We report a 307 W 1018 nm Yb-doped fiber laser pumped by a single 976 nm laser diode. The cavity slope efficiency is up to 75.9% and the amplified spontaneous emission is suppressed by 54 dB. The beam quality of the output laser has an M2 factor of 1.17. Effective thermal management is considered to ensure the stable operation of our system. The power stability at the maximum output power level is measured during a period of 0.5 h and the power fluctuation is less than 0.8%. This architecture can be an effective high brightness pump source of core-pumping high-power fiber amplifiers.