What would this driver earn under each pay model?
Per hour feels fair to drivers and terrifying on a slow day. Per stop feels efficient to owners and unfair on a long rural round. Put one real day into all four structures and see the difference before you change anything.
Earnings for this day
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Each model is a statement about what you want more of
None of these structures is wrong. Each one rewards something specific, and choosing one is choosing what you want drivers to optimise for.
Per hour rewards reliability, care at the door and willingness to take the awkward stop. It suits pharmacy, furniture and anything where a signature matters more than speed. Its weakness is that it does not distinguish a productive hour from a slow one.
Per stop rewards throughput and drivers who plan their own run well. It suits dense urban work with similar effort per stop, and it fails the first time a driver gets the rural round: forty minutes for one drop paid the same as a two-minute doorstep.
Per mile rewards taking the far stop and covering a wide area honestly. It is terrible when the route itself is inefficient, because you are paying for the planner’s mistakes.
The mix — a base that makes a quiet day survivable, a per-stop amount that rewards throughput, a per-mile amount that makes distance worth taking, and a bonus for whatever you most want — is where most fleets end up. The proportions are the policy.
Read the spread, not the winner
The useful output here is not which model pays most on this day. It is how far apart they are. A day where all four land within a few dollars is a day your structure handles well. A day where they differ by 40% is a day one group of drivers is being systematically over- or under-paid, and that is where grievances come from.
Run your densest route and your sparsest one through this. If a model is comfortable on both, it is robust. If it is only comfortable on one, you need the mix.
Then check the effective hourly
Whatever structure you choose, divide the result by hours worked. If a per-stop day works out below what you would pay hourly, drivers will notice before you do — and the ones on the sparse routes will notice first. The effective hourly figure is the number that keeps a pay structure defensible.
Which driver pay model is fairest?
None of them is fair on its own — each rewards something. Per hour rewards care and reliability and costs you on quiet days. Per stop rewards throughput and punishes the driver who gets the sparse rural run. Per mile rewards taking the far stop and pays for the planner’s mistakes. Most fleets land on a base plus per-stop plus per-mile, which is what the mixed column here models.
Should per-mile pay use planned or actual distance?
Actual. If distance comes from the planned route, drivers are paid for the plan; if it comes from the completed route, they are paid for the work. The second is fairer and it also gives you an honest cost per delivery.
Should we pay for failed delivery attempts?
Yes. A stop where nobody was home cost the driver the same time and fuel. Not paying it turns every failed attempt into an argument, and it quietly encourages drivers to record failures as something else. Pay it, record the reason and photo, and fix the notification so it happens less.
How do we change pay structure without a fight?
Model it first on real data. Take one representative week, compute what each driver would have earned under the current and proposed structures from the stops they actually completed, and look at who is helped and who is hurt. Then decide, write the formula down, show it to drivers, and change it rarely.
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PrivateMile computes cost per delivery, stops per driver-hour and driver pay from work actually completed — not from the plan. 15-day trial, no card.
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