Hourly pay: straightforward, but track everything
Hourly is the simplest to administer correctly: track hours, apply overtime rules past the threshold, done. The main risk is under-tracking — if crew clocks in before the truck leaves the yard or works past the official job end time and it's not logged, you have a wage record problem waiting to surface.
Flat-rate per job: the part owners miss
Flat-rate pay split among a crew is common, especially for local jobs. The part that trips owners up: even on flat-rate pay, most jurisdictions still expect the effective hourly rate to meet minimum wage — and overtime rules can still apply if the job runs long. That means you need to track hours worked even when pay isn't calculated hourly, so you can show the math holds up.
If you can't show what a flat-rate job worked out to per hour, you can't show it met minimum wage or overtime requirements if it's ever questioned.
Mixed models
Plenty of movers pay hourly for local jobs and flat-rate for long-distance runs. This is fine, but it means your payroll software needs to support both pay types cleanly per employee, rather than forcing everything into one calculation.
Ready to stop doing this by hand? See how Gusto handles it automatically for a moving crew.
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