What Home-Daily Trucking Actually Looks Like

Quick answer: Home-daily trucking means you start and finish at the same place every day and sleep in your own bed every night. The routes stay closer to home, for Laufer intrastate Wisconsin and greater Chicagoland area. The trade-off for being home every night is a workday that often starts early and involves more stops in a day than a long-haul run.

"Home daily" is one of the most searched things in trucking, and for good reason: over time some drivers get tired of living out of a sleeper cab. But the phrase local gets used loosely, for us it does involve leaving the state. Let's walk through what our local driving actually looks like day to day.

What does home-daily trucking mean at Laufer?

Home-daily means exactly what it sounds like: you are home every night. It does not mean you have a set schedule or will be home for dinner every night. Our customer appointment times vary, and trucking is filled with unpredictability. Changing customer requests and load ready times, heavy traffic, inclement weather or a blown tire all can change the trajectory of a local driver's day.

At Laufer, a local driver comes and goes from Hartford, WI each morning. Start and end times vary, but usually the start time is approximately 5am–7am and last 8–12 hours normally. Fourteen hour days are rare, but possible, when things don't go as planned.

What does a home-daily driver's day look like?

Here is the honest version of a typical day. Typical start times are 5am–7am, but for some drivers it could be a little earlier or a little later. We try to learn our driver's aptitudes and plan accordingly.

In many cases your first load of the day could be in the yard waiting to roll out, in other cases you will go pick it up yourself. You'll probably run a route you know well, as our local freight is typically with repeat customers. Over the day you might hit several stops, and depending on the freight, in some cases drivers will do drop and hooks.

The day is busier and more physical than people expect. More stops means more backing, more paperwork, more interaction with dock crews. The miles are fewer than a regional or over-the-road run, but the work between the miles is denser. Then you clock out, park at the same yard you started from, and go home. That last part is what makes the early alarm worth it for a lot of drivers.

What are the trade-offs of home-daily driving?

Every schedule trades something for something else, and home-daily is no different. Being honest about it up front saves you a surprise three weeks into a new job.

What you gain is obvious and significant: you are home every night. For drivers with kids or anyone who is just done with long stretches away, that is the whole ballgame.

What you give up is some gross pay and some simplicity. Long-haul and regional runs often post a higher weekly gross because of the miles and sacrifices of being on the road, and home-daily days can be earlier and more physical because of the stop count and greater amount of time spent in metropolitan areas. The miles-per-day are lower, so if your only goal is the biggest possible paycheck, home-daily may not top the list. For many drivers, though, the home time is worth the slightly smaller take home.

Local drivers also have to drive to work every day. For that reason, you want to live close to the terminal to avoid burning out on driving to and from work every day when you are already spending so much of your day driving.

What does home-daily pay look like?

At Laufer, it is based on experience and job type. The more years you have with a CDL the higher your hourly rate will be. Drivers doing flatbed work are paid more than vans due to the physical nature of the work.

All of our local drivers are paid hourly, with overtime after 40 hours. Local pay can range from $1,200 (guaranteed minimum pay) up to $1,800+ depending on preference for hours worked, experience level and whether a driver is doing vans or flatbeds.

Find a home-daily driving job near Hartford

If you live within about 20 minutes of Hartford, WI and you want to be home every night, home-daily local driving is worth a serious look. Come see what driving for Laufer Trucking is like. We are a family-owned outfit running local home-daily lanes across Wisconsin and Chicagoland, with a guaranteed weekly minimum, no forced dispatch, and home time you can actually count on. If you are still weighing local against regional, our guide to regional vs local trucking at Laufer breaks down the differences, and new drivers can start with our guide for recent CDL graduates.