Truck Driver Salary in Illinois 2026,
$60,320 Median | BLS Data by City

The published Illinois figure is $60,320 a year, or $29.00 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a band from $39,710 at the 10th percentile to $86,300 at the 90th. That is 2.9% above the national median of $58,640. Illinois employs 84,200 heavy and tractor-trailer drivers on SOC 53-3032 at a location quotient of 1.04.

Chicago-Naperville-Elgin at $62,300, then Rockford $59,900, Decatur $59,100, Champaign-Urbana $56,270 and Bloomington $54,610. The Chicago lead is only about 4% over Rockford — modest by Illinois standards, because trucking wages are set by the freight and the schedule rather than by the metropolitan cost base.

Yes — a commercial driver's licence issued by the Illinois Secretary of State under Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration rules, requiring entry-level driver training from a registered provider, knowledge and skills examinations and a DOT medical certificate. Illinois adds no occupational licence of its own. The endorsements that follow — hazardous materials, tanker, doubles and triples — are federal designations and are the effective credential ladder in this occupation.

Endorsed and specialised freight. Hazardous materials, fuel and chemical haulage, tanker work, and flatbed or oversize loads all pay above general dry van, and together they account for most of the step from the $60,320 median to the $75,600 seventy-fifth percentile. Chicago's position as North America's largest intermodal hub means there is a great deal of this work available, alongside the lower-paid drayage that fills the bottom of the band.

Favourably, because the extra hours are not penalised. Illinois applies a flat 4.95% income tax and no Illinois city — Chicago included — levies a local income tax on wages, so mileage, overtime and endorsement premiums that carry a driver toward the $86,300 top decile are taxed at exactly the same rate as base pay. Peer states with similar nominal medians, such as California at $60,230, generally apply progressive schedules to that same income.

It broadens it. Chicago handles more intermodal rail freight than anywhere in North America, and that generates several distinct kinds of driving job in the same metro: short-haul drayage between terminals and warehouses, regional distribution across the Midwest, and long-haul departures. Drayage sits toward the bottom of the band and is a large part of why the $39,710 tenth percentile exists in a state that otherwise pays above the national median. The industrial and chemical corridors then supply the endorsed work at the top.

It is an annual figure for work paid mostly by the mile or the hour, and it conceals how many hours produced it. A driver at the $86,300 ninetieth percentile is generally running long weeks, carrying hazardous or specialised freight, or absorbing equipment costs as an owner-operator. The $39,710 tenth percentile includes part-year and newly licensed drivers as well as local drayage. Comparing offers against the published hourly median of $29.00 alongside the expected schedule is the more useful exercise.

Endorsements and freight class, then hours. Hazardous materials and tanker endorsements open the fuel and chemical work that pays well above dry van, and flatbed and oversize haulage pays for skill and liability — collectively most of the step from $60,320 to the $75,600 seventy-fifth percentile. Beyond that the $86,300 top decile is mileage, heavy-haul specialisation or an owner-operator model. Geography contributes least: Chicago-Naperville-Elgin leads Rockford by about 4%.