Trucking Payroll Software: 12 Compared

If a founder running a small fleet asked me which payroll software to buy, I would start by questioning the premise most comparisons in this category share: that trucking needs its own payroll software. The answer decides whether you pay for one product or two, so this guide settles that question first and then compares 12 platforms.

Trucking pay structures are unusual, certainly: per-mile, per-load, percentage of line haul, accessorial pay, per diem, and escrow. But mainstream payroll platforms already take custom pay items, and entering 2,400 miles at $0.58 is not technically harder than entering 38 hours at $22.

What is genuinely hard is producing the 2,400 miles. That number comes from dispatch records, load confirmations, and mileage data, and no payroll platform has visibility into any of it. This is why the comparison below covers two different kinds of product that get shelved together in search results, and why most carriers of any size end up paying for both.

Motor carriers also face rules that neither category advertises clearly: a federal statute that makes multi-state driver withholding simpler than standard multi-state payroll, a per diem structure that can work against the driver even while saving both sides tax, and an overtime exemption that quietly fails in any week involving a light vehicle. This guide covers all of it as of October 2026, plus published payroll prices at 5, 10, and 20 drivers.

Two problems that search results treat as one

Search for trucking payroll software and you get two categories of product interleaved, usually without anyone explaining that they do different jobs.

The practical consequence is that a carrier asking which one to buy is usually asking the wrong question. The common working arrangement is a transportation management system (TMS) that assembles settlements from dispatch and load data, feeding a payroll provider that handles withholding, deposits, and filings.

A few products come close to spanning both, at a price. Very small operations do the settlement work in a spreadsheet and use general payroll for the rest, which is a legitimate setup rather than a compromise.

How drivers actually get paid

Five structures cover most of the industry, and a single carrier often runs several at once depending on lane, driver, and equipment.

Layered on top are deductions and additions that have no equivalent in office payroll: fuel advances drawn against the settlement, escrow held on leased operators for maintenance or damage, equipment and insurance deductions, and per diem paid as a non-taxable reimbursement rather than wages.

None of that is beyond a general payroll platform to process once the figures exist. All of it is beyond a general payroll platform to calculate, because the inputs live in dispatch.

Where a truck driver timesheet app fits

A truck driver timesheet app records the hours a driver actually worked so payroll has a figure to pay against. That is a different job from the electronic logging device on the dash: the federal ELD rule covers drivers who must keep hours-of-service records of duty status, and those records exist for safety enforcement rather than for wages.

Clock time matters most where drivers are paid by the hour, which in this industry means local delivery, drayage, yard work, and shop staff. It matters again in any week where the overtime exemption breaks, because a driver who spends part of the week on a light vehicle is owed overtime and somebody has to produce the hours.

Neither category on this page covers clock time outright. Payroll platforms take hours as an input, and several put time tracking behind a higher tier or a paid add-on. Transportation management systems capture miles and loads rather than clock time. Small fleets commonly run a separate time clock app for the hourly staff and feed the totals into payroll.

The multi-state rule that makes driver payroll simpler

An interstate driver's wages are subject to state income tax only in the driver's home state. For a carrier whose drivers live in different states, nothing on this page is more useful. Ordinary multi-state payroll runs the other way: an employee is generally taxed where the work is performed, which for a driver crossing eight states in a week would be unworkable.

Federal law removes that problem. Under 49 USC section 14503, commonly called the Amtrak Act after the 1990 legislation that expanded it, compensation paid by a motor carrier to an employee who performs regularly assigned duties in two or more states is not subject to the income tax of any state other than the employee's state of residence.

The home-state rule is not unlimited. It applies to employees who perform regularly assigned duties in two or more states and whose work directly affects commercial motor vehicle safety. A driver who runs entirely within one state, or an office employee, is taxed under ordinary rules.

Per diem, and why drivers do not always want it

Per diem is a reimbursement for meals and incidental expenses while away from home overnight, paid instead of tracking receipts. Because it is a reimbursement rather than wages, it is not subject to income tax or payroll tax on either side. The current transportation industry rates come from IRS Notice 2026-60, effective October 1, 2026.

The 80 percent figure is easy to misread, because it applies to the deduction rather than to a company driver's reimbursement. For an owner-operator deducting meal expenses on their own return, the special rate for workers subject to Department of Transportation (DOT) hours-of-service rules is 80 percent under section 274(n)(3) of the tax code, rather than the 50 percent that applies to most other business travelers.

A company driver is in a different position. When a carrier pays per diem under an accountable plan, meaning a reimbursement arrangement that meets the IRS rules on business purpose, documentation, and returning any excess, the reimbursement is simply not wages.

