Why trucking embraces alarming turnover rates

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — I spent a few days early this month at a truck driver training conference — and I enjoyed an unexpected opportunity to grapple with trucking’s deepest chasm! 

The most fundamental disagreement in this fair industry, perhaps, is whether we are in the midst of a truck driver shortage. Trucking associations say fleets struggle to hire drivers, while researchers have repeatedly concluded that there is no evidence for a long-term labor shortage in trucking. Instead, these companies struggle with massive turnover rates.

The discourse around a truck driver shortage has larger implications than an intellectual spar. Lawmakers believe such a shortage exists. They have set aside taxpayer money at the local, state and federal levels to provide funding for truck driver training. 

And there’s an entire association built around connecting schools with public cash: the National Association of Publicly-Funded Truck Driving Schools. It is also called NAPFTDS.

I wanted to meet the people involved in this group. So on Nov. 1, I headed to Corpus Christi, Texas, to attend the NAPFTDS Region Four meeting. Region Four is made up of Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Louisiana and Arkansas.

I learned that these schools have an important role in bringing up the next cohort of truck drivers. But it’s unclear where the leaders of America’s $875 billion trucking industry should direct resources. Should they focus their attention on bringing in new drivers — or rethink how those drivers are treated once they’re employed? And should they try to get as many people as possible into schools — or keep classes small? 

There are public safety reasons for figuring out how to boost driver retention. A federal study from 2017 showed that less experienced drivers are more likely to cause a serious accident. A truck driver with less than three years of experience, for example, is 47% more likely to cause an accident than one with more than three years on the road, according to the analysis.

Improving retention rather than increasing the potential number of drivers might seem to be the obvious answer to an outside observer. But under the current conditions of the trucking industry, fleets aren’t incentivized to do that. It’s just not as profitable — and trucking is ruled by what University of Pennsylvania sociologist Steve Viscelli calls “destructive competition.”

As a group of researchers led by Stephen Burks of the University of Minnesota Morris found in a 2023 paper, high turnover among truckload carriers is “likely structural.” They found that paying drivers more in an effort to reduce costly turnover was ultimately less profitable than paying drivers less and having higher turnover. 

That likely means trucking will be caught in a toxic pattern of training, hiring, and losing people for the foreseeable future. 

A quick rundown on the truck driver shortage debate if you’ve been lucky enough to avoid the discourse 

The American Trucking Associations, a lobbyist organization that represents trucking employers, estimated last year there was an industry shortage of 78,000 drivers. Associations in other countries report similar labor shortages. 

Few outside the ATA’s membership appear to agree. Research suggests trucking fleets — especially large truckload carriers — struggle to keep their trucks running because of turnover. Large truckload fleets, for example, saw an annual turnover rate of around 94% from 1995 to 2017. That would mean, say, a trucking company that employs 1,000 drivers would have to rehire 940 drivers over the course of a year.

“As a whole, the market for truck drivers appears to work as well as any other blue-collar labor market, and while it tends to be ‘tight,’ it imposes no constraints on entry into (or exit from) the occupation,” concluded one March 2019 study published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “There is thus no reason to think that, given sufficient time, driver supply should fail to respond to price signals in the standard way.”

My first day at the NAPFTDS Region Four meeting

A humble beachside hotel in Corpus Christi hosted the meeting. I arrived at the hotel conference room around 7:30 a.m. on Nov. 2 ready to learn, and I sat down at a table with two gents from Missouri. Both of them are trainers at community colleges in the Show Me State, and both used to be truck drivers.

The trainers at the conference were almost all from community colleges. Their programs are typically four to eight weeks long. Tuition at such a school is around $4,000 to $6,000. Some students pay that off by agreeing to work at a certain trucking company after getting their licenses. Others find grants, take out loans or pay outright. 

Matthew Albrecht, one of the Missourians, agreed to chat with me before the conference kicked off. 

Albrecht was an over-the-road truck driver for 22 years before he became a trainer. He said he loved everything about being a truck driver, except for what it did to his body.

“After sitting behind a wheel for X amount of time, and if you don’t have really good posture to begin with, it takes a toll on your back after a while,” Albrecht said. 

Some believe that the lifestyle issues around trucking force folks out of the industry and may be a reason for a shortage in the first place. It takes a special type of person to be out for weeks at a time and live out of a truck. People enjoy the open road but perhaps not everything else that the open road entails — looking for parking, a lack of healthy food options, showering at a truck stop and so on.

Still, Albrecht said he doesn’t believe there’s a shortage of drivers. Other former truck drivers I spoke to at the meeting said there’s no shortage, while basically all white-collar folks said there is a shortage.

“It’s more of a driver retention problem,” Albrecht said. “I think a lot of the companies are starting to figure that out as well. If they want to keep their drivers happy instead of this huge turnover that’s in the industry, they need to do something about pay, benefits and home time. Home time is huge.”

Albrecht said he would be out for four weeks at a time when he first started trucking, followed by three days at home. He told me companies could retain more drivers by switching to a relay system. Here’s how that works: Instead of one truck driver bringing goods from Houston to Minneapolis and another truck driving moving a load from Minneapolis to Houston, those drivers could meet halfway and swap trailers. In a 2022 FreightWaves article, several experts explained the merits and downsides of the relay system.

Such a system requires scale and planning, which isn’t always a given in the remarkably disaggregated trucking industry. However, it used to be more common prior to trucking deregulation in 1980, as there were fewer trucking companies and each had larger networks with regular routes. 

