$223,700top of the range in Massachusetts · middle $107,230 / yr
AI is transforming this role
Transportation Managers in the United States earn a median of $107,230 a year. Pay starts near $65,120. Pay reaches $223,700 at the top of the range in Massachusetts, the best-paying state for this work among those with at least 500 people in the job.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Managers, SOC 11-3071). Last checked 9 September 2026.
Entry level
$65,120
Top of the range · Massachusetts
$223,700
Education
Bachelor's degree in Logistics or Business
Wages — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Managers). Top of the range is the highest state-level figure among states with at least 500 people in the job. AI-impact rating is PayCrunch's editorial assessment. Updated September 2026.
🆕 New & Trending AI Tools for Transportation ManagerReviewed September 2026
We track new AI-tool launches every week and refresh this list — here’s what’s gaining traction for Transportation Manager work right now.
Numeo AINEWPaid / see site
AI dispatch platform that matches loads and plans routes for trucking.
How a Transportation Manager uses it: let AI find better loads and build the most efficient route/schedule
DAT iQNEWPaid / see site
Freight market intelligence with AI rate forecasting and lane analytics.
How a Transportation Manager uses it: price a load right and pick profitable lanes with live market data
NetradyneNEWFleet / see site
AI-powered dashcam that coaches driving and rewards safe behavior.
How a Transportation Manager uses it: get instant in-cab coaching and build a safety record that protects your CDL
NotebookLMNEWFree / $7.99 mo
Google tool that answers questions grounded only in the documents you give it — with citations.
How a Transportation Manager uses it: load your own manuals, policies, or PDFs and ask questions that stay accurate to the source
Motive~$89/vehicle mo
Driver app with AI safety alerts, fuel and route insights (formerly KeepTruckin).
How a Transportation Manager uses it: get real-time safety and fuel coaching and cut idle time on the road
Samsara~$99/vehicle mo
Connected-fleet platform with AI dash cams, routing, and maintenance alerts.
How a Transportation Manager uses it: use AI dashcam coaching and predictive maintenance to stay safe and avoid breakdowns
Route4MePaid / see site
Route optimization that sequences multi-stop trips across 200+ variables.
How a Transportation Manager uses it: turn a list of stops into the fastest, fuel-smart route in seconds
ChatGPTFree / $20 mo
The most-used AI assistant — writing, analysis, research, and images from a plain-language chat.
How a Transportation Manager uses it: draft emails and documents, summarize long files, and get instant answers to on-the-job questions
ClaudeFree / $20 mo
AI assistant known for careful writing, long-document analysis, and coding.
How a Transportation Manager uses it: analyze big reports or spreadsheets and turn messy notes into clean, finished writing
The person who owns the day's freight
A transportation manager is accountable for getting freight or people where they were promised, with the carriers, the terminals, and the staff the company actually has. The morning is a board of late loads, a driver call-out, a customer who wants an explanation, and a dock that is either ready or not. You decide which carrier gets the tender, which terminal absorbs the overflow, and which problem can wait until tomorrow. Dispatchers and supervisors run the shift in front of them. You run the pattern: cost, service, safety, and the capacity you will still have on Thursday.
The setting changes the nouns and not the duty. A private fleet manager lives with tractors, trailers, maintenance, and the people who hold the commercial licences. A brokerage or logistics manager lives with contracted carriers and a book of lanes. A terminal manager lives with doors, shifts, and the handoff into a warehouse. A distribution manager in this occupation lives where storage meets the outbound truck. A passenger operation, less common under the same daily rhythm, lives with schedules the public can see. If your week is only a spreadsheet of purchase orders and you never speak to a carrier or a terminal, you may be in a neighboring job. This one has vehicles, or the people who send them, on the phone.
A good day is boring in the way operations people like. Freight moved. Customers were told the truth before they had to ask. A weak carrier was pulled off a lane before the third failure. A supervisor got a clear priority instead of five. A bad day is a weather event, a breakdown cluster, or a promise sales made without asking whether the fleet could keep it. Your job then is to reset the promise, protect the people driving and loading, and write down what has to change so nobody makes that promise again. Heroics that depend on one dispatcher staying all night are a failure of the system you manage.
You also translate between finance and the yard. Finance wants a number it can forecast. The yard wants enough people and enough doors. You sit in the middle with a service record you can defend. You do not need a licence to have that conversation. You need a record of having run something real: a shift, a fleet, a terminal, a set of lanes. The title comes after that record, not before it.
