Tank Car, Truck, and Ship Loaders Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Tank Car, Truck, and Ship Loaders offer sit among all 10,920 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

May 2024 employment stood at 10,920, or 0.01% of the U.S. total. Texas leads the state table with 2,580 jobs; the top three states sum to 40.9% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: North Dakota posts a location quotient of 10.95, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $49,860 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($88,120) is 2.3 times the 10th percentile ($38,260), a gap of $49,860 a year. The mean of $60,010 sitting above the median of $58,070 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Alabama posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $85,260, and Texas the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Tank Car, Truck, and Ship Loaders stands number 676 by employment and number 439 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% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.1% of the group's 13,645,590 jobs. In 18 of the 35 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $58,070, 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

Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX is the largest metro employer with 1,720 jobs, 15.8% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $65,790 a year, against $65,790 in Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $4,839 a month before tax, $2,233 biweekly, $1,117 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($47,260) to the 75th ($71,230) is worth $23,970 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. To turn any of these gross figures into spendable money, run them through the paycheck calculator; to weigh an offer against your current role, use the salary calculator; to test a raise against prices, the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $63,877 would sit between the median ($58,070) and the 75th percentile ($71,230), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $47,260, is $10,810 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

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Stockers and Order Fillers, Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers, Light Truck Drivers, Industrial Truck and Tractor Operators, First-Line Supervisors of Transportation and Material Moving Workers, Except Aircraft Cargo Handling Supervisors, Packers and Packagers, Hand. The full directory is on the Careers hub.