Updated September 2026
Hopper Bottom Driver Home Time & Miles in the United States (September 2026)
If you're hiring hopper bottom drivers in the United States, pay is only half the offer. This September 2026 benchmark covers the other half: offered weekly miles, dedicated-route share, and home time. Right now the median offer is 2,000 miles/week (middle half 1,175–2,500), 32% of postings advertise dedicated routes, and postings that state home time average 3.3 weekends home per month, across 133 active postings.
The hopper bottom workload in the United States right now
Median offered miles
2,000/wk
132 postings with stated miles · September 2026
The middle half of the United States postings offer between 1,175 and 2,500 miles a week. These are offered miles (what the ad advertises), not delivered miles.
Dedicated routes
32%
of 133 active postings advertise dedicated routes
Weekends home
3.3/mo
average across 122 postings that state home time
Route mix
Source: Lanefinder index, September 2026
What hopper bottom work actually looks like
Hopper freight tracks the agricultural calendar: grain-belt loops that surge at harvest and slow in winter. Lanes are regional and repeatable, and home-time offers are generally strong outside peak season.
Benchmark your offer
If applications are slow, pay is the first thing to rule out. Tell us what you're offering and we'll show you where it sits in the September 2026 distribution, and how the fastest-hiring carriers on Lanefinder structure their offers.
CDL home time & miles by segment
- What companies pay hopper bottom drivers, the pay half of the offer
- How fast carriers respond to hopper bottom drivers, speed wins the hire
- Why steady miles beat top-line CPM, reframing the offer
- All segments: CDL driver pay benchmarks
- Flatbed home time & miles
- Reefer home time & miles
- Dry van home time & miles
- Tanker home time & miles
- Car carrier home time & miles
- Container home time & miles
- Dump home time & miles
- Livestock home time & miles
- Log home time & miles
- Hazmat tanker home time & miles
- Pneumatic tanker home time & miles
- Curtain van home time & miles
- Double drop home time & miles
- Step deck home time & miles
- Removable gooseneck (RGN) home time & miles
- Walking floor home time & miles
The methodology behind the benchmark
Every figure comes from active job postings in Lanefinder's index. Miles are OFFERED miles (the midpoint of the weekly-mile range a posting advertises), never delivered or actual miles. Percentiles are nearest-rank; each metric only counts postings that state it, and segments with fewer than 30 active postings are not published. Read the full methodology. Updated September 2026.