Experience, rather than a licence
No government licence is the ticket into this title. Companies hire transportation managers because they have already supervised a desk that moves freight. A commercial driver's licence may sit in your past if you came up from driving, and it can help you speak with drivers. It is not the manager credential, and many strong managers have never held it. A broker's bond or a carrier's operating authority belongs to the company, not to your name. Do not shop for a personal licence in order to look qualified. Shop for scope: more lanes, a larger terminal, a messier customer.
Education varies. Some postings want a bachelor's degree in logistics, supply chain, or business. Some will trade the degree for a decade of terminal or fleet leadership. If you have the degree and thin experience, say which internship or dispatch role was real. If you have the experience and no degree, say the size of what you ran: doors, drivers, lanes, or shifts, in words a stranger can picture. Inventing neither a diploma nor a headcount is how you stay hireable after a reference check.
Preparation is the climb through dispatcher, coordinator, broker, or supervisor. Learn why a load fails, how a customer scorecard is built, and how to tell a salesperson that a lane is not priced for the service they promised. Learn to read an invoice dispute without making it a moral drama. Learn the difference between a safety problem and a service problem, and which one stops the truck. Those distinctions are the curriculum. A short course can give you vocabulary. It will not give you the scar tissue of a peak season.
What a director listens for
Directors hire for judgment under noise. They will ask you to walk through a week when capacity collapsed. They want the sequence: what you learned first, who you called, what you told the customer, what you changed the next week. A story that is only about your effort, with no result, is weak. A story that blames drivers and never mentions the plan is also weak. The strong story has a number you personally watched, a decision you made, and a consequence you can describe without decorating it.
They listen for how you treat the people who do not sit in your meeting. Drivers, dock crews, and dispatchers can make a brilliant network design fail by lunch. If you talk about them as a cost to be squeezed and never as a constraint you have to staff, a good director hears a future turnover problem. Ask, in your turn, how the company measures service, who owns the carrier relationships, and whether the manager is expected to be on the floor or only in the review. Both shapes exist. You should know which one you are accepting.
The resume should be scoped. "Reduced missed deliveries on two regional lanes by changing the carrier mix and the cutoff" is a manager sentence. "Responsible for transportation" is a void. Name the mode if it matters: truckload, less-than-truckload, private fleet, parcel, rail intermodal, or a local delivery operation. Name the customer type: retail replenishment, industrial inbound, or a final-mile consumer promise. A director hiring for a fleet will not be persuaded by a pure brokerage paragraph, and the reverse is also true. Adjacent experience counts. Pretending it is the same job does not.
The manager series, named once
These figures are May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Managers. The series is wider than a pure transportation desk, because storage and distribution leadership sit in the same published occupation. Use the numbers as that shared picture, with a transportation manager's duties in mind. The range opens at $65,120. The middle of the national figures is $107,230. The step from the opening figure to that middle is $42,110. The high end of the published range is $223,700, which is $116,470 above the national middle. The state medians are a different statistic. They are listed next, in a required order, before the high end is tied to a state.
Give every state the same kind of sentence, so a middle wage never gets abbreviated into a range top. New Hampshire's middle wage is $129,470, and New Jersey's middle wage is $130,610. After that, the District of Columbia middle wage is $132,180. Colorado's middle wage is $132,610. Washington's middle wage is $136,500. Washington's middle wage is the highest median in the set, and it sits $29,270 above the national middle of $107,230. The list runs from New Hampshire to Washington on purpose. Washington is last. It is the highest median, not a trophy for reading the list backward.
Massachusetts holds the high end
Massachusetts holds the high end of the published range at $223,700. Washington holds the highest median, and Washington posts a middle wage of $136,500. Massachusetts is outside the five middle wages just listed, so do not borrow a Massachusetts median from this set. The high end and the highest median are different statistics. One is the top of a published range. The other is a middle wage.
The spread between the highest published state median and the lowest published state median is $52,940. That is a gap between middles, and it is wide enough to make a casual comparison across the country meaningless. Colorado posts a middle wage of $132,610, just beside the District of Columbia's middle wage of $132,180. New Jersey posts a middle wage of $130,610, and New Hampshire's middle wage is $129,470. All four sit above the national middle of $107,230 and far below Massachusetts's $223,700 high end. If you remember only one warning, remember that $223,700 and $136,500 do not describe the same kind of pay.
