Driver Shortage or Retention Problem? Carriers Are Worried About Both

A recruiting message can get someone through the door. The working experience decides whether they keep coming back.

Conversion Interactive Agency and People. Data. Analytics released their 2026 Carrier Survey on September 29. Among responding carriers, 71% identified driver shortage as a top concern and 68% identified driver turnover. Those are significant numbers from a survey of carriers who are actively managing driver staffing — and they point to a problem that the industry has been wrestling with for years without fully resolving.

Before drawing broad conclusions, it is worth being precise about what the survey measures. Those percentages describe the concerns of surveyed carriers. They are not a measurement showing that 71% of the industry's driver positions are vacant, or that 68% of drivers quit in a given period. Survey respondents are a sample, not a census, and carriers who respond to a survey about driver staffing may be more likely to be experiencing staffing challenges than those who do not.

With that context in place, the findings are still meaningful. When a substantial majority of surveyed carriers identify both shortage and turnover as top concerns, it reflects a real and persistent challenge in the industry's relationship with its workforce.

Hiring and Keeping Are Different Jobs

The fact that shortage and turnover both appear near the top of the concern list is significant. They are related problems, but they require different solutions — and confusing them leads to strategies that address one while ignoring the other.

Recruitment asks: how do we attract a qualified person to apply for and accept this job? It involves advertising, compensation packages, signing bonuses, referral programs, and the overall attractiveness of the offer. A carrier that is good at recruitment can fill seats quickly.

Retention asks: what is the experience after that person accepts? It involves the day-to-day reality of the job — whether the pay is what was promised, whether the home time is what was described, whether dispatch treats drivers with respect, whether maintenance issues are addressed promptly, whether the company communicates clearly when things change. A carrier that is good at retention keeps the seats filled.

A carrier needs both answers. Strong advertising cannot permanently compensate for a mismatch between the recruiting promise and the day-to-day job. A driver who expects one pay arrangement, schedule, or home-time pattern and encounters another will reasonably ask questions — and if the answers are not satisfactory, will start looking at other options.

The industry's historically high turnover rate — which has been measured at over 90% annually at large truckload carriers in some years — suggests that recruitment has often been prioritized over retention. Carriers have become skilled at filling seats. They have been less consistent at keeping them filled with the same people.

The Cost of Turnover That Does Not Get Counted

Turnover is expensive in ways that are not always fully accounted for in carrier cost structures. The direct costs — recruiting advertising, background checks, drug testing, orientation, training — are visible and measurable. The indirect costs are harder to quantify but equally real.

A new driver takes time to learn a carrier's systems, customers, and routes. During that learning period, productivity is lower and the likelihood of a service failure is higher. Experienced drivers who know a customer's dock, a shipper's preferences, and the quirks of a particular lane are more efficient and more reliable than new hires who are still figuring things out.

Customer relationships are also affected by turnover. A shipper who has worked with the same driver for two years has a relationship that has value — the driver knows the dock, knows the contacts, and knows what the customer expects. When that driver leaves and is replaced by someone new, the relationship has to be rebuilt. Some customers notice and care about this more than others, but it is a real factor in service quality.

The carriers that have the lowest turnover rates tend to be the ones that have invested most deliberately in the driver experience — not just in compensation, but in the full set of factors that determine whether a driver wants to stay.

Listen Before the Resignation

One of the most consistent findings in driver retention research is that drivers often leave for reasons that were visible and addressable before the resignation. Pay discrepancies, dispatch communication problems, maintenance concerns that were not addressed, home time that did not match what was promised — these are issues that drivers typically raise before they leave, if they believe raising them will make a difference.

A productive conversation about retention does not have to be complicated. Are pay statements understandable, and do they match what was promised? Are expectations about home time, load assignments, and schedule realistic and consistently met? Can drivers raise a maintenance concern and receive a response that takes the concern seriously? Does dispatch explain changes clearly and treat drivers as professionals rather than as interchangeable units of capacity? Are recurring problems actually addressed, or do they get acknowledged and then ignored?

These are questions, not claims that every carrier has the same shortcomings. Some companies do this well. Their practices deserve as much attention as the stories about employers getting it wrong. The carriers that have built reputations for treating drivers well tend to have shorter driver queues and lower turnover — not because they pay the most, but because they have created an environment where drivers feel respected and valued.

What "Shortage" Needs to Explain

The driver shortage conversation has been a fixture of trucking industry discussion for over a decade. The persistence of the concern, despite years of attention and investment in recruitment, suggests that the framing may be incomplete.

A shortage, in economic terms, means that demand for a good or service exceeds supply at the prevailing price. If there is a genuine driver shortage, the expected response is for compensation to rise until the shortage is resolved — more people enter the profession, fewer leave, and supply meets demand.

The fact that the shortage persists despite significant recruitment investment suggests that either compensation has not risen enough to attract and retain sufficient drivers, or that there are non-compensation factors — working conditions, home time, respect, predictability — that are keeping qualified people from entering or staying in the profession.

The survey establishes that respondents are concerned about both shortage and turnover. It does not settle every argument about why filling jobs is difficult. Discussion should consider qualifications, location, schedule, compensation structure, and the specific requirements of the position. An available driver and an available job are not automatically a suitable match — a driver who wants to be home every night is not a solution to a long-haul shortage, regardless of how qualified they are.

Calling the situation a shortage can start the conversation. It should not end it.

What Drivers Say Makes Them Stay

When drivers are asked directly what makes them stay with a carrier, the answers are consistent across surveys and interviews. Pay matters — but it is rarely the only factor, and it is often not the primary one.

Drivers consistently cite respect and communication as critical factors. Being treated as a professional, having dispatch explain decisions rather than just issuing orders, having concerns taken seriously — these factors show up repeatedly in driver retention research. A carrier that pays well but treats drivers poorly will still lose drivers to a carrier that pays slightly less but treats them with respect.

Predictability matters. Drivers who can plan their lives — who know when they will be home, what their schedule will look like, what their pay will be — are more likely to stay than drivers who face constant uncertainty. Surprises in trucking are usually bad surprises: unexpected loads, extended time away from home, pay that does not match what was expected. Reducing those surprises is a retention strategy.

Equipment matters. Drivers who are asked to run poorly maintained trucks, who have to fight to get repairs done, who worry about whether the equipment is safe — those drivers are looking for the exit. A carrier that invests in equipment maintenance is investing in driver retention.

A shiny hiring bonus gets attention. A workplace that keeps its word gives people a reason to stay.

Drivers: what makes you stay with a carrier — and what tells you it is time to leave? Share your experience in the GladHands Pro community. Your perspective is the most useful data in this conversation.