New Survey Highlights Costs of Driver Turnover

Driver iQ, provider of background screening and driver monitoring services to the trucking industry, announced that carriers taking part in its Q3 2018 Recruitment & Retention Survey must offer innovative packages to attract and retain drivers.

“In addition to offering additional driver compensation, 60% of the carriers are offering scheduled pay increases, 25% are offering a guaranteed weekly compensation, and 30% are offering some type of guaranteed transition pay for new hires to make up for the lost productivity when they change jobs,” said Lana Batts, Co-President of Driver iQ.

Batts further noted that “while 60% of the carriers expect to see an increase in the number of applicants, 55% expect that the quality of the applications will be worse than it was last year. Furthermore, 43% expect that the quality of future applications will worsen next year. As a result, 45% of the carriers have lowered their hiring standards.”

Among the details in the survey are the following:

• Driver turnover costs the truckload industry over $10.6 billion per year;
• Over one-third of fleets expect driver turnover will increase or remain the same;
• The largest cost of driver retention is for incremental pay increases and training (59% and 50%, respectively);
• Only 15% of the carriers has someone dedicated solely to driver retention;
• Over 53% of the drivers have been with the company for over three years;
• For 40% of the companies, women make up more than 50% of their recruiting staff, while for only 9% of the companies do minorities make up more than 50% of their recruiting staff.

The Q3 Trends in Truckload Recruitment and Retention Survey from Driver iQ is the latest in a planned series of quarterly surveys designed to better understand and measure recruiting and retention experiences and expectations in the truckload sector. The results of the survey are coupled with observations of Driver iQ personnel engaged in the background screening industry. The survey represents the views of recruiting managers who operate over 75,000 trucks and the majority of the responses came from dry van carriers with over $100 million in gross operating revenues.

 

Category: Driver Stuff, General Update, News