driver turnover

I always took note of the disparity in turnover rates between LTL and TL carriers.

May have been the reason we stuck with one place for over 7 years.

 

If I had stayed as a company driver I would have gone LTL by now. More flexibility to the schedule, home daily and better pay would all have been very attractive. One of the biggest mistakes I see among drivers is that they refuse to see this as a career. In a career you set your sights on a path that moves you forward in a direction that allows you to grow as a professional, person and hopefully increase your income as well. Instead it seems most see trucking as nothing more than a series of jobs. In the end they don't have 10, or 20 years of experience, they have 1 year of experience that they have repeated 10, or 20 times. At some point you have to take charge of your own life, set some goals and then work to achieve them.

 

I believe the turnover numbers are skewed by the started companies. It is basically industry standard to go to a mega company, get your year and go find a better job. So the system is set up for an initial high turnover rate since there are also all the other factors contributing to turnover also taking place.

If 100 drivers are hired and trained there will be a few that dont make it, a few that get into accidents and a few that just dont like the career once they realize what it takes to be a driver. Then most of the remainder will work long enough to have enough experience to move on to a better company. Then another 100 drivers will be hired again and the spiral continues. Obviously drivers leave all the other "better" jobs too but probably at a lower turnover rate. So those starter companies create such high turnover that the average is skewed upwards.

 

There's a lot to what you are saying, but too many drivers don't move up. They just go from job to job until eventually they get fed up and quit. Many of the better companies won't even talk to you if you don't show some stability before applying to them.

 

After I had a couple years in, I started looking for something different...more variety in equipment to make myself more versatile. A few years later, I decided I wanted my own rig...so I started limiting where I was willing to work to companies that had company drivers (to test the water with the company) as well as O/O's (to stay with the company while paying for the truck). That worked out pretty good for me, but owning my own truck pulling their trailers was about as far as I could go with them because buying my own trailer would only be worth an extra 2%...not near enough to make it worthwhile. So, when things started to change at that company and it was no longer tolerable, I wanted a company where I had room to grow...where I could start running their numbers pulling their trailers, and eventually buy a trailer or get my own numbers and run for them as a dedicated carrier, which would give me the option to find my own loads if they didn't have anything for me or if what they had wasn't all that appealing.

Bottom line, you've got to have room to grow wherever you're at or it gets old pretty quick. Especially when starting at a new company, it needs to offer something new, with extra steps on the ladder to keep moving forward in your career. Whether that is new types of equipment, new responsibilities, or even just training new guys who don't have the knowledge or experience that you do...there has to be something or else it won't be long before you'll likely be looking for greener pastures. When the only way to advance your career is to change jobs, changing jobs is inevitable.