Table of Content
- Why there is no honest national hotshot pay number
- The benchmark to beat: what an employed heavy truck driver earns
- Gross: what a week of rate confirmations adds up to
- Hotshot Dispatch Where You Keep the Final Say
- Costs that come out of every gross dollar
- A worked week, with every input labelled
- Net is not take-home yet: taxes you pay yourself
- Run it on your own last four weeks
- Frequently asked questions
Short answer
No public dataset reports what hotshot owner-operators earn, so any single national figure is an estimate. The public benchmark is the Bureau of Labor Statistics figure for employed heavy truck drivers: a mean of $59,710 a year in May 2025, about $1,148 a week before tax. That figure leaves out the self-employed. As an owner-operator, your week works like this: gross is the sum of your rate confirmations, costs come out of every dollar of it, and net is what is left before tax. The worked week below uses real fuel, insurance and fee figures, and shows where the money goes.
This guide is about what is left after a week of hauling. What a single load should pay, and how to set the lowest rate you accept, is covered in hotshot rates per mile. Here we take a week of those loads and follow the money from gross to net.
Why there is no honest national hotshot pay number
The federal wage survey does not count owner-operators. BLS says its truck driver wage data come from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program and “do not include self-employed workers” (BLS, The Economics Daily). The same survey also defines heavy truck drivers by vehicle: trucks of at least 26,001 pounds gross vehicle weight, which require a CDL. A non-CDL hotshot setup falls outside that group entirely. See where the 10,001 and 26,001 pound lines fall for which side your rig is on.
Single hotshot “salary” figures you find online are estimates, and you usually cannot see the method behind them, so we do not repeat them here. Instead, this article gives you two things you can check: the employee benchmark you need to beat, and the arithmetic for your own week.
The benchmark to beat: what an employed heavy truck driver earns
If you could drive for a company instead, its paycheck is the number your own business has to beat. These are the national figures for heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers from the BLS May 2025 occupational wage data. Weekly figures are the annual ones divided by 52.
| BLS measure, May 2025 | Per year | Per week |
|---|---|---|
| 25th percentile | $47,960 | $922 |
| Median | $58,640 | $1,128 |
| Mean | $59,710 | $1,148 |
| 75th percentile | $69,120 | $1,329 |
Half of employed heavy truck drivers earned between $47,960 and $69,120. These are wages before tax. An employee also pays only half of Social Security and Medicare tax: 6.2% and 1.45%, with the employer paying the same again (IRS Topic 751). You pay both halves yourself (more on that below). Your net has to clear the benchmark with room to spare, not just match it.
Gross: what a week of rate confirmations adds up to
Gross is the total of the rate confirmations you delivered that week, plus any accessorial pay a broker actually paid, such as detention. Two ways of dividing it matter:
- Gross per loaded mile is how brokers quote and how a load looks on the board.
- Gross per total mile includes the empty miles you drove to reach each pickup and to get home. This is the number your costs are measured against.
A week can look strong per loaded mile and weak per total mile. The gap is your deadhead. It also shows up as empty hours between loads, which keeping the lane full covers in detail.
Costs that come out of every gross dollar
| Cost | What sets it | Where a real number comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Fuel | Total miles, your real miles per gallon loaded and empty, and the diesel price | The EIA weekly diesel price put the U.S. on-highway average at $6.292 a gallon for the week of November 2, 2026 |
| Insurance | Coverage, limits, deductible, driving record, what you haul, where you run | Insureon reports a median of $816 a month for commercial auto among trucking businesses that applied for quotes with it. That group includes semi trucks, and the same page says hotshot insurance costs less than semi insurance |
| Dispatch fee | The percentage in your dispatch agreement | Logity Dispatch charges 7% of gross for hotshot, as stated on our hotshot dispatch page |
| Truck and trailer payments | Your loan or lease terms | Your own statements |
| Maintenance and tires | Miles, load weight, age of the truck | Your own repair history, set aside per mile |
| Heavy vehicle use tax | Taxable gross weight | The IRS Form 2290 instructions tax vehicles at 55,000 pounds or more, counting the truck, the trailer it customarily pulls and the maximum load it customarily carries. Below that line there is no tax to file |
Everything else, from the ELD and phone to plates, permits and load board subscriptions, belongs in a fixed weekly line. If you have never totaled these, start with knowing your cost per mile.
