Truck Driver Pay in Tennessee (2026)

Key numbers at a glance

Truck driver pay in Tennessee: the numbers

The benchmark is the Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS survey for heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers, May 2025 release. Tennessee counts roughly 64,890 driver jobs — about 19.8 of every 1,000 jobs in the state, well above the national concentration, because Tennessee is not just a place trucks drive through; it is a place trucking companies are headquartered. Annual figures assume 2,080 hours, so treat them as full-time equivalents.

Read the shape, not just the middle. Tennessee pairs a below-average floor ($39,960 at the 10th percentile vs. $40,140 nationally) with a genuinely strong top end — $73,420 at the 75th and $83,280 at the 90th percentile, both well above the national cuts. That wide spread is what a diversified freight market produces: cut-rate trainee freight at the bottom, and premium dedicated, LTL and team-integrated work at the top, with lots of rungs between. The median of $58,620 sits almost exactly on the national median, so the state neither subsidizes nor shortchanges the typical driver — the money is made by climbing the ladder. Pay structures here are the full mix: CPM for OTR, hourly-plus-overtime for parcel and LTL city work, and salary for dedicated account fleets, though BLS does not track CPM and offers vary — confirm specifics with the carrier.

How miles and freight shape pay in Tennessee

Three distinct engines drive the state. Memphis is one of the great freight nodes of North America — the home of FedEx's World Hub at Memphis International Airport, one of the world's busiest cargo airports, and a dense ring of LTL, parcel and drayage operations feeding on overnight schedules. Nashville has become a major distribution-center market, with national retailers stacking DCs along I-40, I-24 and I-65 to reach two-thirds of the U.S. population in a day's drive. And the eastern tier — Chattanooga, Knoxville and the Tri-Cities — mixes automotive freight (Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Nissan's Smyrna operations near Murfreesboro) with heavy through-traffic on I-75 and I-40, the state's east-west spine. Roughly speaking, drivers choose between dense local P&D work in the metros (hourly, overtime after 40), regional DC replenishment loops across the mid-South (CPM plus stop and detention pay), and classic OTR lanes running to Texas, the Midwest and the Southeast.

For owner-operators, Tennessee's location is the asset and its trap: freight is plentiful in every direction, but so is competition, and the through-lanes on I-40 are rate-sensitive. Run every offer through the load profit calculator, and remember that a dense backhaul market means deadhead discipline pays double here — a cheap load with a Nashville reload attached often beats a headline rate into a dead zone. Know your true cost per mile before you negotiate. For more state-by-state comparisons, see the truck driver pay by state hub.

The tax angle in Tennessee

Tennessee does not tax wages — it never has — and its former Hall tax on investment income was repealed for tax periods beginning January 1, 2021, per the Tennessee Department of Revenue. For a company driver earning the $60,440 state mean, that means no state withholding at all: roughly $2,400–$3,300 more kept per year than an identical wage in a 4%–5.5% tax state, before credits. Combined with a cost of living below the national average outside Nashville's boom, it is a core reason Tennessee has attracted both drivers and trucking headquarters. Owner-operators still owe federal income and self-employment tax; for deduction basics that apply everywhere, see the trucking tax deductions guide.