Stay Metrics’ Driver Turnover & Retention Update: Q1 2022

The holiday season has come and gone, and much of North America is in the thick of winter weather. With the start of 2022, the trucking industry continues to struggle with driver availability issues due to drivers leaving the industry during the pandemic, increased demand, and the Clearinghouse. Displayed below are the quarterly Stay Days Table and Turnover report, provided by Stay Metrics, now owned by Tenstreet. These reports give carriers a glimpse into current trends that can help you make the best decisions for your carrier’s needs. The tables and insights below highlight some of the trends that Stay Metrics is seeing.

First Quarter Reports

The Stay Days Table serves as a “survivor” chart tracking how long recently hired drivers are staying with their carriers, while the Turnover Report provides additional detail into driver employment trends among carriers. What does the data reveal this quarter? To see enlarged versions of each chart, please click on the image.

Monthly Annualized Driver Turnover

Quarterly Annualized Driver Turnover

The Stay Days Table

• Quarterly turnover remains low – While the country eases its way back to a sense of normalcy amidst the pandemic, low turnover has remained in the driver sector. Quarterly turnover since Q2-2020 has been below 58%, nowhere near the turnover level from Q1-2020, which was above 70%. With drivers less likely to leave, along with the ongoing driver shortage, it becomes increasingly important that you don’t lose anyone from your fleet since the pool of available drivers is small. For monthly turnover, a significant drop in turnover was seen in December, but that is consistent with December 2020, and likely a result of a slowdown in job searching over the holidays.
• Average Days Stayed In First Year Above 200 – Supporting the above turnover finding, drivers recently hired by carriers in our data set have been averaging over 200 days stayed in their first year for each month since July 2020, including 4 different months where the average hit over 230 days. Contrast this to the first six months of 2020, where there are two months with less than 200 days stayed, and the highest number reached was 236. Once you are able to hire new drivers for your fleet, it is looking increasingly likely that those individuals will stay longer than before. This retention trend for new drivers, combined with overall low turnover numbers, will continue to challenge the industry and in particular, any fleet that is looking to grow their driver base.

What can you do? Here are a few ideas:

The temptation may be to use the shotgun approach to your advertising to reach as many potential drivers as possible. With Tenstreet, you can take a more targeted approach using Pulse Match, which shows your postings within Driver Pulse only to drivers who have met the qualifications for your specific position. You only pay per application, making this an extremely effective budget spend. Increase your retention numbers by quickening your business reflexes with FleetCheck. By sending surveys through FleetCheck every week, you can stay on top of challenges being faced by your fleet so you can keep turnover low and avoid the tight driver hiring market.

Did Omicron have an impact on driver retention?

Stay tuned. With omicron emerging in December and taking hold in January, we will be able to see its effects on the driver market in our next quarterly update. Notes on Data: For this Q1, 2022 dataset, Stay Metrics (SM) chose to include data from 24 clients, based on their lengthy duration as clients and the quality of their data. For the analyses, data were aggregated to the client level, then averaged across clients. As this is based on Stay Metrics clients, results could differ from the industry.