Data refutes a long-purported myth that truck driver shortage undercuts pay and hinders healthy industry growth, according to a recent Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association’s (OOIDA) Research Foundation report.
The report, The Churn: A Brief Look at the Roots of High Driver Turnover in U.S. Trucking, claims driver churn traps trucking in dangerous cycle, undermining safety and industry growth.
The trucking industry experiences sharp annual turnover rates despite mega carriers and big trucking companies facing a driver shortage. For some major truckload carriers, the turnover rate is more than 90 percent.
According to the report, deeply rooted structural and economic factors prevent the industry from making market corrections and this fuels driver churn.
Factors contributing to high turnover include:
Many new drivers enter the industry believing misconceptions about earnings and conditions.
Carriers face intense competition that prevents them from raising wages without risking losing business.
Industry and government initiatives artificially suppress wages by increasing the labor pool.
The misclassification practices and overtime exemption suppress market wages.
Drivers struggle to negotiate better conditions.
More needs to be done to address the distorted, systemic reasons causing such high turnover, the report concluded, for the market to move toward a more sustainable balance.