Driver settlements drafted from the loads, the fuel card and the lease.

When the settlement week ends, your settlement clerk pulls every load each driver delivered, ties it to its rate confirmation or freight bill, applies that driver's pay basis, then works through the fuel card transactions, cash advances, escrow and standing deductions. Owner-operators get a statement under their lease. Company drivers get pay lines that feed payroll.

For the test, AI does that build on copies of weeks your office already paid. Each draft statement shows where every line came from: the load, the lease clause or pay plan rule, the fuel card transaction. A line it can't support is listed, not guessed. Nothing is paid, posted or sent, and your reviewer sets each draft beside the statement the driver actually got.

The pay basis, load by load. A driver paid a percentage of revenue is owed a share of what the customer paid, and the lease decides what that share is figured on, whether linehaul alone or linehaul plus fuel surcharge and named accessorials. The federal leasing rule at 49 CFR 376.12(g) adds that when pay is a percentage of gross revenue, the carrier gives the lessor a copy of the rated freight bill, or a document holding the same information, before or at settlement, and may delete the shipper and consignee names from it. The draft attaches that bill to each percentage load and shows the revenue base it used. Mileage pay follows whatever basis the terms name for counting miles, and a team load shows how the pay was split.

Every deduction needs a recipe and a receipt. Section 376.12(h) has the lease list each item the carrier pays first and later deducts, with how its amount is computed, and gives the lessor copies of the documents needed to test the charge. Insurance charged back must show its amount in the lease, the lease has to spell out any truck purchase or rental contract that lets the carrier deduct payments, and a cargo or property damage deduction needs a written explanation and itemization in the lessor's hands before it is taken. Some costs stay with the carrier under the rule: it assumes overweight and oversize fines on a preloaded, sealed or containerized load, or one otherwise outside the lessor's control, unless the lessor caused the violation, and reimburses a lessor who paid one. The draft sets each deduction beside its clause and its backup, and lists any that has neither.

Escrow is a running account. When a lease requires an escrow fund, section 376.12(k) has the carrier account for it either on each settlement sheet, with the amount and description of every deduction or addition, or in a separate monthly accounting, and the lessor may demand an accounting at any time. Interest is paid at least quarterly, at a rate no lower than the 91-day Treasury bill yield, on a balance from which the carrier may subtract the driver's average advance. The fund comes back no later than 45 days after the lease ends, with a final accounting. The draft carries the balance forward week to week and marks the weeks when interest or a return falls due.

Late paperwork still gets paid. Under section 376.12(f), the lease has to promise payment within 15 days after the lessor turns in a trip's delivery documents, and the paperwork the carrier may require first is limited to the hours-of-service logs and what it needs to collect from the shipper. Payment can't wait on a bill of lading free of exceptions, and the carrier can't set a deadline for turning documents in. The lease may let the carrier hold final pay until its identification comes off the truck and goes back, or a letter says it was lost or stolen. So the draft dates each load's paperwork and never drops a load because its POD arrived late; it places it in the week the terms say.

The statement is also a log record, and what your reviewer watches. Section 395.11 counts payroll records and settlement sheets among the supporting documents a carrier keeps to verify each driver's on-duty, not-driving time, matched to that driver's record of duty status. A stop paid on the statement that the log doesn't show is a question before it is a payment. Your reviewer, the person who knows your settlements best, usually the settlement or driver pay lead, looks hardest at chargebacks with no backup, percentage loads figured on the wrong base, escrow lines that don't carry forward, and fuel bought on a card tied to a different unit.

Once your reviewer says yes against the success criteria, statements are drafted for each new settlement week for about 30 days.

Each one waits for your settlement clerk to approve it before a driver sees it or any pay is released, and every listed line stays open until someone decides it. Disputes with a driver stay with your team.

Nothing else is added in that month. A next job, if you want one, gets its own price.