Hiring a truck driver in Australia

What the role really costs to employ, what the market is paying, and which licences actually gate it. Written for the employer doing the hiring.

This page is about taking a truck driver onto your payroll, not about booking one for a job. A truck driver on the award floor of $29.00 to $30.28 an hour costs about $66,247.77 a year once superannuation, leave loading and workers compensation are counted, against a wage of $57,304.00. That is roughly 15.6 per cent on top.

What it actually costs you

The wage is the smallest honest answer. Worked at the award floor, full time, 38 hours a week:

Award floor from the Fair Work P.A.C.T summary for the Road Transport and Distribution Award (MA000038), effective 1 July 2026. Superannuation 12 per cent for 2026-27, ATO. Leave loading 17.5 per cent of four weeks, Fair Work Ombudsman. Workers compensation 1.85 per cent, ReturnToWorkSA scheme average, which varies by state and industry so use your own insurer's rate. Payroll tax is excluded because most employers sit below the threshold. Checked 5 August 2026. Full method on what an employee really costs.

That is the floor, not the offer. The market band above is what the role is actually advertised at, and an offer pitched near the legal minimum is the one experienced people scroll past. The full rate detail for this role has the classification ladder.

What gates this role

Heavy combination and multi combination licence classes, issued by each state road authority, and they are sequential: time is required on a lower class before the next one can be obtained, which is a genuine bottleneck. Fatigue management accreditation is commonly required for long distance work, and dangerous goods carriage needs its own licence again. Forklift and load restraint tickets are frequently expected on top.

Which rung you are actually hiring on

The grade is set by the vehicle, not by the licence class on its own. Grade 6 covers heavy combination work, grade 7 a B-double up to 53.4 tonnes, and grade 8 a multi combination or B-double above that. The pay guide publishes the grade names and rates but not the tonnage bands, which sit in the award classification schedule, so the guide alone will not tell you which grade a given run falls into.

Road Transport and Distribution Award (MA000038), adult full-time minimums effective 1 July 2026, from the Fair Work Ombudsman pay guides. Casual loading of 25 per cent sits on top. Which classification applies is decided by the work actually performed, not by the job title.

Roles that overlap with this one

Widening or narrowing the brief by one role often does more for a stalled vacancy than raising the rate. The nearest neighbours:

• Forklift driver: a different award and a lower floor, often at the other end of the same delivery
• Storeperson: the warehouse side of the same operation

Why the good ones are hard to reach

A multi combination driver cannot be created on demand. State rules require time held on a lower licence class first, so the pipeline into the top grades is measured in years. Add an ageing driver workforce and the pool at the heavy end is structurally tight regardless of what an employer pays.

What employers get wrong hiring this role

Advertising for an MC driver and paying a grade 6 rate, which is the wrong grade for the vehicle. The second is not stating the run: local, interstate and away work attract entirely different people, and drivers filter on that before they filter on money. The third is leaving fatigue management and dangerous goods requirements out of the advertisement and discovering the gap after the offer.

How we fill it

Four checks before a name reaches you: licences verified, screened against your brief, history checked, rate locked. If one step fails, the name never reaches you. The whole process is written out here, including where reference checks actually sit.

You pay nothing until your hire starts, and if they leave inside the first 90 days we replace them free.

Questions