About Us – Superior Trucking Payroll Service
The Only Trucking Payroll Provider Built from the Inside Out
Most payroll companies learned about trucking from the outside. We learned it by working inside a trucking company. Here’s our story.
Why I Built the Only Payroll Company Made Just for Trucking
I didn’t set out to start a payroll company. I set out to fix a problem that was driving me crazy.
I was the CFO of a trucking company with about eighty trucks and a brokerage. We used one of the big national payroll providers, and for the most part it worked fine. But it never really understood trucking. And one day a driver came to me and told me his check was wrong.
We ran shuttle routes where a local driver would finish a load that came in from California. We’d pay them a flat rate for the run, but I also tracked the miles for cost reports. The payroll system saw the mileage, saw zero cents per mile attached to it, assumed that was an error, and filled in its own default rate on top of the flat pay. The driver got overpaid. That’s how I found out.
If you’ve ever had a driver call the office because something on their check didn’t add up, there’s a good chance something similar happened to you. The difference is whether anyone caught it.
I went to the owner and said: I can build you something better. He knew I could, because I’d already built IFTA software for the company. So I built it. We ran it for a few years, and everything was great.
The Conversation That Changed Everything
Around 2008, a rough year for trucking, a common vendor introduced me to another owner about fifty miles away. He was trying to cut costs and was seriously considering converting all his drivers to 1099 owner-operators.
I talked him out of it. Some drivers are exceptional at driving but have no interest in running a business. Turning them into owner-operators doesn’t save money — it creates turnover.
But then I asked him a different question: had he ever heard of per diem?
At the time, drivers could receive around $38 a day as a meals and incidentals reimbursement instead of straight wages. The trucking company saves on payroll taxes and workers’ comp. The driver often takes home more. It’s one of the most straightforward ways to reduce payroll costs in trucking without cutting anyone’s pay.
He had never heard of it. And this was a sharp, educated guy who had been running a trucking company for years.
That was the moment. If he didn’t know about this, how many other owners didn’t? How much money was sitting on the table across the industry simply because nobody had ever brought it up? Why wasn’t there a trucking payroll provider?
The Decision to Go Out on My Own
Around the same time, the CEO of my company retired. The person who took over and I were simply not a good fit. I like to pressure-test ideas, ask hard questions, make sure things are thought through. She heard that as criticism. Neither of us was wrong, exactly. We were just wired differently. It became clear, pretty quickly and mutually, that it was time for me to move on.
For the six months to a year before I left, I was working two jobs. During the day I was the CFO. At night I was building infrastructure, setting up systems, figuring out how to turn what I knew into something I could offer other companies.
The moment I knew it was real was in 2009, when I went to register a website and found that truckingpayroll.com was available. I took that as a sign.
The First Two Years
I picked up a few clients early on, but nothing that changed the math. Then I got a meeting with someone who took it mostly as a favor to a mutual contact. As it turned out, the week before, their payroll company had botched a Veterans Day holiday and drivers got paid late. My timing was right. They switched to us, became our first client with more than twenty trucks, and they’re still with us today, sixteen years later.
My grandfather had owned businesses his whole life. When word got around the family about what I was doing, he told everyone: give him two years. You don’t know what you have until you’ve been in it for two years.
At twenty-three months, I signed two sizeable clients. Both are still with us. Those two accounts were what finally let me pay myself a real wage and made it clear this was going somewhere.
What I Actually Know About Trucking Payroll
I didn’t come to trucking through payroll. I came to payroll through trucking.
I started at that first company as a temp, hired while the controller was on maternity leave. She came back, and I stayed. Over the years I did nearly every clerical job in the building. I know what it looks like to sit down with a stack of driver trip sheets and build a payroll by hand. I know what it feels like when the phone rings on a Friday afternoon and a driver — or their spouse — wants to know what’s on their check and whether they got paid for that load they ran last week.
That experience shapes everything about how we operate. When we can get load data from a client, we put it directly on the check stub. Driver ran a load on Tuesday? It shows up on the check. They can see it, confirm it’s right, and they don’t need to call the office.
That might sound like a small thing. But the person doing payroll at most trucking companies is also handling invoicing, safety compliance, and a dozen other things that need their attention. Every driver phone call on a Friday is an interruption. Multiply it by twenty drivers and it stops being small fast.
We’ve been on both sides of that desk. We know what your office is dealing with, and we build our service around making that easier.
Our Mission
We’re here to help trucking families; the owners, yes, but also the office staff, and the drivers, and the people at home counting on a check that’s right and on time.
Saving money matters. Reducing payroll tax through per diem matters. But so does making the work easier for the person in the office who already has too much on their plate.
That’s why we built this. That’s why we’re still here.
Is Superior Trucking Payroll Service a good match for your business? Call us toll-free at (616) 608-1800, and we’ll schedule a 30-minute, free phone call with no obligation.
We’ll analyze your payroll situation and suggest how we can help your trucking family.