Road Transport Award Pay Rates 2026-27: Every Grade

The Road Transport and Distribution Award 2020 (MA000038) pays a Transport Worker Grade 1 $26.87 an hour, $1,021.00 a week full-time, rising to $31.55 an hour at grade 10, from 1 July 2026. A distribution facility employee is paid from $27.83 to $30.78 an hour. All 24 rates are in the tables above. One group is not on the same week as the rest: an employee engaged in the transport or distribution of petroleum products works 35 ordinary hours rather than 38, so grade 1 for that work is $29.17 an hour, rising to $34.25 at grade 10.

They are not higher weekly. They are higher hourly, because the working week is shorter. The award sets 38 ordinary hours for most of the employees it covers, and 35 for employees engaged in the transport or distribution of petroleum products. A grade 1 weekly rate of $1,021.00 over 35 hours is $29.17 an hour. The same weekly rate over 38 hours is $26.87. Both figures are in the award, for different work, and this page publishes each grade against the week that actually applies to it. Dividing an oil distribution weekly rate by 38 produces a rate the award does not set, which is the single most common way this award is published wrongly.

The award decides it in its own classification definitions, by the work done and the vehicle driven, and this page does not publish a vehicle mass table for them. The rates above were read from the rates clause of MA000038 and checked a second time against its rates summary schedule. The classification definitions were not extracted, so any mass to grade mapping printed here would be a copy of another site's reading rather than our own, and the sites that do publish one disagree with each other. Read the classification definitions in MA000038 itself, then take the rate for that grade from the table above.

No. Long distance operations are covered by a separate instrument, the Road Transport (Long Distance Operations) Award MA000039, which pays cents per kilometre rather than an hourly rate. No figure for MA000039 appears anywhere on this page, because we have not extracted it. The two awards carry their own coverage clauses and those decide which one applies, not the job title, so if any of the driving is long haul or interstate, read the MA000039 coverage clause before using a grade from this page. If you are paid by the kilometre, you are almost certainly not being paid under MA000038.

No. MA000038 is a national instrument and its rates do not vary by state or territory, so a Transport Worker Grade 1 is paid at least $26.87 an hour in Western Australia, New South Wales, Queensland and everywhere else. What differs is which instrument covers the employer. Separate state instruments exist for employers outside the national system, including the Transport Workers (General) Award in Western Australia and the Transport Industry (State) Award in New South Wales, and Victoria publishes its own owner driver rates schedules. This page publishes no figure for any of them.