An offer conversation with the gaps written down
A first manager title after a strong supervisor or dispatcher run should be compared with $65,120 and with the $42,110 climb toward $107,230. If the offer sits near the opening figure, ask what scope they think that pay matches, because $65,120 is the early published level for a broad manager series, not a compliment. If you already run a terminal or a book of lanes, you can anchor nearer $107,230 and ask which duties in this company sit at the national middle. Get the answer in scope: headcount, lanes, a fleet, a building. Adjectives such as "strategic" are not a scope.
Then use the state, and use the full label every time. If the desk is in New Hampshire, New Hampshire's middle wage is $129,470. If it is in New Jersey, New Jersey posts a middle wage of $130,610. If it is in the District of Columbia, the District of Columbia posts a middle wage of $132,180. If it is in Colorado, Colorado posts a middle wage of $132,610. If it is in Washington, Washington posts a middle wage of $136,500, the highest median, $29,270 above the national middle. Say "middle wage" so nobody hears you quoting the Massachusetts high end by accident.
$223,700 is the high end of the published range in Massachusetts, $116,470 above the national middle. It fits a conversation about a large multi-site operation or a scarce executive scope, and only if the employer is actually in that conversation. It is a poor opener for a single terminal. You might say, once, that the published high end is $223,700 and the highest median is the middle wage Washington posts, $136,500, and that you want to know which world this offer lives in. Then stop. Let the director place the job. If they place it at the national middle, negotiate around $107,230 and the $42,110 below it, not around Massachusetts.
Two offers in two of these places should be laid beside two middle wages, not beside the high end. A New Jersey offer near the middle wage New Jersey posts, $130,610, and a Colorado offer near the middle wage Colorado posts, $132,610, are both "at the local middle." The $52,940 spread between the highest and lowest published state medians is the reason a third offer, in a state that pays less, can look shocking without anyone lying. Name the state. Name the statistic. Leave bonuses and car allowances in words unless the offer writes a dollar, and do not add an imagined dollar to $107,230.
After this title
The first manager job is about surviving a peak season without losing the account or the crew. You learn the company's real priorities, which are sometimes different from the poster in the lobby. You build one or two carrier relationships that are yours. You learn which supervisors tell you the truth. From there, some people take a larger building, a regional fleet, or a broader network and move from the national middle toward a state middle wage. Washington posts a middle wage of $136,500 at the top of this median list. That is still a middle. It is not Massachusetts's $223,700.
Later titles include director and vice president of transportation, or a move into a general operation that also owns the warehouse. Those jobs may reach toward the upper part of the published range. They also change the week from today's freight to next year's network. If you want that, collect one story about a redesign, not only stories about firefighting. If you do not want that, a well-run terminal is a full career, and the pay conversation can stay on $107,230 and the middle wage of the state you are standing in. No licence appears at the director level either. The credential remains a record of operations you did not drop.
When you negotiate the next step, repeat the list in the same order and the same words. For New Hampshire, use the middle wage of $129,470. For New Jersey, use $130,610. The District of Columbia posts a middle wage of $132,180. Colorado posts a middle wage of $132,610. Washington posts a middle wage of $136,500. The national middle is $107,230. The range opens at $65,120. Massachusetts holds the high end at $223,700, a different statistic from every one of those middle wages. Keep the labels, and the offer conversation stays about the job you actually have.
The top of Transportation Manager pay — and how to get there with AI
$223,700what Transportation Manager pay reaches in Massachusetts
Highest state-level top-of-range annual wage for Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Managers, among states with at least 500 people in the job. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025.
And the role it leads to — Industrial Production Managers — reaches $230,410 in Colorado.
$65,120entry$107,230middle$223,700top end
A transportation manager who only keeps freight moving is priced as overhead; the one near the top of the range negotiates the rates, sits in the customer's quarterly review, and can put a number on what each routing decision was worth.
The job description already contains the commercial half — negotiating prices and terms with suppliers, vendors and freight forwarders, meeting suppliers to discuss performance metrics and forecasts, monitoring supplier activity against quality and delivery requirements, selecting routes that combine shipments or consolidate distribution. Most managers hand the money conversations to procurement or sales and keep the operational half. That is the choice that caps the pay. Rate analysis that once needed an analyst now comes out of a routing comparison in ALK Technologies PC*Miler against actual paid invoices in Microsoft Excel, with a model summarising the exceptions, which means one manager can carry both halves.
Your playbook, by where you are now
Just startingLearn what every lane really costs
Rebuild your top lanes from paid invoices rather than the rate sheet, including accessorials, detention and fuel.
