CONTENT: As a long haul driver, you will encounter a great many expenses on the road. Obviously, your main expense on the road should be for fuel, but there are many others too. They range from expenses for food and lodging to expenses for scale charges, tolls, and permits. Somebody has to keep account of all those expenses, and unless you plan to pay an accountant to ride along with you in the cab, that somebody is going to be you.
A System for Keeping Track of Expenses
The question is how do you keep account of all those little details - receipts for coffee, receipts for bridge tolls - and the big details like how much you paid for fuel along the way. You need a system. And a system is just what we are going to teach you in this section of the workbook.
The thing is, your system needs to match your company rules. Of course, if you are an owner/operator and you haven't leased on with anyone, it's pretty simple to figure out what kind of a system you need. You need to keep track of all receipts for everything on a daily basis so that you can declare the expenses as business expenses on your income tax at the end of the year. On the other hand, as a company driver or an owner leased on with a company, you're going to find a whole lot of variation in the way things are handled.
We're going to teach you two systems for handling expense reports and receipts. The two systems are for the two extremes of how expenses are handled in the industry. The two extremes are (1) you pay all your expenses on the road and the company doesn't reimburse you for anything, and (2) the company pays for all your expenses on the road as long as they are reasonable, related to the job, and not extravagant.
Two Extremes
Extreme #1 (You Pay): Some leased-on owner/operators would operate under this system. The owner-operator would be responsible for truck expenses such as fuel, service, parts, and sometimes for all hauling expenses (scales, tolls, permits), etc. The company might pay some expenses, such as fuel use tax and some types of insurance; but the road expenses and truck expenses would be the responsibility of the owner/ operator. Under this plan, all your road expenses and truck expenses have to come out of your earnings. So two things become clear right from the start: (1) You'd better earn a lot of money every month so that you can pay for all your expenses. (2) If you live high on the hog while you're traveling, you're going to be literally eating your paycheck. You won't be taking much of it home. And that's one of the ways owner- operators go broke. They forget that all those road and truck expenses have to come out of their gross pay. And until they've paid those expenses, they haven't really earned anything.
Extreme #2 (Company Pays): Some company drivers would operate under this system. Their companies, for example, might give them credit cards to use for food and lodging and advance them small amounts of cash for miscellaneous expenses like tolls. These drivers would be reimbursed for all reasonable expenses, but not for extravagant meals or lodging. For example, the company might pay up to $5.00 for dinner in Northern Wisconsin, but up to $7.50 for dinner in New Orleans. One price might be reasonable in one city, but not in another.
Remember, it's a competitive world out there, and if one driver is always turning in receipts for meals that are a lot higher than the ones the other drivers turn in, somebody's going to say something about it. If you're lucky enough to work for a company that makes a reasonable attempt to see that you can eat and sleep comfortably on the road, you'd be wise not to take advantage of it. You'll be found out soon enough and you'll find yourself out looking for a new job. In your next job, you might wind up paying all your own expenses. Nothing's standard in the industry when it comes to road expenses. If you wind up in a good situation, do your best to stay in it.
The Middle Ground
In practice, most truckers find themselves in a situation someplace between the two extremes we described above. For example, if you're an owner-operator, the company may pick up all permit and toll fees, but expect you to pay your own truck expenses. Chances are, if you're a company driver, your company will pay some expenses, but not others. For example, they might pay for three meals a day, but not for coffee breaks or snacks. On the other hand, if they've outfitted you with a top- of-the-line sleeper unit with a TV, double-bed, and range, they might not pay for motels or meals at all, but pay all hauling and truck expenses (fuel, service, wash, tolls, permits, parts, etc.) as normal costs for keeping a truck on the road.
