The Pay Statement Problem for Relay Carriers
Amazon Relay pays the carrier. The carrier pays the driver. That second step — figuring out what each driver earned based on the loads they ran — is entirely on you. Amazon doesn't calculate driver pay, and the settlement CSV doesn't break down earnings by driver in any format that's useful for payroll.
Most carriers handle this one of three ways: manually building a spreadsheet from load records, paying a flat weekly amount that doesn't reflect actual load performance, or hiring someone to do the math. None of these scale well, and the manual spreadsheet approach introduces errors that are hard to catch before a driver notices a discrepancy.
How Driver Pay Is Usually Structured on Relay
The most common pay structures for Amazon Relay drivers are:
- Percentage of gross load pay — driver earns a percentage of each load's total revenue. Common range is 25–35%. Simple to calculate, directly tied to load value.
- Per mile — driver earns a fixed rate per mile driven, either loaded miles only or total miles. Requires matching loads to mileage data.
- Flat per load — driver earns a fixed amount for each load completed regardless of distance or revenue. Simplest to calculate, but doesn't incentivize higher-value loads.
Your pay structure determines what data you need to pull for each driver. Percentage of gross requires load revenue by driver. Per mile requires miles by driver. Flat rate just requires load count by driver. All of this data is in your Relay export — it just needs to be organized by driver.
Generating Statements With Relay Dashboard
Relay Dashboard's driver pay statement tool is built around this exact workflow. After uploading your CSV, you go to the Driver Breakdown section, select a driver, and choose your pay method — percentage of gross, per mile (loaded or total), or flat per load. Enter the rate, and the statement is calculated immediately: every load the driver ran in the current filter period, the pay for each load, and the total.
From there, one click opens a print-ready statement. The document includes your company name, the driver's name, the pay period, the rate structure, a table of every load with dates, origin, destination, miles, gross pay, and driver pay — and a total at the bottom. It's formatted to print cleanly on a single page for typical pay periods, or multiple pages for longer periods or high-volume drivers.
What the Statement Includes
Each generated pay statement shows:
- Your company name (pulled from your profile)
- Driver name and pay period
- Pay rate and method clearly stated
- Load-by-load breakdown: load ID, pickup date, origin, destination, miles, gross load pay, driver pay amount
- Total driver pay for the period
- A footer noting the statement was generated from Relay data and to contact dispatch with discrepancies
That last line matters. Giving drivers a documented statement with a clear process for raising disputes reduces the "I think I was underpaid" conversation from a guessing game into something you can resolve by looking at the same data together.
Filtering for the Right Pay Period
Pay statements should cover a defined period — typically one week or two weeks. Use the date filter in Relay Dashboard to set the pickup date range before opening the driver statement tool. The statement will reflect only loads that fall within that range, which is what you want for a clean weekly or bi-weekly payroll run.
If a driver ran loads across multiple trucks (which happens with team drivers or when equipment is swapped), the loads appear on their statement regardless of which tractor was used, because statement generation is keyed to driver name, not tractor ID.
Consistent Statements, Every Week
The biggest operational benefit of using a structured statement tool isn't the time saved on any individual statement — it's the consistency. Every driver gets a statement in the same format every pay period. The math is done the same way every time. If a driver questions a number, you can open the dashboard, pull up their loads for the period, and show them exactly how the total was calculated — load by load. That transparency builds trust and reduces payroll disputes significantly compared to a system where the carrier just tells the driver what they made with no documentation.