Run the same lanes through ALK Technologies PC*Miler and find where the planned mileage and the billed mileage diverge.
Score your carriers on delivery and quality performance every month, in writing, and send them the score.
Learn the master data in whatever system runs your flow, whether Microsoft Dynamics, SAP Concur style expense capture or a warehouse package such as 3PL Central.
Sit in on one negotiation as a note taker so you learn how terms are actually conceded.
What proves it: A lane-level cost model built from paid invoices, with carrier scorecards you issue on a schedule.
Realistic span: the first two years
A few years inTake the negotiations yourself
Ask to lead the next carrier or forwarder renewal outright rather than supporting it, and bring your own cost model.
Consolidate shipments and reconsider warehousing footprint where the model says it pays, then track the saving for a full year.
Own compliance with new environmental and customs rules, using a trade platform such as Amber Road, because regulatory exposure gets attention at board level.
Have ChatGPT compress a long carrier contract or tender response into an issues list, then read the clauses yourself before you rely on any of it.
Publish a monthly one-page view of cost per unit shipped, service level and forecast variance, and send it to the commercial team unprompted.
What proves it: A renewal you led end to end with a documented, sustained cost or service change.
Realistic span: years three through seven
ExperiencedFace the customer, not only the carrier
Get into the customer quarterly business review and present the logistics numbers yourself instead of briefing someone who will.
Take profit and loss responsibility for a distribution operation, since managers who own a number are paid against it.
Lead the transport side of new product launches and engineering changes, where material flow decisions are made before anyone can fix them later.
Build a rate benchmark you can defend to a customer as well as to a carrier, and use it in both directions.
Consider Massachusetts, which pays this occupation best, or an industrial production management role if you want the plant as well as the network.
What proves it: Named ownership of a distribution profit and loss, and a standing seat in customer reviews.
Realistic span: year eight onward
The next 90 days
Spend ninety days building one thing: a true cost per lane on your twenty largest flows, assembled from what was actually paid rather than what was quoted. Include accessorials, detention, fuel and the reconsignments nobody logs. Compare it to the routing your system recommends and note every gap. Then take the three worst lanes to whoever negotiates your rates and ask to run the next conversation with those carriers. You are not asking for a promotion; you are arriving with the analysis the negotiation needs. Transportation managers who bring lane economics into the room stop being the person who reports the freight bill and become the person who sets it.
Wage figures: BLS OEWS, May 2025. The playbook is PayCrunch editorial guidance, not a guarantee of pay or placement.
Every figure is the national median from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (OEWS) shown on that role’s own page.
Never used AI before? Start here (2 minutes).
Start inside your fleet telematics platform — Samsara or Motive — and turn on its AI safety and efficiency features first. These score harsh driving, detect fatigue and distraction, and flag fuel-wasting idling and routing in real time, which is where cost and crash risk actually live. Coach from the AI-flagged events instead of guessing, and your safety scores, insurance costs, and fuel burn all move the right way.
For planning and the paperwork, layer AI dynamic routing (Wise Systems or your TMS's optimizer) onto dispatch, and use Microsoft Copilot in Excel and Power BI or Claude (with de-identified data) to turn telematics exports into cost-per-mile and on-time dashboards and to draft driver SOPs and comms. Keep driver personal data out of consumer tools. AI is the dispatcher and analyst bench; you run the operation.
The one rule, forever: DOT and FMCSA rules — hours-of-service, ELD, driver qualification, and CSA safety scores — are legal limits, not optimization targets: never let AI routing or dispatch push a driver past legal hours or skip a safety check. Treat AI safety and telematics scores as decision support you validate, and keep driver PII, medical, and driver-qualification-file data out of consumer AI tools.
The plays — exact steps, exact prompts
Do these in order. Each one is copy-paste ready. You do not need to know anything about AI going in.
1
Cut cost per mile with AI routing and dispatch
Why this pays: Deadhead miles and driver overtime are the biggest controllable costs in a fleet. AI dynamic routing that sequences stops and reduces empty miles lowers cost per mile directly — the number a transportation manager is measured and paid on.
Add Wise Systems dynamic routing or your TMS optimizer (Oracle Transportation Management, McLeod) to dispatch, feeding it real constraints — delivery windows, capacities, and driver hours.
2
Design the setup and a savings scorecard.
