When Driver Turnover Becomes a Business Risk
For years, trucking has treated 90% annual driver turnover as normal. It isn’t. It’s a compounding business risk.
Large truckload carriers routinely report turnover exceeding 90% annually, while the industry faces a shortage of more than 80,000 drivers, projected to reach 160,000 by 2030. At the same time, employment has softened, and recent BLS revisions revealed that the sector was weaker than previously understood.
This isn’t just a hiring issue. It’s a structural problem of workforce instability. If you replace 90% of your drivers every year, you don’t have a recruiting problem; you have a workforce model problem.
The Operational Impact
High turnover creates cascading disruption:
- Missed loads and service failures
- Dispatcher burnout
- Safety exposure tied to inexperienced drivers
- DOT compliance risk
- Endless retraining cycles
Freight is already cyclical. When workforce instability compounds freight volatility, performance suffers in both downturns and recoveries.
The Financial Reality
Driver churn erodes margin through:
- Rising cost-per-hire
- Increasing advertising spend with declining ROI
- Escalating sign-on bonuses
- Idle trucks generate no revenue
Compensation rose just 2.4% in 2025, which is below inflation, meaning carriers are spending more without improving stability. The danger isn’t today’s shortage. It’s five years of continued instability.
The Strategic Risk
An aging workforce (average long-haul driver age over 47) and limited demographic expansion, since women represent less than 8% of drivers, intensify long-term exposure. When leadership is stuck replacing drivers month after month, a long-term workforce strategy never gets built. That limits scale, market share, and enterprise value.
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Stability Is a Competitive Advantage
When turnover decreases:
- Service reliability improves
- Safety stabilizes
- Cost-per-hire normalizes
- Revenue per truck increases
- Leadership shifts from reactive to strategic
The carriers that win the next decade won’t be the ones hiring fastest. They’ll be the ones building workforce stability. When turnover exceeds 90%, it’s no longer a KPI. It’s a business risk.
Why Traditional Approaches Fall Short
In-house recruiting often lacks scalability, advanced labor intelligence, and the infrastructure to manage freight volatility.
Staffing agencies are volume-driven. They fill seats but rarely own retention, employer brand, or long-term workforce planning. Neither model addresses structural instability. But do you know what does?
Recruitment Process Outsourcing, when designed specifically for transportation, shifts the model from reactive hiring to a workforce strategy.
Flexible, RPO for Transportation Cycles
Transportation demand fluctuates with seasonality, port volume, and macroeconomic conditions. Transportation and Logistics RPO allows organizations to scale their recruiting infrastructure up or down without fixed internal headcount expansion. According to Hueman’s RPO Transition Guide, flexibility and workforce analytics are critical differentiators when evaluating talent acquisition models.
We provide:
- Enterprise RPO (Fully Outsourced)
- Role-based (Partially Outsourced)
- Project RPO for seasonal or surge needs
- AI-assisted screening solutions
Driver turnover doesn’t have to define your operating model.
If instability is limiting growth, eroding margins, or keeping your leadership team in a reactive mode, it may be time to rethink the structure of your recruiting strategy.
Hueman RPO partners with transportation leaders to design modular, AI-enabled recruiting infrastructures tailored to freight volatility, CDL complexity, and long-term retention.
Let’s build a workforce model that scales with your business — not against it.
Schedule a workforce strategy conversation with our transportation RPO team!
