FMCSA's carrier census lists 16,497 active carriers based in the Los Angeles area — 15,477 with one to nine trucks, 849 operators running 10 to 49, and 148 with 50 or more — roughly 87,881 power units between them. 1 Every one of them is hiring the same drivers you are.
We're a truck driver recruiting agency, not a lead reseller and not a staffing firm. Our recruiters talk to every driver by phone, screen them against your requirements, and submit ready-to-hire packets. You pay per placed driver — half when the driver starts, half after the first 14 days — and nothing up front. That is the whole model, and it is the same in Los Angeles as it is in Chicago, where we started.
If your recruiting partner gets paid before a driver ever starts, you didn't buy recruiting. You bought a contact list.
What recruiting in Los Angeles actually looks like
Los Angeles is two hours wide and the freight runs east. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach feed drayage up the 710 into a first ring of carriers in Carson, Compton and Santa Fe Springs, then out the 10 and the 60 to the Inland Empire — Fontana, Ontario, Rialto — where the mega-warehouses are and where most for-hire fleets now actually park. California adds its own layer: CARB-compliant equipment, AB5 and the owner-operator question, and a driver pool that is heavily Spanish-speaking and knows its rights.
Pay is high on paper and eaten by rent and traffic. Local and regional work that gets a driver home in the Inland Empire every night beats almost any OTR offer here, and the carriers that fill seats say exactly which yard and which shift.
The lanes: I-710 · I-10 · I-15 · SR-60 · I-405 · Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach · Inland Empire warehouse belt.
Recruiting in Los Angeles means recruiting in the Inland Empire, because that is where the trucks park and the drivers live. A carrier in Carson competing for the same driver as a carrier in Fontana loses on commute alone unless the pay says otherwise. California adds CARB-compliant equipment, the AB5 question for anyone considering owner-operators, and a driver pool that is heavily Spanish-speaking and well informed about its rights — we screen in Spanish when the driver prefers it, and we promise nothing about employment classification the carrier has not confirmed.
Local and regional seats that get a driver home every night fill; OTR from Southern California competes with every national fleet that stages here. Our nearest office is Lancaster, Texas; Los Angeles runs by phone.
Where the 10-plus-truck fleets sit, by ZIP: 92337 (47), 92335 (45), 90058 (44), 90670 (43), 91761 (41).
What drivers in Los Angeles are paid
BLS puts the median annual wage for heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA metro area at $60,340, with a mean of $61,230 (Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025).
Two caveats before you build an offer on it. The figure blends local hourly seats with OTR mileage pay, so it is neither; and it lags the market by up to a year. Treat it as the floor a driver already knows, not the number that makes them switch. The carriers that fill seats here publish the actual pay — by the mile, the hour or the day — and the actual home time. We wrote up the posting mistakes that cost carriers applications if you want the checklist.
- $60,340
- median annual wage, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim metro
- $61,230
- mean annual wage, May 2025 (BLS OEWS 53-3032)
How pay-per-driver works for a Los Angeles carrier
- 01
Intake call
We map your lanes, equipment, pay, home time and hiring requirements for Los Angeles. If we can't guarantee you enough driver volume, we say so on this call — not three invoices later.
- 02
Screening and interviews by our recruiters
Our recruiters interview every driver by phone and verify CDL, endorsements, experience and work history against your requirements. No raw lists ever reach your desk.
- 03
Submission packets through Onboard
Qualified drivers go to you as complete submission packets through Onboard, our in-house platform. The packet lands in your inbox and you decide from there — no portal to learn. The pipeline is tracked through drug test to hire.
- 04
Placement, arrival and follow-through
You pay per placed driver — half when the driver starts, half after the first 14 days — and we stay involved through arrival and the early weeks. Recruiting for Los Angeles runs from our Lancaster, TX office, 1,440 miles away.
We don't need a desk in Los Angeles to place drivers in Los Angeles — and we won't put a virtual-office pin on a map to pretend we have one.
The model in full is on Pay Per Driver. The team behind it works from our Lancaster, TX office. Why the first 48 hours decide most hires: speed to hire.
Who this fits in Los Angeles — and who it doesn't
Fleets of 10 to 49 trucks are our core. The census counts 849 operators of that size in the Los Angeles area: big enough to have open seats every month, too small to carry a recruiting department. Pay-per-driver gives them one without the payroll.
