How Much Do You Earn in Logistics: Why Salary Reports Lie With Averages

In this episode of Rozmowy Logistyków, Piotr Skobało and Adam Sobolewski discuss logistics pay — how much a director, a manager, and a warehouse supervisor earn. They compare the salary bands reported by recruitment firms against their own experience in corporations and family-owned businesses.

REPORTS SHOW THE AVERAGE, NOT YOUR SITUATION

Between 2020 and 2023, salary bands in reports (Antal, Hays, Michael Page) rose by around 20%, while cumulative inflation over the same period exceeded 30% — in real terms, that's a drop in the purchasing power of pay in the industry. A key warning: reports are based on averages and self-reported figures, and don't account for industry splits (pharma pays noticeably better than logistics operators or retail, because of its higher margins), or for geography outside Warsaw. The classic analogy: "I went for a walk with my dog, I have two legs, the dog has four, on average we have three" — a report's average rarely describes any specific case.

WHY BANDS FOR THE SAME ROLE CAN DIFFER BY 15,000 PLN

Geographic scope of responsibility is the main differentiator: a logistics director responsible only for Poland falls in the lower band, someone managing a region spanning several countries sits in the upper band, often needing fluent English to work with central functions. The job title itself can be misleading: "director" in a Polish organization can mean a role without real decision-making autonomy (an extreme example: a company where every hotel invoice over 400 PLN for a "logistics director" required board approval) — a title without real authority doesn't translate into higher pay.

OPERATIONS PAYS LESS THAN PLANNING AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

Purely operational roles (warehouse manager, distribution center manager) are valued lower than planning roles (demand/supply planning manager) or business-development-adjacent roles (business development manager at logistics operators) — despite comparable seniority. The practical career takeaway: running operations alone, regardless of scale, rarely leads to the highest pay — moving toward planning, customer service, or relationship management usually opens a higher ceiling.

WORKING ABROAD: CALCULATE PURCHASING POWER, NOT THE EURO EXCHANGE RATE

Higher rates in euros don't always mean a higher real standard of living — housing costs in Western cities (a cited example: Berlin, where recruiters openly warned a candidate about difficulty finding an apartment) can eat up a large share of the nominal raise. Recommendation: do a full profit-and-loss account of your relocation, the way you would for a company — not just the revenue side (higher salary), but also the costs (rent, cost of living), before deciding to move.

BONUSES: CORPORATE VS. FAMILY-OWNED BUSINESS

In large corporations, the annual bonus usually doesn't exceed 10-25% of salary; in family-owned businesses, especially at director level, the variable component tends to be much higher (sometimes several dozen percent) and easier to negotiate — because directly tying results to the bonus makes the money conversation simpler for both sides: you delivered, you got paid; you didn't, you didn't.

PUBLISHED SALARY BANDS: TRANSPARENCY HAS LIMITS

For specialist roles and first-line management positions (up to warehouse manager/operations manager level), publishing salary bands saves both sides of the recruitment process time. For higher roles (supply chain director, executive board), too much depends on the structure of the bonus scheme to sensibly compress into a single number in a job ad up front.

INTERIM MANAGEMENT AS A GROWING MARKET SEGMENT

For projects requiring competencies beyond an organization's current needs (opening a new warehouse, deploying a WMS/OMS), a 6-12 month interim management contract can be a sensible option instead of a permanent hire — at a 20-40% premium over standard pay, since the contract is temporary. Platforms like Redgate (delivering interim managers within 72 hours) show that this market segment, previously dominated by narrow candidate pools at headhunters, is clearly expanding in Poland.