Anyway, my conversation with Albrecht soon ended because the conference was starting at last!

Pay is an issue

I learned that the other big chunk of attendees at the meeting, outside of truck driver schools, were companies that hire recent driving school graduates. 

The problem with hiring industry newbies, as these fleet employees would explain on various panels, is that they might quit trucking once they learn that they don’t like being away from home for weeks at a time or the health effects of trucking. 

Other truck drivers quickly switch fleets when he or she learns another company might pay a few cents more per mile, as some fleet recruitment employees said on panels. 

There’s some discrepancy on what a truck driver typically earns. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers earned a median annual salary of $49,920 in 2022. Data from the ATA found that average pay for truckload drivers was about $70,000, before benefits, in 2021.

Truck driver pay has increased in recent years. A 2022 study from the ATA said that truck driver compensation jumped by 19% from 2019 to 2021, while the National Transportation Institute found that truck driver wages have consistently grown each year since 2010.

Historically, though, truck driver pay is low. Trucking salaries have decreased by as much as 50% since deregulation, according to Wayne State University economics professor Michael Belzer. Widespread industry complaints about a driver shortage began soon after deregulation. 

Folks I chatted with at the conference mentioned that truck driver pay is still far above the pay of many jobs that don’t require a fancy degree — especially in rural areas. Kelly Cikanek, a driver instructor based in Kansas, told me some of his students go from making $35,000 to $45,000 a year to landing driving gigs making up to $80,000. 

Truck driver training schools say more cash would help them train more students

I was able to chat about some of these themes with Martin Garsee, NAPFTDS executive director and director of transportation training at Houston Community College. Garsee told me he believes that there is a driver shortage.

“I think that there is a shortage because there are trucks that are sitting idle,” Garsee said. “Now what causes that shortage? We don’t know.”

And while naysayers might push back on the idea of public funding for truck driver training schools, Garsee said the schools in his association do need this cash. Many schools say they need more trucks and more concrete driving space to train more students. They also need modern rigs that reflect what students would be operating in the real world. Garsee mentioned a school in Milwaukee that can only train 200 students per year but has a waiting list of 700 to 800.

“In most places, the demand is still higher than what a public college can support,” Garsee said. 

There’s only so much you can charge for truck driver training school too. Perhaps, say, a medical school could up its tuition in order to pay for more training facilities. But these schools can’t ask for massive payments from potential big rig drivers. 

More money could improve truck driver training. Arguably, so would more time. Alana Semuels outlined in a 2022 Time magazine article the strangeness of truck driver certification. Barbers need 1,000 hours of training in most states to be certified, while passenger airlines require 1,500 hours. “To drive a 40,000-pound truck, though, there’s no minimum behind-the-wheel driving time required, no proof of ability to navigate through mountains, snow, or rain,” Semuels wrote. Just a medical exam, a paper test and a driving test.

To address that, several conference attendees pushed for the idea of apprenticeships in trucking. That would allow truck drivers to get paid and trained at the same time. Garsee noted that most trucking companies, however, likely wouldn’t hire a truck driver with no CDL at all; some sort of classroom education would still be necessary in an apprenticeship program. 

Cikanek, the Kansas trainer, said there’s no way you can perfectly train a truck driver — not even in his program, which is impressively eight weeks long and has a ratio of one trainer for every three students.

“I tell my students at the end, ‘I’ve given you a lot of information, but I’ve given you the tip of the iceberg,’” Cikanek said. “‘You’re not going to be a truck driver for a couple more years.’”

Unfortunately, under the current maximalist turnover regime, it seems that many drivers will leave the industry before they’re fully formed. 

Retention programs might make trucking better for drivers and fleets alike

By my second and last day at the conference, I was stressed. It seemed like there were more problems than solutions in trucking. And, ultimately, there was a fundamental split over what would improve the industry.

On one side, a group believed that more people becoming truck drivers would keep the supply chain humming. One panel discussion even brought up the practice of training prisoners on how to drive truck. 

The other side pushed for better retention, pay and job conditions for drivers. 

The folks at the NAPFTDS meeting still seemed upbeat and ready to untangle the issues. The conference, frankly, felt like a joyous family reunion rather than a work event.

A cheery fellow I met named Brent Lauber put some spring in my step before I left Corpus Christi. Lauber works at the Kelly Anderson Group, a company that provides training, recruitment and retention services for carriers. He said a truck driver shortage does exist, but that fleets should consider retention programs too.

“Companies a lot of times want to just recruit, recruit, recruit, but they forget about that retention piece,” Lauber said. “There’s so many things that companies can do that really doesn’t cost them anything.”

Lauber recommended, above all, that companies treat their drivers as valued employees. Lauber said the Kelly Anderson Group’s retention program decreases turnover by 30% to 60%, saving fleets the thousands of dollars it costs to recruit a new driver. 

On their first day of work, for example, drivers should receive the sort of treatment that, well, any other new hire might expect. Calling drivers every few weeks to learn more about what they’re struggling with is also key. 

“Contact that driver and say, ‘Hey, so-and-so will meet you at the front door Thursday morning,’” Lauber said. “When they come in, buy that driver a cup of coffee or have coffee there with them. Sit down with them and get to know the driver, get to know their family, get to know what they like and then take them around to the different departments … to make them feel welcome.”

While academics have found that high driver turnover is cheaper than paying drivers more or providing more predictable routes, perhaps fleet managers could consider a completely free option: Basic kindness.

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