Truck Driver Salary in Georgia 2026,
$57,050 Median | BLS Data by City

The published Georgia figure is $57,050 a year, or $27.43 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a band from $38,150 at the 10th percentile to $77,900 at the 90th. That is 2.7% below the national median of $58,640. The row is SOC 53-3032, heavy and tractor-trailer drivers specifically — light-truck and delivery driving is counted elsewhere and pays considerably less.

Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell at $59,100, marginally ahead of Savannah $58,930, then Albany $57,050, Gainesville $56,770 and Athens-Clarke County $54,190. The whole table spans less than five thousand dollars, which is the norm for long-haul work: pay follows the lane and the freight rather than where the driver sleeps, so the geographic signal is much weaker here than for site-based occupations.

A Class A commercial driver's licence from the Georgia Department of Driver Services, issued under federal FMCSA standards. New applicants must first complete entry-level driver training with a provider on the FMCSA Training Provider Registry, then pass the knowledge and skills tests. Endorsements for hazardous materials, tankers and doubles or triples are added by examination, with hazmat requiring a TSA security threat assessment. Georgia adds no occupational licence beyond the driving credential — the practical gate is the carrier's insurance underwriting.

It changes the work more than the median. Savannah publishes $58,930, essentially level with Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell's $59,100, so drayage and port-adjacent work is not a wage premium in itself. What the port provides is volume and consistency — container drayage, intermodal transfers and the warehousing runs inland along I-16 — which shortens the search for steady miles. Drivers seeking the $68,780 seventy-fifth percentile generally get there through endorsements and specialised freight rather than by working port lanes.

It removes the penalty on a good year. Georgia taxes all individual income at 5.49% under the 2024 schedule, dropping to 5.39% for 2026, with no local income tax, so mileage bonuses, seasonal peaks and accessorial pay face the same state rate as base earnings. For interstate drivers, federal law generally assigns state income tax to the state of residence rather than to each state driven through, so a Georgia-domiciled driver's whole income is taxed at Georgia's flat rate no matter where the miles were run.

Because freight density is a demand signal, not a scarcity signal. Georgia's 74,840 drivers and 1.15 location quotient describe a state with a great deal of trucking work, which also means a large resident driver population, a dense network of carriers competing on rates, and a steady supply of new CDL holders entering through the state's training providers. National wage leadership in trucking tends to belong to states with thin driver populations and difficult conditions — remote, cold or oilfield markets — rather than to logistics hubs. The 2.7% shortfall to the national $58,640 is exactly that pattern.

Legal scarcity and time. The $38,150 tenth percentile is a first-year driver on training pay, restricted by insurance to the freight that carriers will trust to an inexperienced record. The $68,780 seventy-fifth percentile is a driver whose endorsements — hazmat with its TSA assessment, tanker, doubles — mean that fewer drivers can lawfully take the load, and the $77,900 ninetieth percentile adds specialised heavy or high-value freight and very high mileage. None of that is seniority in the office sense; it is a series of deliberate decisions to accept more regulation, more risk and more time away.

Read it as churn, not growth. The national projection is 4% employment growth against about 237,600 average annual openings, and Georgia's pro-rated share of roughly 8,620 openings a year reflects the same turnover-driven arithmetic. Entry is easy and exit is common, particularly in the first year of long-haul truckload work. The practical implication for someone in Georgia is that finding a first CDL job is rarely the hard part; finding the second one, with a clean record and enough experience to reach a carrier that pays near the $57,050 median rather than the $45,700 twenty-fifth percentile, is where the career actually turns.