New tanker truck drivers employed by the federal government to deliver fuel will earn twice as much or more as many of their counterparts in the private sector, a survey of job advertisements shows.

President López Obrador has pledged to pay bimonthly salaries of 14,500 pesos (US $750) to 2,000 drivers of 571 new tankers purchased by the government to reinforce Pemex’s fleet of fuel distribution vehicles.

In contrast, a recent job ad published by a local recruitment company for a tanker truck driver with a minimum of two years’ experience transporting hazardous materials offers a gross salary of just 8,000 pesos (US $420) a month plus 95 centavos (US 0.05) per kilometer traveled as well as other benefits.

Praxair, an industrial gas company, offered a monthly salary of between 8,000 and 9,000 pesos for a truck driving position in a recent listing on the job search website indeed.com, while wholesale fuel distributor Grupo Petrolero Arca offered 14,000 pesos per month plus benefits and per-kilometer payments for a similar role advertised on the Computrabajo platform.

The newly-employed drivers of the National Defense Secretariat’s 60,000-liter tanker trucks will even be paid a higher base salary than the drivers who currently work for Pemex.

According to their collective labor agreement with the state oil company, Pemex tanker truck drivers are paid 20,220 pesos a month if they work the morning or afternoon shifts and 21,480 pesos (US $1,120) if they work nights.

With benefits, salaries go up to just over 30,000 pesos (US $1,565) a month, a Pemex source told the newspaper El Financiero.

With such enticing salaries on offer, it’s not surprising that interest in the new jobs has been high.

National Defense Secretary Luis Crescencio Sandoval said this week that the government received 6,199 applications, of which 1,365 candidates were short-listed to write an exam and 804 passed.

Source: El Financiero (sp)