a dedicated BLS wage figure to cite.
What's inside
- National median wage for CDL-A and CDL-B drivers, BLS-sourced and clearly labeled
- Every proxy classification named honestly - no invented number where the data doesn’t exist
- Total-compensation factors that matter more than base pay for driver retention
- A comparable-classifications table across all 10 recruited roles
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Download 2026 Commercial Trucking Salary GuideWhat the public wage data already says about commercial trucking pay.
The guide is built from our own placement records. This is the other half - what the federal government published for Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers in May 2025, free, before any of our data is added to it.
The eight metros that pay it best.
| Metro | Median | vs national | Employed | Concentration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seattle, WA | $71,240 | +21% | 21,230 | 0.77× |
| San Jose, CA | $70,730 | +21% | 5,360 | 0.36× |
| San Francisco, CA | $66,450 | +13% | 16,450 | 0.52× |
| New York, NY | $65,040 | +11% | 65,100 | 0.52× |
| Minneapolis, MN | $64,200 | +9% | 20,430 | 0.79× |
| Boston, MA | $64,010 | +9% | 20,090 | 0.56× |
| Denver, CO | $63,900 | +9% | 14,320 | 0.67× |
| Portland, OR | $63,800 | +9% | 14,370 | 0.90× |
Concentration is the location quotient: 1.00× is the national rate, 1.40× means the metro has 40% more of these workers per job than the country as a whole.
The same job title pays $71,240 in Seattle and $46,360 in Myrtle Beach - $24,880 a year apart. BLS publishes a median for heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers in all 100 of the metros we recruit in, so that is the full range and not a selection from it.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. Figures are annual, for all employers, not only commercial contractors.
