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What a driver hour costs your fleet in Italy
Start from the hourly cost tables the Italian Ministry of Labour published for the national agreement covering logistics, freight transport and forwarding, add the overtime and allowances you actually pay, and estimate the hours that produce nothing each week. In two minutes you get the full cost of an hour and what a year of waiting, empty returns and unbalanced routes is worth.
Source of the tables: Italian Ministry of Labour, Directorial Decree no. 135 of 19 December 2025 (PDF in Italian). No scoring of individual drivers: the calculation works on the contract profile and the fleet.
Contract and fleet
The grade is on the payslip. The letter describes the type of work, not seniority.
The 47-hour week applies once discontinuity has been verified under article 11-bis of the agreement.
The decree table assumes €773 a month for this profile.
Waiting at loading and unloading, empty returns, time lost on unbalanced routes. The starting value is only an example: enter your own estimate.
Full cost of an hour
€32.06
The table says €32.55. The gap comes from the allowance you actually pay and from overtime.
- Yearly cost per driver
- €54,858
- Yearly cost of driving staff (35 drivers)
- €1,920,015
- Paid hours per driver per year
- 1,711
- Cost of one overtime hour
- €22.48
With this much overtime you exceed 165 hours a year per driver, the cap in article 13 of the agreement, unless a flat-rate overtime agreement applies.
Hours that produce nothing, in a year
€139,964
4,366 fleet hours, 7.3% of paid hours, at the full hourly cost.
With 10% fewer of these hours: €13,996 a year.
10% is the low end of the reduction in kilometres that Optivo customers achieve on average (10-20%), applied here to hours as an assumption. It is not an industry benchmark.
Hire-and-reward carrier? Since 20 July 2025, article 6-bis of Legislative Decree 286/2005 (in Italian) grants the carrier €100 per hour or fraction of waiting beyond the 90-minute allowance for each loading or unloading operation, owed jointly by shipper and loader.
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With fewer than ten drivers the whole result is already here. To read the tables item by item, see the guide to what a driver costs in 2026.
How it is calculated
The starting point is the average hourly cost in the ministry table for the profile you pick. It includes base pay, seniority increases, the professional area element, 13th and 14th month salaries, social security and workplace insurance contributions (INPS and INAIL), severance pay (TFR), the sector bodies Ebilog and Sanilog, supplementary pension, workwear and a notional travel allowance. The decree divides the yearly cost by the hours worked on average: 1,628 for truck drivers, 1,516 for van drivers, out of 2,036 theoretical hours.
The calculator removes the notional allowance and adds the one you enter. Overtime is priced on the hourly wage (base pay, seniority and the two pay elements divided by 168 hours a month), with the 30% weekday premium set by article 13 of the agreement and the INPS and INAIL contributions from the table. Severance pay and deferred salaries on overtime are left out, so that item is conservative.
Unproductive hours are counted on the weeks actually worked, that is, net of the holidays, bank holidays and average absences the decree already accounts for, and valued at the full hourly cost. The estimate depends entirely on the figure you enter: the calculator does not suggest it, it multiplies it.
Hours are half of the sum. The other half is kilometres, which the route savings calculator estimates. Where its percentages come from is explained in the report on the route savings method.
The decree tables for drivers
Average hourly cost on a permanent contract from January 2026, in euros. Grades A3 and D2 carry no travel allowance in the table, so their cost is the same in every regime.
| Grade | 39 h | 47 h, domestic | 47 h, abroad |
|---|---|---|---|
| A3areas, repeat runs | 26.66 | 26.66 | 26.66 |
| B3with allowance | 29.76 | 32.55 | 35.20 |
| C3certified or special kit | 29.90 | 32.69 | 35.34 |
| D2areas, repeat runs | 25.92 | 25.92 | 25.92 |
| E2with allowance | 28.93 | 31.72 | 34.37 |
| F2certified | 28.95 | 31.74 | 34.39 |
| G1vans | 30.14 single van driver table | ||
| H1vans, certified | 30.27 single van driver table | ||
39 h: continuous duty. 47 h: discontinuous duty, domestic or international transport (article 11-bis of the agreement).
