Not every load pays the same way, and not every driver gets paid the same way. Flatbed crews doing steel, box truck teams on local routes, and dump truck drivers running day work often get paid by the hour or by the day, not by the mile or by a percentage of the load. That's a legitimate, common pay structure. It's also the one most likely to create a mess at settlement time if your process isn't tight.
This article covers the mechanics of hourly and day-rate driver pay: how to track it accurately, how to handle deductions, how to prevent paying the same time twice, and how to give drivers a statement they can actually read. For the full picture on driver settlements across every pay structure, see the Driver Settlements for Small Fleets guide.
Why Time-Based Pay Creates More Settlement Complexity Than Mile-Based Pay
When a driver gets paid per mile, the math anchors to a load record. The load has a distance, you have a rate, the settlement line writes itself. Time-based pay is different because the unit of work is an entry that someone has to create, verify, and attach to the right period before settlement runs.
The problems that commonly show up:
- Time entries for the same day or the same job end up on two different statements if the settlement process doesn't prevent it.
- Day-rate and hourly drivers sometimes also get a per-load bonus or override on certain runs, so one statement needs to carry both time lines and load lines without dropping either.
- Deductions like fuel advances or equipment charges get missed or applied twice when the settlement is built manually from a spreadsheet.
- Drivers have no visibility into what they were paid for, which creates disputes that take longer to resolve than the original error.
None of these problems are unsolvable. They just require a settlement process that was designed with time-based pay in mind from the start, not bolted onto a system built only for mileage runs.
Tracking Hours and Days Accurately Before Settlement Runs
The settlement is only as clean as the time records going into it. A few practices that keep those records reliable:
Log time entries against a load or a date, not just a driver. If a driver worked three days on a job, the time entries should tie to that job. If they ran local pickup-and-delivery all week with no single load anchor, the entries tie to the date range. Either approach works as long as it's consistent so you can pull those records at settlement time without guessing what period they cover.
Agree on the rate unit before the job starts. Hourly and day-rate sometimes blur. A driver who "works a day" might be on a flat day rate no matter how long the day runs, or they might be on an hourly rate with an eight-hour floor. Document which structure applies to which driver so there's no renegotiation at pay time.
Handle overrides explicitly. A day-rate driver who also gets a per-load bonus on a specific run needs both on one statement. If your settlement process requires picking one pay basis per period, you'll either miss the bonus or split it across statements awkwardly. Build the statement so both can live on it.
Deductions on Time-Based Statements
Fuel advances, escrow holds, insurance deductions, and equipment chargebacks don't care what pay basis a driver is on. They show up on the statement regardless, and they need to be transparent.
A clean deduction presentation shows the driver three numbers: gross pay, total deductions itemized by label, and net pay. If net pay is negative because a deduction exceeds what was earned in the period, that number needs to show clearly as the driver owing the company, not be hidden or rounded away. Drivers who can see the math are far less likely to dispute it, and when disputes do happen, a labeled breakdown resolves them faster than a single-number summary ever will.
Don't apply the same deduction twice across two settlement periods. If a fuel advance was already deducted on last week's statement, it doesn't come off again this week. That sounds obvious, but manual settlement processes commonly produce this error when the person building the statement doesn't have a clear view of what previous statements already covered.
Preventing Double-Pay on Time Entries
Double-pay on mileage runs is usually caught because the load is the anchor and you can see whether it's already been settled. Time entries are more vulnerable because the anchor is a date or a range, and it's easier to lose track of what's already been paid.
The fix is a closed-period rule: once a date or a load is on a settled statement, it can't be added to a later one. This has to be enforced by the process, not by memory. If you're running settlements in a spreadsheet, that discipline lives entirely in your head and whoever else touches the file. If you're running them in a system, that system should block a date range or a load from appearing on a second statement once it's been settled.
Immutable statements matter here too. If a settlement has been issued, it should stay exactly as it was at the moment you generated it, even if you later edit the underlying load record or time entry. Settlements that change after the fact create disputes that are impossible to resolve cleanly because the driver's copy doesn't match your records.
Giving Drivers Visibility Into Their Own Pay
Time-based drivers often have less load-by-load insight into what they're earning than mileage drivers do. A mileage driver can back-calculate their pay from what they hauled. An hourly driver is trusting that the hours you recorded match the hours they worked.
That trust is easier to maintain when drivers can see their own settlement statements directly, without having to ask. A read-only view where a driver can pull up their own history, see the line items, and check the numbers against their own notes eliminates a category of disputes before they start. It also makes it easier to catch legitimate errors early, when the memory of what happened is still fresh.
How HaulerPro Handles Time-Based Driver Pay
HaulerPro's driver settlements are built to handle time-based pay natively, not as a workaround. You set a driver's pay basis as per-day or per-hour when you configure their profile. Time entries work in quarter-unit steps, so partial days and partial hours resolve cleanly on the statement rather than requiring manual rounding. A time-based driver can also carry per-load overrides on specific runs, so a day-rate driver who earns a bonus on a particular load gets both on one statement: the time lines and the load line together, not split across two documents.
Per-settlement deductions are supported with labeled line items. The statement shows gross pay, total deductions, and net pay. If net is negative, it shows as the driver owing the company. Double-pay protection means a date or a load already settled on one statement can't appear on a later one. Each settlement is an immutable snapshot, so the numbers a driver sees in their read-only Settlements view are exactly what you generated, even if underlying records are edited afterward.
Driver settlements at HaulerPro work alongside dispatch, invoicing, and expense tracking in one platform. You can dispatch a load in under 60 seconds once your account is set up, and your first load can be live in under 10 minutes from signup. No implementation fee, no consultant, no spreadsheet cleanup required before you start.
For more on structuring driver pay across all pay types, see the Driver Settlements for Small Fleets guide.
If you're running hourly or day-rate drivers and your settlement process lives in a spreadsheet right now, start a free trial and see how the time entry and settlement flow actually works. No credit card required.