On a mixed fleet, the Motor Carrier Act exemption is a per-week question: the same diesel tech can be exempt one week and owed overtime the next. WageTime is payroll for fleet and truck repair shops built to answer it one workweek at a time.
There are about 42,299 US truck-repair businesses, most small enough that the owner runs payroll after the last truck rolls out. Diesel technicians are their own trade, median pay $60,640 a year, and they get paid in ways a generic payroll never planned for: exempt one week and owed overtime the next, half a week spent on the road, an efficiency bonus on top of an hourly base, and a federal inspector signature that expires.
The Motor Carrier Act can exempt a mechanic who keeps interstate commercial vehicles safe. The small-vehicle exception written into the 2008 technical corrections pulls that exemption back for any workweek the tech works on a vehicle weighing 10,000 pounds or less. Run a mixed fleet of tractors and light vans and the same tech is exempt one week, owed overtime the next. Whether either rule fits your shop is a question for you and your counsel. What isn’t in question: the week overtime is owed, somebody has to compute it right.
A mobile tech runs a stocked service truck to breakdown sites: road calls, travel between jobs, weeknight on-call, mileage on the truck. Field roles pay a premium over shop work for exactly that reason. Travel time is compensable hours, so it counts toward the 40-hour line and the wage floor. A payroll built for a tech who never leaves the bay has no line for any of it.
Heavy-duty work is diagnostic-heavy, so the common plan is an hourly base plus a productivity bonus above a threshold, with per-PM flat rates for scheduled service and warranty labor paid at OEM standard times. That is three earning types on one check, and the bonus is nondiscretionary, so it belongs inside the overtime rate. The usual fix is a spreadsheet and the hope that the auditor never asks.
Fullbay, Mitchell 1 TruckSeries, Karmak, Decisiv: whatever writes your repair orders already holds flagged hours, PM completions, and tech efficiency by unit and VIN. Your payroll holds none of it. Between them sits the spreadsheet that multiplies hours by rates, guesses at overtime, and gets re-typed into payroll every period.
The 49 CFR 396.19 annual-inspector qualification and the 396.25 brake-inspector qualification each need a year of training or experience on file, and a DOT annual inspection is only as good as the signature behind it. Let one lapse and the paperwork behind your inspections goes with it. Right now those dates live on a whiteboard next to the ASE certs.
One workweek at a time, because that is what a mixed fleet makes it: you set the rule with your counsel, and WageTime runs each week to that rule, exempt where it holds, overtime where it doesn’t.
| Tech | This week | Overtime |
|---|---|---|
| Dale R.Class 8 tractor, 33,000 lb | Exempt week | MCA exempt |
| Wes P.Cargo van, 9,500 lb | Small-vehicle week | OT due |
| Nina C.Class 6 box, 26,000 lb | Exempt week | MCA exempt |
| Rob T.Class 8 plus 8,600-lb van | Small-vehicle week | OT due |
Replaces the exemption you set once and forgot, and the month-end guess about which weeks a tech touched a light van.
Every piece of a mobile week is its own line in WageTime: road calls as per-stop or per-mile codes, travel between jobs as compensable hours, on-call as a premium, mileage as a reimbursement, nothing dropped or double-counted.
Replaces the road-call money worked out on a napkin, and the travel time nobody counted toward overtime.
A single WageTime run holds each earning as its own code: hourly base is one code, the efficiency bonus another, per-PM flat rates and warranty standard times per-unit, and the overtime math runs across all of it, one check at the end.
Replaces the flag-only payroll that can’t see a bonus, and the efficiency plan negotiated line by line every month.
