new driver turnover rate

Turnover is a tool that trucking created to keep wages low. Period.

Driving schools, Vocational Schools, Vo-Tech Schools, Junior Colleges- Independent Driving Academies, Recruiting "Professionals", (head hunters), The "A.T.A.", the Mega-Carriers and bottom feeding small truck companies that are all here to use the flood of new drivers to line their pockets.

They (and the businesses that they're related to and depend on for support and assistance) contribute to it regularly. They encourage it. They live off of it.

Over regulation of this industry created Corporate Desperation. (Over regulation is ANOTHER result of the A.T.A.'s meddling). Companies are spending more or less than 30% of their earnings for regulatory compliance.

If Uncle Slam would stop stealing from trucking companies by milking the over regulation they created and let this business catch its' breath, we could afford higher wages. That would attract a higher caliber of worker.

Instead, they flood us with prisoners, section 8 housing and foodstamp beneficiaries- then hire and train more enforcement personnel to deal with the problem they created, while blaming us.

It's long past time for some serious change here.

 

Theirs not a driver shortage thats what the big 5 major companies want you to believe. So they can keep your miles per week low

 

Jody ? Zebco? New name for an old friend? Round here we call him Sancho and generally don't mind his presence as long as he replaces the beer, and pays the bills, and is gone when we get back......

 

Both and around $35k .......

 

first yr OTR you'll gross $25,000 to $45,000 depending on, Who you work for, How long you stay out, and how hard you run.




American Trucker

 

Well your list is good AT. The turnover is extremely high for many reasons. Not to mention all that quit, there are many that don't stay at a company more than a year before they try another.

Not saying all are like this, but you take someone that drops out of high school or wastes their younger years partying. They wake up one day and say what can I do to make a decent living?

Almost all will go into construction or into trucking as they are the only industries that pay halfway decent and will hire them with zero experience. Than when they get there and see what it is really like, their poor up bringing takes over and they say "F*** this S***". Funny, but true.

 

Some guys don't get it that trucking isn't for them. We're seeing applications come across with guys that have had 22 jobs in the last 9 years. I'm just thinking if it hasn't worked out the last 22 times, we're not going to be a good fit. Dudes like this are helping to over inflate the numbers. Not to say that turnover isn't high but statistics are easily manipulated. My last company hired the same guy 4 times in one year, guess we thought things had changed. They didn't he quit before I moved on.

 

In my world, all the newbies love it till the snow flies. Then things get re-evaluated.

I guess my mistake was I started in the winter, thought that was "the way it was supposed to be".