Copy-paste this prompt
You are a fleet routing analyst. I run [40] trucks doing [regional LTL delivery] out of [one terminal]. Given these constraints — [driver hours-of-service limits, delivery windows, vehicle capacities] — explain how to set up dynamic route optimization: the data the optimizer needs, how to sequence multi-stop routes to cut deadhead and overtime, and the five KPIs to watch weekly. Then draft a before-and-after scorecard I can use to prove the savings.
Optimize within legal hours only. Validate routes against real conditions before dispatch.
What you'll haveLower deadhead and overtime on every route — a measurable cost-per-mile cut that shows up on your scorecard.
2
Drive down crashes and insurance with AI safety telematics
Why this pays: Crashes, claims, and insurance premiums are enormous fleet costs, and a poor safety record loses freight. AI dash-cam and telematics coaching that cuts risky driving lowers premiums, improves CSA scores, and protects the contracts that fund the operation.
SamsaraMotiveGeotab
1
Turn on AI safety scoring and dash cams in Samsara or Motive, and coach drivers from the flagged events rather than from guesswork.
2
Build a fair, data-driven coaching program.
Copy-paste this prompt
Act as a driver-safety coach. Here is a summary of this week's AI-flagged safety events by driver [paste de-identified counts: harsh braking, following distance, phone use, speeding]. Group drivers into coaching tiers, write a short constructive coaching script for a driver with [repeated following-distance events], and outline a fair, escalating accountability process.
No driver names or personal data. AI scores are decision support; a human reviews context before any action.
What you'll haveFewer crashes and claims, lower premiums, and a stronger CSA record — protecting both margin and freight.
3
Master DOT and FMCSA compliance with AI
Why this pays: A bad audit, an out-of-service order, or a poor CSA score can shut down freight and spike insurance. Using AI to keep hours-of-service, driver files, and inspections airtight prevents costly violations — pure downside protection on the operation you run.
Samsara ELDMotiveChatGPT
1
Use the ELD and compliance modules in Samsara or Motive to monitor hours-of-service and inspections, and AI to build the audit-ready checklists.
2
Generate a monthly compliance routine.
Copy-paste this prompt
You are a DOT and FMCSA compliance assistant. Build me a monthly compliance checklist for a [for-hire interstate carrier] fleet covering hours-of-service and ELD, driver-qualification files, the drug-and-alcohol program, vehicle inspections, and CSA BASIC monitoring. For each, note the record to keep and the common violation that hurts a CSA score.
General guidance only. Confirm every item against the current Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations.
What you'll haveAudit-ready compliance and a clean CSA profile — no costly violations, and freight that keeps flowing.
4
Slash fuel and maintenance costs
Why this pays: After labor, fuel and maintenance are the largest fleet costs. AI that surfaces idling, poor mpg, and trucks trending toward failure lets you cut fuel spend and prevent breakdowns — direct savings on the P&L you own.
GeotabSamsaraMicrosoft Power BI Copilot
1
Mine Geotab or Samsara telematics for idling, mpg, and fault-code trends, and use Power BI Copilot to build a cost dashboard.
2
Quantify the savings and prioritize action.
Copy-paste this prompt
Act as a fleet cost analyst. Using this telematics export [paste de-identified: idle time, mpg, and fault codes by truck], identify the top fuel-wasting behaviors and the trucks trending toward a breakdown, estimate the annual dollar impact of cutting idle by [30%], and give me a prioritized action list for a preventive-maintenance and anti-idling program.
De-identify the export. Verify fault-code interpretations with your maintenance team before acting.
What you'll haveLower fuel burn and fewer roadside breakdowns — savings that drop straight to the bottom line.
5
Buy freight smart and report like a director
Why this pays: Whether you tender to carriers or run private fleet, buying capacity at or below market and proving your numbers to leadership is what earns the director-of-transportation role — where pay at the top of the range lives.
DATTruckstopClaude
1
Benchmark lane rates on DAT and Truckstop, then use Claude to build the renegotiation case and the executive summary.
2
Turn market data and ops numbers into a leadership brief.
Copy-paste this prompt
You are a freight-procurement and reporting analyst. Given current market rates on [these lanes] from a load board and my current contracted rates [paste generic], flag where I am over market and draft a renegotiation plan. Then turn my monthly ops numbers [cost per mile, on-time %, safety score, utilization] into a one-page executive summary for the VP with the top three wins and three risks.
Use generic lanes and de-identified numbers. Confirm market rates in the load board before negotiating.
What you'll haveBelow-market freight buys and director-grade reporting — the visible results that earn the promotion and the pay.
