![]() ![]() Many are seizing those opportunities that a booming freight economy present by moving to different companies for higher pay rates, bonuses, new routes or better benefits. When the labor market tightens, drivers find themselves in the driver's seat (pardon the pun), putting millions of hard-working men and women in control of their own destiny in ways they haven’t been in years, if ever. In many respects, high turnover is an indicator of driver empowerment. One could argue they're getting it backwards. So when Kaiser-Schatzlein and others point to high turnover figures as a sign of truckers’ job dissatisfaction, they’re missing the mark. This churn-or poaching, or whatever one wants to call it-is what inflates turnover in a tight labor market. Six months later, he can do the same thing again. What does this mean for "turnover"? Driver A, who's been working for a fleet for only four months, knows he can jump to another carrier and get an immediate $15,000 sign-on bonus plus pay raise. FOX Business | Workers leaving jobs for trucking industry, six-figure salaries.FreightWaves | Driver pay hikes not letting up.CNN | Truckers are getting big pay hikes, but there's still a shortage of drivers.Transport Topics | More Carriers Raise Pay Amid Driver Shortage.Business Insider | One of the largest trucking companies in the US is giving raises of up to 33%, allowing drivers to make up to $150,000 in their first year, amid worker shortage.Fleets are also offering sizable, five-figure sign-on bonuses and full benefits as they all compete for the same limited pool of drivers. We’re witnessing unprecedented pay increases across the industry, with weekly driver earnings surging at a rate more than 5x their historical average-up more than 25% for long-haul, truckload drivers since the beginning of 2019. To attract and retain drivers, fleets must increase pay, which is now happening at extraordinary levels. Drivers are in high demand today-a fact exacerbated by COVID. Trucking is an extremely tight labor market, for cyclical and structural reasons. So why are drivers moving between fleets in such great numbers and frequency? There are many factors at play, but 1) demand and 2) opportunity are salient. While retirements and exits account for a small percentage of turnover, by-in-large that is not what this figure is counting. It captures churn within the industry-not attrition from the industry. Rather, it more accurately measures drivers moving between carriers. Turnover is not an indicator of people exiting the industry (we know, because ATA created and tabulated the metric). ![]() If 91% percent of truck drivers were quitting the industry within a year, our economy would have collapsed a long time ago. He, and many others before him, assume or imply the rate captures drivers leaving the industry and often cite poor pay or working conditions as the cause. The problem? The author, Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein, fundamentally misunderstands what the annual truckload driver turnover rate measures. “None of them will work for these wages,” he added. Plenty of people have the commercial driver’s licenses needed to operate trucks, said Michael Belzer, a Wayne State University economist who has studied the industry for 30 years. The turnover rate was at a staggering 91 percent in 2019, which means that for every 100 people who signed up to drive, 91 walked out the door. But setting these rhetorical contortions aside, the author also claims to have struck the nail on the head when it comes to driver turnover rates:įor decades, truckers have quit at alarming rates, leading to a chronic shortage. They almost always point to high turnover rates as the empirical epicenter of trucking's labor woes.Ĭase in point: This recent New York Times essay, which oddly pinballs between saying the job is too dangerous on one hand, but that lifesaving technology is too Orwellian on the other. Bureaucrats, essayists, and other cultural commentators-most of who have no real-world experience in trucking-are quick to explain why, for example, the industry faces a labor shortage as it strives to hire the next generation of professional drivers. Many cite driver turnover rates, but few understand what they measure.Īs post-pandemic supply-chain challenges have been thrust into public consciousness, a new class of armchair experts has risen to explain all that ails America's trucking industry. Agricultural and Food Transporters Conference. ![]()
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