Industrial Truck and Tractor Operators Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Industrial Truck and Tractor Operators offer sit among all 805,770 workers doing this job? The survey top-codes at $239,200+ and withholds unreliable cells, shown as n/p in the table.

Employment and concentration

BLS counted 805,770 Industrial Truck and Tractor Operators jobs in May 2024, which is 0.52% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Delaware, where the location quotient is 2.80, meaning the occupation holds 2.80 times its national share of local jobs. Texas employs the most people outright, 106,350 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 32.6% of the national total.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $25,040 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($61,540) is 1.7 times the 10th percentile ($36,500), a gap of $25,040 a year. The mean of $47,830 sitting above the median of $46,390 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Every state with a publishable estimate is in this table, 51 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is District of Columbia at $81,470; the jobs leader is Texas:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Industrial Truck and Tractor Operators stands number 46 by employment and number 613 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Transportation and Material Moving Occupations, the group median wage is $52,310 across 50 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 11% less than its group median, and it supplies 5.9% of the group's 13,645,590 jobs. In 29 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $46,390, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX is the largest metro employer with 44,250 jobs, 5.5% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 387 metros BLS publishes for this occupation: where the jobs are, then where the money is, with the pay ranking restricted to metros employing at least 500 people in this occupation to keep small samples out of the lead.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $32,150 a year, against $64,520 in Urban Honolulu, HI. The lowest-paying large metro and the highest are both real markets for this occupation; the difference between them is the geography premium, or penalty, in cash terms.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $46,390 works out to $3,866 a month before taxes, $1,784 per biweekly paycheck, and $892 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($39,780) to the 75th ($53,680) is worth $13,900 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Run the median through the paycheck calculator for a take-home estimate in your state, compare an offer against your current pay with the salary calculator, and check whether a raise actually beats prices with the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $51,029 would sit between the median ($46,390) and the 75th percentile ($53,680), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $39,780, is $6,610 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Transportation and Material Moving Occupations

Sibling occupations in Transportation and Material Moving Occupations: Pump Operators, Except Wellhead Pumpers, Railroad Brake, Signal, and Switch Operators and Locomotive Firers, Ambulance Drivers and Attendants, Except Emergency Medical Technicians, Transportation Workers, All Other, Tank Car, Truck, and Ship Loaders, Aircraft Cargo Handling Supervisors. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.