Nussbaum Transportation Raises Pay for the Work Beyond the Miles, Second Major Move of 2026

Employee-owned carrier increases Activity Pay, Detention Pay, and Weekly Guarantees—its second major pay increase this year.

HUDSON, IL—Nussbaum Transportation, an employee-owned truckload carrier, has announced a new series of driver pay increases built on this idea: pay drivers for everything the job demands—including the work that a CPM rate quietly leaves out. The increases include:

• Activity pay rises from $20 to $23 on every pickup, delivery, and stop-off, with trailer relays and shuttles going from $12 to $15 per event.
• Detention pay climbs 25%, from $20 to $25 per hour, and still kicks in after one hour.
• The weekly minimum guarantee increases $50 per week.
• An extra $50/week for drivers who run on a special Illuminate Loop project.
• Trainer pay jumps 50%, from an extra $500 to $750/week (atop the trainer’s regular mileage, activity pay, and guarantee).

The detention bump applies fleetwide, while the activity pay and guarantee bumps apply to OTR and Regional Van System drivers.

“There’s far more to this job than the miles,” said Jeremy Stickling, Chief Administrative Officer at Nussbaum Transportation. “We still pay per mile, but these features pay for the rest of the work, and cover drivers when trucking happens.”

Most carriers pay only “stop-offs” between the first pickup and final delivery, treating those two as covered by the mileage rate. In addition to stop-offs, Nussbaum pays on every pickup and every delivery, as well as drop-lot relays.

“That’s exactly where the work is,” Stickling said. “The guard shack, staging, hooking trailers, the paperwork, the dock. Our activity pay puts a floor under every stop.”

It also helps high-volume weeks, when a driver running 8 or 9 shorter loads does considerably more hands-on work than a driver with 2 long hauls, yet logs fewer miles. Higher activity pay helps to close that gap.

Detention rises to $25 per hour while keeping Nussbaum’s signature “first hour free” structure. Much of the industry requires two hours before detention pay kicks in and only pays the driver if the shipper reimburses the carrier.

“Two hours free is the standard, and many times drivers only get paid if their company recovers the cost,” Stickling said. “Ours starts after one hour, and we pay even if we can’t recover the time. The driver lost it, so they get paid. Collection is our problem, not theirs.”

Nussbaum considers its weekly guarantee “one of the highest safety nets in the industry.” The $50 guarantee bump sweetens it even more, serving as a floor for weeks when things go sideways. It sits alongside layover and breakdown pay, plus perks like paid parking with no prior approval required.

Those are the features job-seeking drivers should weigh, Stickling says, but rarely ask about. “When a driver says ‘just give me your cents per mile,’ that’s usually the very question that burned them,” he said. “A high advertised rate can hide a short-route system paying nothing for work at the dock, time waiting at a shipper, or equipment failures.”

Stickling encourages drivers to ask: How do you pay me when I’m broken down? When I sit a full day? When the load cancels? “That’s where our guarantees, our layover and breakdown pay, and our paid parking come in,” Stickling said. “Those are the numbers that show up in a driver’s annual earnings. And on the mileage front, we pay practical miles—door to door instead of zip to zip—costing us more, paying the driver more, but never showing in our advertised rate.”

A new weekly pay item introduced this fall shows the same principle at work on a specific lane. On the company’s Illuminate project, drivers run a recurring lane pairing that eats into a driver’s hours-of-service clock and, in turn, their payable miles. After digging into the data, Nussbaum introduced Illuminate Loop Pay: $50 for any qualifying week, in addition to a driver’s mileage and activity pay, paid automatically with no authorization request and shown as its own line on the settlement. The pay is meant to offset the productivity drop drivers see through no fault of their own, and it runs until the project wraps up.

These increases mark Nussbaum’s second major pay move in 2026. In May, Nussbaum unveiled Driver Profit Sharing in addition to boosting mileage rates, weekly guarantees, and payments for transition bonuses and its innovative Early Exit Program.

Nussbaum is an industry leader in over-the-road freight transportation. Since 1945, trust and integrity have guided our operations as we serve our customers and employees with a level of care and integrity unique to Nussbaum. In 2018, we began a new journey as an ESOP, giving our people an ownership stake in the company. As employee-owners, we are purpose-driven to create a positive impact with every interaction and maximize Nussbaum’s potential for ourselves, our families, our customers, and our partners. For more information on our award-winning services and top-paying driver careers, visit nussbaum.com or nussbaumjobs.com.

Nussbaum Marketing Department | marketing@nussbaum.com | p:  309-260-3423