The increases up to June 2027
| Profile | Jan 2026 | Jan 2027 | Jun 2027 |
|---|---|---|---|
| C3, continuous duty (39 hours) | 29.90 | 30.54 | 31.29 |
| C3, discontinuous domestic (47 hours) | 32.69 | 33.32 | 34.08 |
| C3, discontinuous international (47 hours) | 35.34 | 35.97 | 36.73 |
| G1, vans | 30.14 | 30.51 | 30.99 |
Source: Italian Ministry of Labour, Directorial Decree no. 135 of 19 December 2025, driving staff tables (in Italian). To read each item and see what the tables are used for in public tenders, see the guide to what a driver costs in 2026.
Frequently asked questions
Where do the hourly costs come from?
From the tables of Directorial Decree no. 135 of 19 December 2025 issued by the Italian Ministry of Labour. They set the average hourly cost of staff covered by the national collective agreement for logistics, freight transport and forwarding (CCNL Logistica, trasporto merci e spedizione), renewed on 6 December 2024. The decree implements article 41(13) of the Italian Public Procurement Code and is used to check whether tender bids cover labour costs. Every figure in the calculator comes from the table for the profile you pick.
Why is my hourly cost different from the table?
For two reasons. The table includes a notional travel allowance, for example €43.16 a day for discontinuous domestic transport: the calculator removes it and uses the one you enter instead. And overtime costs less than the average hour, because it pays the 30% premium and social contributions but carries no holidays, bank holidays or extra monthly salaries: adding overtime nudges the average hourly cost down while the yearly cost goes up.
What counts as an unproductive hour?
A paid hour in which the vehicle neither delivers nor collects: waiting at loading and unloading, driving back to the depot empty, time lost on a route that is too long for one driver while another finishes early. Mandatory breaks under Regulation (EC) 561/2006 are not unproductive: they stay, and a well planned route includes them.
Where does the 10% at the bottom of the result come from?
It is the low end of the reduction in kilometres that Optivo customers achieve on average with route optimization, which ranges from 10 to 20%. Here we apply it to unproductive hours as an assumption: it is not an industry benchmark, and waiting at unloading has a different lever. The real figure for your fleet only comes from measuring your routes.
Can waiting time at unloading be charged in Italy?
For hire-and-reward carriers, yes. Article 6-bis of Legislative Decree 286/2005, as in force since 20 July 2025, sets an allowance of 90 minutes for each loading or unloading operation, counted from the carrier’s arrival. Beyond it, shipper and loader are jointly liable for compensation of €100 per hour or fraction, indexed every year, unless the delay is the carrier’s fault. Arrival time is proven with vehicle GPS or the smart tachograph, and the claim must be made within one year (article 2951 of the Italian Civil Code). Own-account transport is not covered.
Is the data I enter stored?
No. The calculation runs in your browser. Only if you ask for the reading of your result by email do you leave your name, email and fleet size, and the figures you entered are not sent.
Keep reading
Guide
What a truck driver costs an employer in Italy in 2026
The ministry tables, the gap between pay and cost, the 2027 increases and what the cost includes.
Calculator
How much can you save on delivery routes?
The other half of the sum: kilometres, fuel and planning hours, always as a range.
Article
Driver turnover and unbalanced routes
When people who leave are not running from the job but from the route they were given.
Platform
Route optimization with OptivoRoute
Routes balanced on real service time, with deliveries and pickups in the same plan.
This calculator is a preliminary analysis tool for employers applying the Italian agreement. The decree tables are averages: they move with contribution relief, company agreements, individual pay supplements and flat-rate overtime (article 2 of the decree). Craft businesses use EBNA and San.Arti instead of Ebilog and Sanilog. It does not replace a labour consultant.