Documentation is the other half. The driver still needs to substantiate time, date, and place for each day claimed, which for most fleets means electronic logging device records serve double duty as per diem substantiation.

The overtime exemption and the week it stops working

Most carriers know drivers are exempt from federal overtime. Fewer know that the exemption stops working in any week involving a light vehicle.

Section 13(b)(1) of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) exempts from federal overtime any employee whose hours the Secretary of Transportation has authority to regulate. In practice, as a Department of Labor fact sheet explains, it covers only drivers, driver helpers, loaders, and mechanics whose work affects the safety of operation of motor vehicles in interstate commerce.

The rationale is jurisdictional: the Department of Transportation sets hours of service for these workers, so the Department of Labor's overtime rules step back.

Two further points. First, the exemption is federal, and some states require overtime for drivers regardless of the federal position. New York requires overtime at one and a half times the state minimum wage for employees covered by a federal FLSA section 13 exemption.

Washington exempts interstate drivers only when their pay system already includes overtime pay reasonably equivalent to what the state requires. A carrier operating in states like these cannot rely on 13(b)(1) alone.

Second, the exemption covers safety-affecting work only, not everyone on the payroll: dispatchers, office staff, and employees who load without responsibility for proper loading are generally not covered and are owed overtime under ordinary rules.

Company drivers, owner-operators, and the classification risk

A carrier running both W-2 company drivers and 1099 owner-operators is running two payroll processes with different obligations.

The risk sits in the boundary. Classification follows the IRS common-law test on behavioral control, financial control, and the nature of the relationship, and it is not established by the lease agreement. A leased operator who hauls only your freight, on dispatch you assign, in your trailer, on your schedule, with a truck financed through you, is a difficult case to defend as an independent contractor no matter what the paperwork says.

Trucking is an area of active enforcement on this point, and reclassification triggers back payroll taxes, penalties, and, generally, state wage claims covering several years.

12 trucking payroll platforms compared

The table below mixes both categories deliberately, because search results do and because carriers evaluate them side by side. The columns that separate them are tax filing on one side and settlements plus fuel tax reporting under the International Fuel Tax Agreement (IFTA) on the other.

Gusto

The strongest general payroll choice for a small fleet running W-2 drivers and contractors together. Contractor payments and 1099 filing are included rather than an add-on, and onboarding and document collection are built in, which matters in an industry that hires continuously. Simple runs $49 per month plus $6 per employee.

The constraint is multi-state. Simple covers a single state, and because drivers are taxed where they live, a fleet with drivers in three states needs Plus at $80 plus $12 per employee. In this industry that is a common rather than exceptional situation.

OnPay

Functionally close to Gusto with one structural advantage that matters unusually much here: one flat plan at $49 per month plus $6 per employee, with tax filing in all 50 states at no surcharge. Given that driver withholding follows residence rather than the company address, a fleet recruiting across state lines pays nothing extra for that with OnPay and pays materially more with several competitors.

Roll by ADP

Payroll through a chat interface, designed for a phone. At $39 per month plus $5 per employee or contractor, with a three-month free trial, it is the natural fit for an owner-operator paying themselves or a two-to-five-truck operation where the person running payroll is also driving or dispatching.

It markets directly to transportation and supports mile, load, and per diem pay items. What it lacks is depth: no meaningful HR module, limited reporting, and nothing resembling settlement or fuel tax functionality.

Patriot Software

The cheapest full-service payroll on this page at $37 per month plus $5 per employee, with federal, state, and local filing included and unlimited runs. For a single-state fleet of W-2 drivers with settlements handled elsewhere, it does the job.

Additional states cost $12 per month each, which is a meaningful penalty in an industry where drivers commonly live in several states.

QuickBooks Workforce Payroll

Workforce Payroll, the plan called Payroll Core until Intuit renamed it in May 2026, is $50 per month plus $7 per employee. The argument is the same as in every industry: if the carrier's books are already in QuickBooks Online, payroll entries reach the general ledger without an export.

Trucking software builds around QuickBooks too, since Truckbase and Tailwind TMS both sync with it. That is why it appears on every trucking comparison despite having no transportation-specific features.

Paychex Flex

Service rather than software: Paychex offers the option of a dedicated payroll specialist and keeps a large in-house compliance team. It no longer publishes a rate on any package, so Basic, Foundations, Advanced, and Complete all run through a pricing request.