Fleets of 50 or more — 148 here — use us two ways: as overflow when their own recruiters are behind, or as the whole department for a terminal or a lane they can't staff from headquarters. Either way the fee is the same and the retention terms are the same.
Who we turn down: private fleets that only hire through their own HR, and surge hiring that needs bodies by Monday and none by June. We won't sign a carrier we can't keep supplied, and we won't place a driver into a seat we expect to disappear. If you want to know how we think about drivers who stay, start with finding CDL drivers who stay. Selling to trucking companies rather than hiring drivers? That's a different service — Marketing for Trucking.
Our numbers
No third party audited these. They're our own operating numbers — the claims we make publicly about our own shop, and the standard you should hold us to on a call.
- 100+
- drivers our operation places per month
- 3,000+
- lifetime CDL hires
- 50+
- carrier partners
- 24 hrs
- to first drivers for a new carrier
“They came in, fixed our recruiting, and now manage the whole operation with AI. We just do a 30-min call weekly — they handle the rest.”
More carrier feedback, in the carriers' own words: results.
Questions Los Angeles carriers ask us
Ask any agency the same questions. Then compare who does the work and when the money changes hands — staffing and recruiting are not the same purchase.
How much does a truck driver recruiting agency cost in Los Angeles?
We charge per placed driver — no retainer, no weekly fee. The placement fee is quoted per engagement (it depends on your lanes, pay and equipment) and paid half when the driver starts and half after the driver's first 14 days, so part of our fee is only due once the driver has stayed. There is no Los Angeles-specific price list.
How many trucking companies are based in Los Angeles?
FMCSA's carrier census lists 16,497 active carriers with a business address in the Los Angeles area (Los Angeles, Long Beach, Carson, Wilmington and nearby): 15,477 with one to nine trucks, 849 operators with 10 to 49, and 148 with 50 or more, roughly 87,881 power units in all. Fleet sizes are self-reported on the MCS-150, so read it as a scale, not a headcount.
What do truck drivers make in Los Angeles?
BLS puts the median annual wage for heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA metro area at $60,340, with a mean of $61,230 (Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025). That blends local hourly seats with OTR mileage pay and lags the market by up to a year — treat it as the floor a driver already knows, not the offer that makes them switch.
Do you have an office in Los Angeles?
No. Our nearest office is Lancaster, TX, about 1,440 miles away. We don't need a desk in Los Angeles to place drivers in Los Angeles — recruiting is phone, text and paperwork — and we won't put a virtual-office pin on a map to pretend otherwise.
How fast can you get drivers for a Los Angeles carrier?
Our claim, from our own operation: first drivers in 24 hours for a carrier whose intake is complete. Full ramp-up depends on your pay, lanes, home time, and how quickly your side reviews and approves submissions — the carriers that reply the same day fill seats first.
Do you recruit Spanish-speaking and cross-border drivers in Los Angeles?
Yes. Our recruiter network includes Spanish-speaking recruiters, and cross-border work in Los Angeles — transloads, drayage on a loop, FAST-card lanes — is a specific ask we screen for. We confirm the paperwork a driver actually holds before submitting them.
Drivers in Los Angeles: browse current CDL-A jobs or get matched to a carrier — free for drivers.
1 FMCSA Company Census (2026-09-26): active carriers based in Los Angeles, Long Beach, Carson, Wilmington, Compton, Santa Fe Springs, Commerce, Vernon, City of Industry, Fontana, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Rialto, Bloomington, Riverside, Corona, Chino, Pomona, Gardena, Torrance, Montebello, Pico Rivera; MCS-150 filed in the last 24 months; 1–20,000 trucks; fewer than 10 buses. 10+ truck counts merge registrations sharing an address or D-U-N-S number. Totals and the 1–9 band count active USDOT registrations; fleet sizes are self-reported on the MCS-150, so read them as a scale, not a headcount.
Wages: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025, occupation 53-3032, series OEUM003108000000053303213 (median) and OEUM003108000000053303204 (mean).
Written by
Andrius Pletniovas — Founder, CDL Agency
Andrius Pletniovas (Andrius Digital) is the founder of CDL Agency, a truck-driver recruiting and marketing company that has placed 3,000+ CDL drivers for 50+ carriers across the U.S. He writes about driver recruiting, retention, and the trucking market from running the agency every day.
More about Andrius →Official personal website →