Driver Turnover

I know this is old news for this group.

I was reading through Transport Topics which is an industry news site. They had an article that pointed out the current turnover rate is around 94%. 70% quit within their first year at a company.

Now you may understand why you have to prove yourself to your company.

Sorry for not posting the link. My phone has sided with those evil planners and is not cooperating with me today.

Yeah, that was a pretty basic article, but it had a few things worth noting:

Stay Metrics Analysis Finds New Drivers Spur Higher Turnover Rates

The key statistics:

More than 70% of driver turnover occurs in the first year of employment, and 36% of drivers leave a firm within their first three months on the job

The fact that 36% of the drivers leave within the first few months is very telling. It shows that people rarely understand the importance of proving yourself to your company and developing strong relationships within your company, two things that we emphasize very heavily here at Trucking Truth. It takes time to do this. No one is going to think you're a trucking hero because you put in a couple of good months. It takes consistent effort over a longer period of time to really demonstrate what you're capable of. It also takes quite a long time to develop strong relationships within your company.

This stuff will not happen in 3 months I promise you.

Now this is also very telling:

Experience doesn’t appear to be a factor [in turnover]. For instance, about the same percent of drivers who leave a carrier within three months have more than one year of experience as those with less than a year.

Now you've also heard us say 1,000 times that it's incredible how many drivers have been in this industry for years and never seem to figure out how it really works. That stats shows that even people with experience in this industry will show up at a new company, run for a few months, and then leave right away because they're already dissatisfied and they've already spotted greener pastures on the other side of that fence they always stay close to.

I always say you should not take career advice from complainers and blamers and finger-pointers. Let me add one to that list - never take career advice from job hoppers. If someone wants to tell you how the trucking industry works, ask them how many companies they've worked for in the past 5 years. If it's more than 3 then tell them you have some urgent business to attend to and get out of there before they poison your mind.

The only thing someone like that is going to teach you is the approach to take if you never want to get anywhere and you never want to be satisfied with anything.