ADP RUN

RUN includes multi-jurisdiction payroll and tax filing, which for a carrier means a filing footprint spread across states is handled as routine rather than as a project. That matters more here than in most industries, because driver residence decides which states you file in. ADP does not publish RUN pricing, but RUN needs no contract and can be ended at any time.

Paylocity

A human capital management platform with a dedicated trucking and logistics payroll page, aimed at fleets that have outgrown basic payroll and want performance, learning, and engagement tooling alongside it. Pricing is quote-based and implementation is a project rather than a signup.

TruckLogics

A transportation management system aimed at owner-operators and very small carriers, with dispatch, settlements, expense tracking, and fuel tax reporting at an entry price far below the mid-market TMS products. For a one-to-five-truck operation that wants load-level records rather than a spreadsheet, it is the cheapest realistic entry point.

Plans are priced by truck count, from $35.96 a month on annual billing for one or two trucks to $224.96 for 15 to 24, with a free 7-day trial. It is a TMS rather than a payroll provider, so tax filing generally sits with a separate payroll product or an accountant.

Truckbase

A modern transportation management system built for growing asset-based carriers, meaning fleets that run their own trucks. Dispatch, load management, driver settlements, and integrations with more than 30 electronic logging devices are the core, with document handling and automated data capture layered on.

Truckbase states a minimum of $290 per month on annual billing. Above that minimum, pricing is set per truck, per driver, per load, or as a flat annual rate.

Axon Software

The closest thing on this list to a single system covering both halves. Axon combines dispatch, accounting, driver settlements, a payroll module, and IFTA fuel tax reporting in one real-time platform, which for a carrier tired of reconciling three systems is the entire argument. It sells through a personalized demo rather than a published price.

Axon's payroll module calculates driver pay, taxes, and deductions inside the same system. Its pages do not say that Axon deposits and files payroll taxes for you, though, so confirm who handles deposits and quarterly returns before treating it as a payroll provider.

Tailwind TMS

A cloud transportation management system, now sold under the CargoWise brand, covering dispatch, accounting, and settlements for motor carriers, freight brokers, and companies that do both. Its online subscription checkout lists $250 per base user plus a $1,500 setup fee.

Pricing by user rather than by truck suits a small carrier with a couple of office staff, which is a different shape from most of this category.

What payroll actually costs at 5, 10, and 20 drivers

At published rates, payroll for 5 to 20 drivers runs from about $62 to $190 a month. Fleet sizes in this industry skew small, so the table below models 5, 10, and 20 drivers rather than the usual 10, 25, and 50. Only the payroll platforms with published pricing appear, since a TMS is a separate line.

Two observations. At 5 drivers the base fee is more than half of every bill in the table, and Patriot's $37 base keeps it cheapest across the whole range. At 20 drivers, the gap between the cheapest and most expensive published plan is still only about $53 a month.

The larger variable is not in the table. A fleet with drivers residing in four states pays for four state filing footprints, and a provider charging $12 a month for each state beyond the first, as Patriot and QuickBooks Workforce Payroll do, adds roughly $432 a year that OnPay does not.

Because the state footprint follows driver residence rather than business location, per-state charges move more money in trucking than the base fee does.

Verdict by fleet type

There is no single winner here, so the table routes you by fleet type instead. Several of these routes point away from trucking-specific software entirely.

The paperwork that has to exist before the first dispatch

Every industry has onboarding paperwork. Trucking has an audit file with a regulatory retention schedule, and it is the reason driver onboarding is its own software category rather than a feature of payroll.

Alongside the ordinary Form I-9, Form W-4, and any state withholding certificate, a motor carrier must build and maintain a Driver Qualification File for each driver. The carrier must also keep two more record sets in separate files: the safety history from previous employers and the drug and alcohol testing records, including queries to the federal Clearinghouse database.

The distinguishing feature of that list is that most items expire. A medical certificate lapses, a license renews, an annual review comes due, and a Clearinghouse query has to be repeated.

That list is not paperwork you collect once and file away. It is a set of records with dates attached that someone has to watch, and the consequence of missing one surfaces during a compliance review rather than at hire.

The retention clock runs past the driver's last day, too. Under 49 CFR 391.51 the qualification file is kept for as long as the driver works for you and for three years after, and the Clearinghouse rule requires a pre-employment query, an annual query, and three years of query records.

Before you choose

FirstHR is an onboarding and HR platform, not a payroll provider. Payroll runs, payroll tax filing, driver settlements, and fuel tax reporting come from the platforms above, so if paying drivers correctly is the problem in front of you, one of them is the answer. Pick from the comparison.

