TORONTO — Here’s a club you’d probably want to be a member of: The finalists of the Truckload Carriers Association’s (TCA) annual Best Fleets to Drive For contest.

Here’s why: The annual driver pay at those places has risen by at least 10 percent over the past five years. 

What’s more, even though the dollars have gone up, the miles-driven per year decreased and there’s less driver turnover.

According to Mark Murrell, President of the online training organization Carrier’s Edge and the lynchpin of the annual TCA competition, the average annual income for company drivers in the Best Fleets finalists ranged from $44,000 to $74,000, with the majority of the rates hovering between $50K and $70K. 

With fleets that employ owner-operators, gross income ranged from $97K to $225,000.

“The bulk of them,” Murrell said in a seminar held in Toronto this week, “are in the higher range.” 

“In the best fleets to drive for,” he said, “over the past five years, we’ve got better miles, better pay, better safety, less turnover.”

The free three-hour seminar was number seven in a 13-city tour designed to share operational ideas from the Best Fleet winners with carriers across Canada.

Best Fleets to Drive For, now in its fifth year, identifies North American for-hire trucking companies that provide the best workplace experiences for their drivers.

Carriers are nominated by drivers and evaluated on the range and depth of offered programs, the overall effectiveness of those programs across key metrics, and the responses of surveyed drivers.

The top finishers are identified as Best Fleets to Drive For, and the highest scoring fleet in each category is named overall winner.

The overall winner in the company-driver category for 2013 was Nebraska-based Grand Island Express and the overall winner in the owner-operator category was Landstar, based in Jacksonville, FL. 

For more on the series, check www.bestfleetstodrivefor.com.