Well yeah, it’s like that in most other industries too where you work for somebody other than yourself. There’s a capout, where unless you want to take on MORE responsibilities, then you are going to cap out at your market value. Some jobs sooner than others.
Public teacher’s salaries are one of the few exceptions to the profession, where your pay steadily increases until retirement. Unfortunately, public teaching salaries also start pretty low compared to what everyone else around you is making and when taking into account the cost of living. Would you rather trucking be like teaching, where the pay starts off really low and steadily goes up over a 30 year period, or would you rather trucking be like it is now where you start really low but you can basically shoot up to top pay within 2 – 5 years?
Do you want to take 30 years to get to top pay, or 5 years to get to top pay?
It’s the same for someone who works at a bank doing mortgage loans. That person is going to get capped out at top pay unless they want to take on more responsibility and start managing a branch, rather than just having to worry about themselves.
The only exception to these pay increases are during rare times like the past few years, where it’s an employee market. In those cases you better take advantage of it and jump ship to raise your pay significantly (which you personally should have done these past few years if you didn’t feel your pay was up to par with the industry standard).
If you run OTR reefer or dry van, then you should know that you’re going to make less money (gross wise) than someone doing fuel hauling, LTL, food service, etc. etc. It is what it is. If you want more pay, you have to take on more responsibility, which those 3 sectors of trucking require.
With LTL you’re going to need to keep those endorsements, including hazmat, up to date. You also might have to deal with constant city traffic if you’re doing P&D or driving at night and going to sleep when the sun comes up everyday if you’re doing linehaul. With fuel hauling, if you screw up, well then you’re going to burn to death. With food service, you’re going to have to work physically hard and get out from the seat. All these sectors of trucking have significantly more responsiblity than opening and closing doors in a reefer or dry van and bumping a dock every other day.
I say this as someone who does OTR reefer and dry van work, so don’t think that I’m trying to put you or anyone else in the sector down, that’s not the case at all. But at the same time, this is capitalism and the free market, and the market says that OTR reefer and dry van drivers are worth around $0.60 CPM – $0.70 CPM if you are a W2 employee with 2 or more years experience (but most companies closer to $0.70 CPM you might have to give up on driver comforts like APU’s). The free market says that more experience past 2 years really doesn’t matter in this sector of trucking.
It is what it is, but just like most other jobs if you want more pay, you’re going to have to switch to something that requires more responsibility than what you’re doing now.
To answer your question, yes experience still matters, but so does responsibility and the work involved in your job.
