Local and regional fleets run the vans and box trucks the motor carrier exemption never covered, so overtime, dock time, and state wage rules land on the paycheck. WageTime is payroll built for those fleets, computing what each week actually owes.
A local fleet is not a small over-the-road fleet. The trucks are lighter, the days are hourly, the drivers sleep at home, and almost every wage rule that gives long-haul a pass turns around and applies to you. Generic payroll built on the over-the-road playbook gets a city fleet backwards, one exemption at a time.
The motor carrier exemption that skips overtime for interstate drivers has a hole the size of a cargo van. Under a federal rule (DOL Fact Sheet #19), any workweek a driver works even partly on a vehicle rated at 10,000 pounds or less, overtime is owed over 40 hours. Sprinters, cargo vans, and most Class 2 box trucks live under that line, so the exemption that covers your tractor does not cover the van it ran on Thursday.
Local fleets do not run one class of truck. A driver takes the straight truck Monday, a small box van covers a route Wednesday, and that single small-vehicle day can defeat the exemption for the whole week. Exemption status flips week to week, per driver, based on which keys they grabbed. Payroll has to know the vehicle behind every shift, or it guesses, and a guess is a back-wage claim waiting to be filed.
Local drivers are not paid to sit, but they are paid for sitting. Loading, waiting at the dock, the fourteenth stop of the day: all of it is hours worked. Pay a flat per-stop rate and let the wait time fall off the record, and the hours still exist, waiting for a minimum-wage or overtime claim to add them back at the worst possible exchange rate.
Federal preemption that carves out interstate drivers does not reach an intrastate driver working one state. California’s Wage Order 9 adds daily overtime after eight hours, double time after twelve, a meal break before the fifth hour, and one premium hour of pay for every meal or rest break missed. Washington and Colorado add their own. A payroll that only knows the 40-hour federal week cannot run a driver in Fresno.
WageTime runs local driver pay as hourly, per-stop, and day-rate pay codes, and the week a small-vehicle assignment owes overtime, it computes automatically on the weighted-average regular rate across hourly and per-stop earnings together, not just the base wage.
Replaces the per-stop spreadsheet that never once counted the hours a driver spent waiting at a dock.
WageTime gives a local fleet the pay codes and the time record a state wage claim tests: the missed-break premium hour or a daily-overtime premium is set up once as a configurable pay code and lands on the stub as its own line.
Replaces the payroll that ran a California route on a flat 40-hour week, and the premium-pay codes nobody set up until a letter arrived.
WageTime withholds a local driver’s income tax where the work happens: an intrastate route driver is taxed in the work state, while a regional driver with regularly assigned duties in two or more states gets the residence-state override (49 USC 14503), set per driver.
| Driver | Income tax | SUI state |
|---|---|---|
| Ana M.Intrastate, OH · work state | OH | OH |
| Devon P.Intrastate, PA · work state | PA | PA |
| Marcus L.Regional, OH-IN-KY · residence | KY | OH |
| Rosa T.Intrastate, TX · no income tax | None | TX |
Replaces the generic payroll that treated a one-state route driver like an over-the-road trucker, and the wrong-state withholding nobody caught until the W-2s printed.
WageTime pays the mix a local yard actually runs: W-2 CDL drivers, non-CDL van drivers, hourly dock helpers, the office on salary, and a 1099 route contractor when a peak day needs one, all in the same weekly run.
Replaces the separate system the dock crew was paid from, and the quarter-end cleanup to make two payrolls agree.
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 demoUsually, yes. The motor carrier overtime exemption does not apply in any workweek a driver works even partly on a vehicle rated at 10,000 pounds or less (DOL Fact Sheet #19), which covers most cargo vans and light box trucks. WageTime watches the 40-hour line per driver and computes overtime on the weighted-average rate when a week owes it.
On-duty non-driving time, loading, unloading, and waiting at a dock, is hours worked and counts toward minimum wage and overtime. WageTime’s mobile time clock captures those hours with GPS-stamped punches, and minimum-wage processing checks every one of them, so wait time never quietly falls off the paycheck or the record.
Intrastate drivers are generally covered by state wage orders the federal exemption does not preempt. California’s Wage Order 9, for one, requires daily overtime after eight hours, a meal break before the fifth hour, and a premium hour of pay for each missed break. In WageTime those premiums and overtime differentials run as configurable pay codes, with meal and rest break rules and rounding tracked in the time setup.
For a driver who works one state, you withhold where the work happens. Federal law (49 USC 14503) points withholding at the residence state only for a driver with regularly assigned duties in two or more states, so WageTime sets work-state withholding by default and a residence-state override per regional driver, with unemployment reported to its own state.
Generally no. Accountable-plan per diem requires being away from the tax home overnight long enough to need rest, so a home-daily local driver does not qualify, and paying it anyway invites an IRS problem. WageTime runs per diem as a configurable non-taxable earning line for the regional drivers who do stay out; your tax advisor sets the program.
$50 a month for the company plus $10 for each person actually paid that month, with unlimited runs. A fleet paying 15 people, drivers, dock helpers, and office, is $200 in a month, whether that month had four Fridays or five. Weekly costs the same as biweekly, and off-cycle runs cost nothing extra.
Last week’s timecards, your vehicle list with weight ratings, and the states your drivers run. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo company: you’ll see hourly and per-stop pay codes, the overtime that a small-vehicle week triggers, daily-OT and break-premium lines, and work-state withholding set per driver.
Book a 20-minute demo