Light Truck Drivers
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. Alaska pays light truck drivers best, at $57,190. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $47,321 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for light truck drivers is also the real leader: Alaska at $57,190, holding through tax and through price deflation to $47,321. Both adjustments leave the ordering at the top intact, which indicates a wage premium large enough to dominate the state's tax burden and price level rather than merely offset them.
Compare this career across states
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$44,860
People doing it
983,300
Highest paid
$57,190
AK
Best off, really
$47,321
AK, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$30,800
Highest tenth
$80,310
Lowest, really
$34,078
HI
States with data
51
National average
$48,770
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
101.72%
AK, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job is fairly steady around the country. Count tax and local prices and the states bunch closer still, from $34,078 to $47,321. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- Roughly 983,300 people hold this job nationally, earning $44,860 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $44,860 in the middle.
- Geographic dispersion in light truck drivers is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $34,078 through $47,321. Where nominal spread is this contained, relocation decisions in the occupation turn on non-wage factors, because the wage differential does not survive the adjustments in a form large enough to drive them.
- 983,300 are employed nationally in light truck drivers, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- 51 jurisdictions report light truck drivers, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Light Truck Drivers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $30,800 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $44,860 |
| Top tenth earn over | $80,310 |
| This salary | $44,860 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Light Truck Drivers
The national median for this job
$44,860around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $30,800 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $44,860 |
| Top tenth | $80,310 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Light Truck Drivers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $37,080 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Alaska · $57,190 |
| Spread | $20,110 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $42,500 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $43,736 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| AK | $57,190 | $48,132 | $47,321 |
| ND | $47,950 | $40,708 | $45,960 |
| MT | $46,420 | $38,053 | $42,167 |
| SD | $43,240 | $36,923 | $41,913 |
| TN | $45,050 | $38,378 | $41,483 |
| WY | $43,780 | $37,357 | $41,121 |
| MO | $45,500 | $37,538 | $40,908 |
| MN | $48,880 | $39,655 | $40,292 |
| WI | $45,670 | $37,478 | $40,257 |
| NE | $44,120 | $36,327 | $40,195 |
| IA | $42,750 | $35,517 | $40,011 |
| IN | $44,560 | $36,699 | $39,811 |
| ID | $44,370 | $36,333 | $39,741 |
| KY | $43,230 | $35,520 | $39,262 |
| OH | $42,600 | $35,954 | $39,160 |
| NM | $42,360 | $35,362 | $39,123 |
| CO | $48,410 | $39,656 | $39,115 |
| KS | $43,730 | $35,165 | $39,088 |
| UT | $45,860 | $36,988 | $38,934 |
| NV | $43,760 | $37,341 | $38,504 |
| IL | $47,380 | $38,049 | $38,490 |
| VT | $45,090 | $37,156 | $38,449 |
| WA | $49,070 | $41,608 | $38,326 |
| MD | $48,150 | $38,945 | $37,460 |
| LA | $39,440 | $33,073 | $37,436 |
| TX | $42,500 | $36,329 | $37,385 |
| ME | $44,550 | $36,289 | $37,374 |
| NH | $46,260 | $39,350 | $37,353 |
| MI | $43,000 | $35,154 | $37,325 |
| AZ | $45,140 | $37,724 | $37,312 |
| OK | $39,840 | $32,899 | $37,264 |
| PA | $44,120 | $36,276 | $37,206 |
| GA | $44,050 | $35,975 | $37,203 |
| RI | $45,660 | $37,576 | $37,052 |
| DC | $49,330 | $40,023 | $36,120 |
| WV | $38,860 | $32,397 | $36,088 |
| MS | $38,140 | $31,392 | $35,962 |
| DE | $43,990 | $35,651 | $35,920 |
| AR | $37,080 | $31,060 | $35,905 |
| MA | $48,110 | $38,751 | $35,802 |
| NJ | $46,820 | $38,761 | $35,599 |
| NC | $39,910 | $33,164 | $35,229 |
| AL | $38,490 | $31,469 | $34,977 |
| CT | $44,500 | $36,183 | $34,896 |
| OR | $47,150 | $36,490 | $34,845 |
| NY | $46,330 | $37,501 | $34,844 |
| FL | $41,810 | $35,774 | $34,581 |
| CA | $46,790 | $38,768 | $34,436 |
| VA | $42,450 | $34,608 | $34,351 |
| SC | $37,680 | $32,005 | $34,348 |
| HI | $45,930 | $37,011 | $34,078 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for light truck drivers, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $44,860 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for light truck drivers, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is Alaska, at $48,132.
- Levelling out prices for light truck drivers is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — Hawaii sits at the bottom on $34,078.
- All wage figures for light truck drivers are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $44,860. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- Retained-pay figures for light truck drivers model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $48,132, which leads in Alaska.
- The price deflation applied to light truck drivers uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is Hawaii at $34,078. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Hawaii anchors the bottom at $34,078 — and the two source series are dated independently.