Updated September 2026
What Companies Pay Livestock Drivers in the United States (September 2026)
What do other carriers pay livestock drivers in the United States? Here's the full weekly-pay distribution: median, quartiles, and the 90th percentile, so you can see where your offer sits (September 2026). Right now the median is $1,500/week, the middle half of postings pay $1,250–$2,400, and the 90th percentile sits at $2,900, across 74 active postings.
Livestock driver pay distribution (September 2026)
Median weekly pay
$1,500/wk
74 active postings · September 2026
Half of the United States postings pay between $1,250 and $2,400 a week; the top carriers (90th percentile) post $2,900. Find where your offer sits on the scale above.
| Hiring type | 25th | Median | 75th | Active postings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Company Driver (W2) | $1,150 | $1,300 | $1,500 | 45 |
Source: Lanefinder index, September 2026
Why livestock pay sits where it does
Livestock hauling is a specialized segment with live-cargo welfare responsibilities, irregular hours, and load-handling skill that thin the operator pool. Pay benchmarks above general freight for the experience and tolerance the work demands.
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 driver pay by segment
- Home time & miles for livestock drivers, the other half of the offer
- How fast carriers respond to livestock drivers, speed wins the hire
- Why steady miles beat top-line CPM, reframing the offer
- All segments: CDL driver pay benchmarks
- Flatbed driver pay
- Reefer driver pay
- Dry van driver pay
- Tanker driver pay
- Car carrier driver pay
- Container driver pay
- Dump driver pay
- Hopper bottom driver pay
- Log driver pay
- Hazmat tanker driver pay
- Pneumatic tanker driver pay
- Curtain van driver pay
- Double drop driver pay
- Step deck driver pay
- Removable gooseneck (RGN) driver pay
- Walking floor driver pay
How this benchmark is computed
Every figure on this page is computed from active job postings in Lanefinder's index, not survey self-reports. Each posting's weekly pay is the midpoint of its posted range; statistical outliers are filtered before any percentile is computed. Percentiles use the nearest-rank method. Segments with fewer than 30 active postings are not published. Read the full methodology. Updated September 2026.