Your 12-month sequence to the top of the range
How the plays above stack into a path from median pay toward the $223,700 tier.
Month 1
Turn on AI safety telematics; coach from flagged events and track crash-risk and idling trends.
Months 2-3
Add AI dynamic routing and dispatch; prove cost-per-mile and overtime savings with a before-and-after scorecard.
Months 3-6
Systematize DOT and FMCSA compliance with AI checklists and clean up your CSA scores.
Months 6-12
Use load-board rate intelligence and director-grade reporting to cut freight spend and earn the promotion.
Next steps for a Transportation Manager
Some links below are affiliate or partner links. PayCrunch may earn a commission if you enroll or subscribe through them, at no extra cost to you. Wage figures on this page still come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, not from these programs.
Transportation Manager work is specific enough that a stamped 'check out these courses' block would be noise. BLS files this work as Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Managers (SOC 11-3071). O*NET Job Zone 4 is typical: a bachelor's degree, so the honest next credential is a professional certificate or bachelor's-level coursework — not a random catalog dump.
The occupation's listed knowledge area is Transportation, which is what the course searches below actually query.
Transportation Managers in this dataset list Autodesk AutoCAD Civil 3D among the tools in use, so a program that names that stack is a better fit than a survey course.
Coursera search for transportation — a professional certificate or bachelor's-level coursework that lines up with management, not a generic professional-development aisle.
FlexJobs screens remote, hybrid, freelance, and flexible listings so you are not wading through unverified ads. This is a job-board search for Transportation Manager work, not a claim that they list a counted SOC 11-3071 inventory.
Write a Transportation Manager resume, or one aimed at Industrial Production Managers, instead of a blank template. Resume Now is a resume builder; we are not claiming a counted template set for this SOC.
A Transportation Manager resume that names the actual tasks on this page, or the step-up title Industrial Production Managers, beats a blank template when you apply.
What Transportation Managers earn by state
These are the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ own figures for Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Managers, state by state — not a cost-of-living adjustment applied to the national number. Only states employing at least 500 people in the occupation are shown, because a state median drawn from a handful of workers is noise rather than a signal.
Washington
$136,500
highest of them · +27% vs the national median
Puerto Rico
$83,560
lowest of the 42 states and territories that qualify · -22% vs the national median
The same job pays $52,940 more a year at the median in Washington than in Puerto Rico — 63% higher. That gap is what the Bureau measured, before any question of what it costs to live in either place. The top-of-range figure quoted at the head of this page, $223,700, is a different statistic in a different place: it is the 90th-percentile wage in Massachusetts. The state that pays the typical worker most and the state where the best-paid go highest are not always the same one.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, SOC 11-3071. 42 states and territories clear the 500-employee reporting floor for this occupation; those below it are left out rather than shown with a wide error band.
Free data. Use any of it.
PayCrunch publishes verified, BLS-sourced salary + AI-playbook data on 1,000+ professions — free, no signup.
No. AI optimizes routes and flags risky driving, but someone has to manage drivers, handle exceptions, own safety and compliance, and answer for a crash or a missed delivery. The manager who uses AI runs a safer, cheaper fleet with less firefighting; the one who doesn't gets beaten on cost per mile.
What's the fastest win?
Turning on AI safety telematics and coaching from the flagged events. It cuts crashes and insurance, improves CSA scores, and the fuel and idling insights pay for the system quickly — all things you are directly measured on.
Can AI schedule around hours-of-service for me?
It can plan within hours-of-service limits, but those limits are legal, not negotiable. Never let a routing tool push a driver past legal hours or skip a required break — the liability and safety stakes are yours, and CSA and DOT violations are expensive.
Is it safe to put fleet data into ChatGPT?
Not with driver PII, medical, or driver-qualification-file data. De-identify telematics exports and use generic lanes, or use an enterprise instance. Aggregate cost, mpg, and on-time numbers are fine for analysis.
How does this move me toward $224k?
Top-of-range transportation comp goes to managers who run large fleets at low cost per mile with strong safety and on-time numbers. AI is the leverage that lets you prove those results at scale — the record that earns a director-of-transportation role.
Methodology & sources
Salary (median, 10th, top of the range) — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS.
By state — the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ own state medians, limited to states employing at least 500 people in the occupation. No cost-of-living arithmetic is applied to a wage anywhere on this page.
The plays — PayCrunch's own step-by-step guidance using publicly available AI tools. Tool names/URLs are real and current as of August 2026; prompts written to work as-is. Verify any professional output before relying on it.