A worked week, with every input labelled
This is an example to show the method, not a typical or average week. Inputs marked “example” are made up for illustration. Replace them with your own numbers.
| Line | Input | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Gross | Example: rate confirmations for 2,000 loaded miles | $4,000.00 |
| Total miles | Example: 2,000 loaded plus 400 empty | 2,400 miles |
| Fuel | 2,400 miles at an example 12 mpg = 200 gallons at $6.292 (EIA) | $1,258.40 |
| Dispatch fee | 7% of $4,000 (Logity Dispatch hotshot fee) | $280.00 |
| Insurance | $816 a month (Insureon median, all trucking) x 12 / 52 | $188.31 |
| Truck and trailer payments | Example | $500.00 |
| Maintenance and tires reserve | Example: 15 cents x 2,400 miles | $360.00 |
| Other fixed costs | Example: ELD, phone, plates, subscriptions | $100.00 |
| Total costs | $2,686.71 | |
| Net before tax | $4,000.00 minus $2,686.71 | $1,313.29 |
Here is what the example shows:
- A $4,000 gross week left about a third of gross before tax. The same week is $2.00 per loaded mile but $1.67 per total mile.
- The net clears the BLS mean of $1,148 a week by $165, before you pay both halves of Social Security and Medicare.
- Each extra 100 empty miles in this example costs about $67 in fuel and maintenance reserve alone. About 245 extra empty miles would erase the $165 margin over the benchmark.
- With these costs, gross has to reach about $3,823 for net to equal the BLS mean. That is the week’s break-even against a company paycheck, not against zero.
Net is not take-home yet: taxes you pay yourself
Net before tax is still not money you can spend. The IRS sets the self-employment tax rate at 15.3%: 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare. It applies once your net earnings from self-employment reach $400 for the year, and you figure it on Schedule SE. You can deduct the employer-equivalent part when figuring income tax, and income tax comes on top of it.
No employer withholds this for you. Sole proprietors generally have to make estimated tax payments if they expect to owe $1,000 or more when they file. The IRS also allows paying weekly or monthly, as long as enough is paid by the end of each quarter. A simple habit is to move a share of every settlement into a separate tax account the day it lands. Ask your tax preparer what share fits your situation.
Run it on your own last four weeks
- Add up gross from the rate confirmations you actually delivered, week by week.
- Pull total miles from your ELD or odometer, not loaded miles from the confirmations.
- Use your real fuel receipts, not an estimate.
- Put insurance, payments and fixed costs in as weekly amounts.
- Subtract to get net before tax, then compare it with the BLS weekly figures above.
If one week stands out as weak, compare its gross per loaded mile with its gross per total mile. If the loaded figure held up and the total figure fell, the rate was not the problem. The empty miles were.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a hotshot driver make per week?
No public dataset reports hotshot owner-operator earnings. The closest public benchmark is BLS: employed heavy truck drivers averaged $59,710 a year in May 2025, about $1,148 a week before tax, and that data excludes the self-employed. An owner-operator’s week is gross minus costs, which you can only work out from your own settlements.
What percentage of gross does a hotshot owner-operator keep?
It depends on miles, fuel price, deadhead and fixed costs. In this article’s example week, net before tax was about a third of gross. Treat that as the result of made-up inputs, not a rule.
What is the biggest cost for a hotshot truck?
In the example week it was fuel: $1,258 out of $2,687 in costs. With diesel at $6.292 a gallon (EIA, week of November 2, 2026), every empty mile adds to that line without adding gross.
Do hotshot drivers pay the heavy vehicle use tax?
Only if the taxable gross weight is 55,000 pounds or more. The IRS counts the truck, the trailer it customarily pulls and the maximum load it customarily carries. Check the weight you declared when you registered the truck.
Do owner-operators pay more tax than company drivers?
For Social Security and Medicare, yes. The self-employment tax rate is 15.3%, covering both the employee and employer halves. An employee pays half and the employer pays the rest. You can deduct the employer-equivalent part when you figure income tax.