A carrier solves payroll, solves settlements, and still has an office manager tracking medical certificate expirations in a spreadsheet, chasing previous employer inquiries for a driver who started two weeks ago, and unable to find the training record for someone who left in the spring.

That is the layer we handle: onboarding workflows a new hire completes before arriving, with the I-9 and W-4 on the task list, e-signature on offer letters and policy acknowledgments, employee records that stay retrievable after someone leaves, document management that records each document's expiry date, and training with completion tracking.

It runs on flat monthly plans for US small businesses, $98 for up to 10 people and $198 for 11 to 50, rather than per-employee fees, which is worth noting in an industry where headcount moves constantly and per-employee pricing moves with it. It sits alongside whichever payroll platform and transportation management system you choose rather than replacing either.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between trucking payroll software and a TMS?

Payroll platforms calculate gross to net, withhold and deposit taxes, and file returns. A transportation management system builds driver settlements from dispatch and load data and often handles fuel tax reporting. Most TMS products do not file payroll taxes and most payroll platforms have no concept of a load, so carriers typically run both.

Can regular payroll software handle per-mile pay?

Yes. Per-mile and per-load pay go in as custom pay items, which OnPay and Roll by ADP both document. What general payroll cannot do is derive the mileage from dispatch records or reconcile it against a load. That work happens in a TMS or a spreadsheet before payroll sees a figure.

Which state do I withhold for when drivers cross state lines?

The driver's state of residence only. Under 49 USC section 14503, compensation paid by a motor carrier to an employee performing regularly assigned duties in two or more states is not subject to any other state's income tax. Setting withholding to the company's headquarters state is a common error.

How does per diem work for company drivers?

A carrier reimburses meals and incidental expenses at the IRS transportation industry rate, $80 per day within the continental US and $86 outside it, without receipts, and the reimbursement is not wages. The driver must be away overnight. Any amount above the rate counts as taxable wages.

Are truck drivers exempt from overtime?

Usually, under section 13(b)(1) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, because the Department of Transportation regulates their hours. The exemption fails in any workweek involving a vehicle rated at 10,000 pounds or less, assessed week by week, and some states, New York and Washington among them, require overtime regardless of the federal exemption.

How do I pay owner-operators versus company drivers?

Company drivers are W-2 employees with withholding, employer payroll taxes, and unemployment. Owner-operators are typically 1099 contractors paid gross, with a Form 1099-NEC due once payments reach $2,000 in a calendar year. Classification follows the IRS common-law test rather than the lease agreement, and trucking is an active enforcement area.

What is a driver settlement and why does payroll not produce one?

A settlement shows what a driver earned on specific loads and what was deducted, including accessorial pay, fuel advances, and escrow. Payroll software cannot produce it because it has no visibility into loads. Settlements come from a TMS or a spreadsheet, and the net figure flows into payroll.

Does trucking payroll software handle IFTA?

Payroll platforms do not, and fuel tax is not a payroll tax. The International Fuel Tax Agreement redistributes fuel tax among jurisdictions based on miles driven in each and is filed quarterly by the carrier. It appears in these comparisons because the same mileage data feeds both fuel tax reporting and per-mile pay.

How much does trucking payroll software cost?

At 10 drivers, published October 2026 rates run about $87 for Patriot Full Service, $89 for Roll by ADP, $109 for OnPay and Gusto Simple, and $120 for QuickBooks Workforce Payroll. At 20 drivers those plans land between roughly $137 and $190. A transportation management system runs alongside and is often the larger cost.

What is the best payroll software for a small trucking company?

OnPay when drivers live in several states, since every state is included at no surcharge. Gusto for mixed W-2 and contractor fleets wanting strong onboarding. Roll by ADP for owner-operators. Patriot when price is the binding constraint. Axon if you want settlements and payroll in one system and will pay for it.

What paperwork does a new driver need before the first payroll run?

Beyond Form I-9, Form W-4, and any state certificate, a motor carrier must maintain a Driver Qualification File with the application, motor vehicle records, the road test certificate or accepted license, and proof of medical certification. Previous employer safety inquiries and drug and alcohol testing records, Clearinghouse queries included, sit in separate files. Most of those items expire and must be renewed.

Why is driver turnover a payroll software problem?

It makes onboarding continuous rather than occasional. A Bureau of Labor Statistics analysis put annual turnover at large truckload carriers at an average of 94.0 percent between 1995 and 2017.

Each hire needs tax forms, a qualification file, and a Clearinghouse query before the first dispatch, and retention obligations continue after departure. Payroll processes the pay; what consumes office time is everything that must be complete and retrievable beforehand.