Waste and hauling pay runs by the truck, the route, and the crew: front-load, roll-off, and residential rates, with helpers and throwers riding the same route sheet. WageTime is payroll built to pay a collection route the way it actually runs.
Waste is route work, not linehaul. The rate depends on which truck ran, how many pulls and yards the route covered, and who rode the back step, and a large share of the work sits under a city contract with a wage floor. Generic payroll can hold a salary. It cannot hold a front-load rate, a helper line, and a prevailing-wage classification on the same Friday.
The same driver name can run a $28 residential route Monday, a $26 roll-off day Wednesday, and cover a $22 front-load line Friday, and each truck class is its own rate. Generic payroll wants one number per person. When the rate depends on the truck and the route, one flat wage either overpays the easy days or shorts the hard ones, and the driver notices either way.
A residential rear-load route is a driver plus one or two helpers on the back step, and each is a separate worker on a separate rate paid against one route. The office that pays drivers cleanly still ends up hand-keying the helpers, or worse, paying them a flat day amount that quietly dips under minimum wage on a long summer route.
Owners hear “trucking is overtime-exempt” and assume it covers the packers. It usually does not. Garbage transport is exempt only in interstate commerce, and curb-to-transfer-station-to-landfill collection is local and intrastate, so overtime is generally owed over 40 hours. On 8-to-10-hour days across 60 to 100 stops, that is most weeks, not an edge case.
Win a municipal collection franchise and the crew often falls under a prevailing wage, plus a separate Health and Welfare fringe that can’t be swapped for the base pay. It is not construction Davis-Bacon; it is the service-contract regime, with its own classifications and its own fringe. Run it beside private commercial routes in the same week and one flat rate cannot follow the floor.
Refuse collection was the fifth-deadliest US job in 2024 (37.4 fatalities per 100,000 workers, BLS), so clean-quarter and no-incident bonuses are real money, not a perk. Run them as a note in a spreadsheet and they get missed, argued over, or paid to the wrong crew, and the workers’ comp premium audit that rides on payroll classification finds the mess.
WageTime pays waste crews by truck class and route, not by the mile: front-load, roll-off, and residential drivers each carry their own hourly rate, with helpers and throwers riding the same route as their own workers on their own lines.
Replaces the route sheet and the by-the-pull spreadsheet that never once paid the helper on the back step correctly.
Usually yes: the motor carrier exemption reaches garbage transport only when it crosses state lines, and most residential and commercial collection is local and intrastate, so overtime is generally owed over 40 hours in a week, packer or not.
Replaces the payroll that called every truck exempt and the back-pay claim that arrived two years later.
WageTime carries a city contract’s wage determination per classification: the week a crew works a municipal collection franchise, each paycheck pays the contract rate, not the private-route rate. Prevailing wage and certified payroll are add-ons, scoped and priced on the demo.
Replaces the flat private-route rate a city contract quietly turned into a wage complaint, and the fringe nobody paid separately.
WageTime settles the whole yard in one run: the W-2 driver and the helpers on the back step, the 1099 roll-off subhauler with a W-9 on file, and the mechanics and dispatchers who never leave the lot, all on the same pay date.
Replaces the second system the container guys lived in, and the year-end scramble to line up a 1099 stack against a W-2 stack.
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, on local routes. The motor carrier overtime exemption reaches garbage transport only when it crosses state lines, and most residential and commercial collection is local and intrastate, so overtime is generally owed over 40 hours even on a heavy packer. WageTime computes it on the weighted-average regular rate across the week’s hourly, per-pull, and bonus pay. Whether a crew is exempt is your call with counsel.
Give each truck class its own hourly rate and run per-pull, per-yard, per-stop, or route-completion pay as per-unit codes on top. Helpers and throwers ride the route as their own workers on their own rates, not a lump the driver splits. Minimum-wage processing checks every hour so a long route can’t dip a helper under the floor.
WageTime applies the contract’s wage determination per classification, and a week split between the city route and private stops runs as a multi-rate week with weighted-average overtime across both. This is the service-contract floor, not construction Davis-Bacon. Prevailing wage and certified payroll are offered as add-ons, scoped and priced on the demo.
The Health and Welfare fringe is a separate obligation that sits on top of the classification wage and can’t offset it. WageTime pays it as cash on the check or as a contribution to a bona fide benefit plan, whichever your contract and plan design require, and shows it as its own line. Rates change periodically, so you set the current figure and the run applies it.
Yes. Route drivers and helpers run with full withholding, roll-off subhaulers run as contractors with W-9 collection and contractor tax setup, and both settle on the same day. Year-end W-2s and 1099s are both included. Whether a subhauler is a contractor is a decision for you and your attorney; WageTime just removes the second system.
$50 a month for the company plus $10 for each person actually paid that month, with unlimited runs. Weekly route pay costs the same as biweekly, there are no per-run fees, and extra runs like a safety-bonus payout cost nothing more. A company paying 20 people in a month is $250, whether that month had four pay dates or five.
Last week’s route sheet, the rates for your front-load, roll-off, and residential trucks, and any city contract you run. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo company: you’ll see truck-class route pay with helper lines, overtime figured on the real blended rate, the prevailing-wage floor on a municipal contract, and your W-2 crews and 1099 subhaulers in the same run.
Book a 20-minute demo