Flagged hours and PM jobs come straight into WageTime: Fullbay, Mitchell 1 TruckSeries, Karmak, Decisiv, Trimble TMT, whatever runs your repair orders, we import the clock and flag hours it already holds and confirm the exact flow for your setup on the demo.
| Tech | Flag/PM hrs | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Dale R.40.0 clk · UNIT-214, Cascadia | 38.5 | Ready |
| Wes P.43.5 clk · UNIT-118 mix+calls | 30.0 | Ready |
| Nina C.39.0 clock · UNIT-302, T680 | 41.0 | Ready |
| Rob T.41.0 clk · UNIT-407 trlr+van | 22.0 | RO open |
Replaces the export-reformat-retype ritual, and the labor cost nobody could tie back to a truck.
Every credential lives on the tech’s WageTime record, with the document attached and the renewal date on the alert clock: the 49 CFR 396.19 annual-inspector and 396.25 brake-inspector qualifications sit beside the ASE certs, so a federal signature never lapses unnoticed.
| Tech | Renews | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Dale R.396.19 annual inspector qual | on file | Current |
| Nina C.396.25 brake inspector qual | Aug 30 | 30-day alert |
| Wes P.ASE T2 Diesel Engines | Sep 22 | 60-day alert |
| Rob T.EPA 609 / 610 refrigerant | on file | Current |
Replaces the whiteboard beside the toolbox, and the DOT annual-inspection signature that turned out to sit on a qualification nobody noticed had lapsed.
Full-service payroll is $10 a month per person paid that month, plus $50 a month per company, with unlimited runs. No long-term contracts, no per-run charges.
Off-cycle runs and bonuses cost nothing extra. No long-term contracts; cancel anytime.
Example: 50 people paid × $10 + $50 company = $550 for the month
HR & hiring, onboarding, PTO, time tracking, benefits, and workers’ comp are optional add-ons, priced separately when you’re ready.
See a demoDiesel mechanics can be exempt. The Motor Carrier Act exemption reaches mechanics whose work affects the safety of operation of commercial motor vehicles in interstate commerce, unlike the independent auto tech who gets no exemption at all. Whether it fits a given tech is a decision for you and your counsel. The weeks overtime is owed, WageTime computes it on the weighted-average regular rate across every earning, automatically.
The small-vehicle exception restores overtime for any workweek a covered employee works on a vehicle weighing 10,000 pounds or less. On a mixed fleet, that can flip a tech from exempt to non-exempt for a single week. You set the rule with your counsel; WageTime applies it one workweek at a time, recomputes the weighted-average rate, and retests the minimum-wage floor on actual hours.
Road calls run as per-stop or per-mile pay codes, shop time runs hourly, and travel time between jobs runs as compensable hours that count toward overtime and the wage floor. On-call and weeknight coverage run as premium pay codes. Service-truck mileage and per diem run as reimbursement codes, configurable as non-taxable earning types and paid on the same check as wages.
Both run in one payroll: the hourly base as one code, the productivity bonus as a flat-amount code, and per-PM or warranty labor as per-unit codes. A bonus tied to a metric is nondiscretionary, so it folds into the weighted-average overtime regular rate the weeks overtime is owed, rather than sitting outside it. Whether a specific plan is discretionary is a question for you and your counsel.
Yes. Each qualification sits on the tech’s record with the document attached and recurring 30, 60, and 90-day expiration alerts, beside ASE Medium and Heavy Truck certs and EPA refrigerant cards. When a pay tier is tied to a credential, the rate binds to it with an effective date, so a lapse stops the premium instead of quietly overpaying.
$50 a month for the company plus $10 per person paid that month: $150 for a ten-person shop, with unlimited runs, so weekly pay and off-cycle bonus runs cost nothing extra. Filings, W-2s, and 1099s are included. Running an in-house fleet shop as a cost center? Department controls and per-location or combined reporting charge labor back to the operating department, and a multi-entity group keeps one login across every EIN.
Last week’s hours by tech, which trucks each one worked, your road-call and on-call setup, and your efficiency-bonus plan. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo shop: you’ll watch a small-vehicle week compute its own overtime, a mobile week pay travel and stops, and the inspector board flag a renewal before it lapses.
Book a 20-minute demo