Random thought: Why do Megas hire 100 people a week….

Mostly because of job hopping. Yeah, a driver quit, but what isn't told is that drivers simply went to another trucking company.

 

They dont hire 100 a week. They bring in 100 a week for orientation and hire about 25 of them.

 

turn over at megas is well known as are the reasons why .
it is about the money and the truck , not the driver in most mega companies.

 

The churn keeps driver wages low for the most part. The folks who stick it out may get a few raises but when accounting for the lower mileage it's a wash.

 

The real question is why dont they train to retain. A driver will tolerate/understand more if they are treated well, and cause less damage/liability is they recieve ongo8ng training.
Years ago, i became a trainer to counter the stupid rookie problem. Only to find out they want drivers that way

 

When your turnover rate is 100% and higher, you have to keep the revolving door spinning.

 

There are 2 different strategies to fill the trucks at a trucking company. 1) pamper the very few drivers you hire so they stay for a long time, and 2) hire everybody that walks through the door and use the new-hires to replace those quitting.

Strategy 1 is expensive and takes a while to screen out the drivers that won't stick around.
Strategy 2 is expensive but you always have a new-hire starting today to fill-in where you need him.

Many drivers think "if the company just treated me a little better I would stay for many years, until they get an offer from another company claiming to pay 5 CPM more with a $10k higher yearly average. NOBODY is screening trucking company web sites for accurate claims. If some driver is desperate enough to trust a company web site to be accurate, well, you can't help those that want to be fooled.

There are drivers that quit companies because of "the next demand" or the smallest detail and there are drivers that stick around for years for any employer. The company doesn't know which driver is which until they hire him. The driver doesn't know which strategy the company is using until he goes through orientation and starts working for a company.

This forum is full of "don't take sh1t from the company" advice and "every company is the same as every other company" claims. Before you take advice from someone you need to know what kind of driver they are. Not all advice is good advice or meant for every other driver. You are in charge of your career. Taking advice or believing a web site with no idea of what type of person or company is telling you the information is YOU not doing your job. When it doesn't work out, don't blame anyone but the person looking back at you in your mirror.

 

There isn't a real logic; it is an assumption that it has to do with the drivers, but the revolving door has to do with making sure the claim of coverage and capacity is confirmed by a customer or potential customer.

When these carriers go to a customer to get in the door, they make the carrier look great, they have x amount of drivers, and the ability to move freight on demand for the customer. The contract makes sure that the carrier has the latitude to engage other carriers to move the same freight if they don't have coverage.

Most don't see what that is really about.

All they see is how the driver sits, which they are flexible labor at that point - a commodity to a point. When the driver gets tired of the bullsh****, they quit and get replaced within hours, not days or weeks.

This keeps the revolving door spinning; it is cheaper to recruit 100 potential drivers on Monday, pay for the intake, and hire 10 on Friday than to miss out on loads from a customer ---> ten loads covered by the carrier pay for the intake process for more than a few hundred potential drivers.

 

Only really good drivers get the miles. Just because a driver is on the payroll, it don't mean they will get the miles. The best get the best. To answer your question, most drivers aren't worth a darn. In some ways, megas are too big to give everyone big miles. In other instances, drivers are bad workers. They don't run their miles correctly or they prove themselves unreliable. One thing that many drivers never learn to do.....keeping as much drive time as possible, post- delivery. That is how you keep your miles up.