For highway safety’s sake, let’s see those driver turnover numbers

Every big carrier’s driver turnover rate should be public information.

Now that I think of it, the percentage figure should appear on the back door of every trailer and under the U.S. DOT number on the tractor door. It should definitely appear on the company banner flying proudly outside the home office alongside the American flag.

How about the drivers-wanted signs on trucks? They should be replaced by a simple statement: Last year we hired (number here) drivers and lost (number here) of them.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Carriers should be required to include their turnover percentage in every ad for drivers, in print, online, on radio and TV – sort of like a tobacco warning.

The general public can make up its own mind what it all means. Meanwhile, every driver, shipper, broker, and investor would have easy access to driver turnover stats. Of all people, these folks should know the turnover experience of any carrier they work for, deal with, or buy into.

Crazy?

Not as crazy as 100% turnover rates among truckload drivers, the good folks who pilot 40-ton trucks at highway speeds among cars full of soccer moms, church youth groups, and dads on their way to poker night.

The only thing crazier is society’s passive acceptance of the ugly driver turnover reality.

The only driver turnover numbers I’m aware of come from the American Trucking Associations, which claims “to have created and tabulated the metric.” The ATA reports industry averages. Some participating carriers presumably have less-than-average turnover and some have more.

At least one industry expert suggests some truckload fleets experience turnover as high as 200%.

Of course, no carrier replaces its entire driver corps every year. We’re talking about slews of newly hired drivers who stay well under a full year. The ATA claims most are not newbies but experienced drivers changing jobs. We call it driver churn.

Brand-new truck drivers are statistically less safe than experienced drivers, obviously, but job-hopping pros are trouble too.

A 2003 study by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration linked a driver’s annual job-change rate with their crash experience. A driver with two or more different jobs over a two-year period had a higher crash risk than a driver with a more stable employment history. The more frequent the job change, the higher the crash risk.

So there can be no safety upside to driver turnover. Newbies or veterans, the higher the turnover number, the greater the statistical risk for individual fleets. Could it possibly be otherwise?

Of course, I’m surmising from what little I know – and that’s the numbers supplied by the ATA. I asked the ATA for more information on their turnover numbers. True, they might have been more forthcoming had anyone else been asking, but still they did not respond.

The important thing here is that ATA is the only regular source of turnover data.

No FMCSA studies

The U.S. Department of Transportation does not collect turnover data. Carriers have to keep all kinds of safety-related records, but driver turnover is not one of them. Virtually all required record keeping for the sake of safety involves individual drivers and equipment – not the carrier as an organization.

Perhaps as a result, the FMCSA has never actually

studied driver turnover per se.

Despite massive turnover numbers and their probable impact on safety, there has been no FMCSA-sponsored study on turnover at individual carriers, no comparisons of high-turnover carriers with low-turnover carriers.

To be fair, it would be a difficult study to design. To be truly useful, it would have to involve, among other things, measuring hard-to-quantify elements, like company policies, the extent to which those policies are followed, and the qualities of management in general. It is doubtful big carriers would even take part voluntarily. But, given the scope of turnover, its all-too-obvious human costs, and probable safety impact, maybe they should be compelled to participate.

SEC to the rescue?

Meanwhile, maybe the Securities and Exchange Commission can help.

The SEC, which tries to protect the investors in publicly held corporations, requires those companies to share lots of financial information. The agency also requires disclosure of some nonfinancial items that could affect performance.

In 2020, the SEC added a requirement for information on what they call “human capital.” For example, the SEC wants a measure “of a registrant’s part-time employees, full-time employees, independent contractors and contingent workers, and employee turnover.”

Unfortunately, there are no specifics and no definitive numbers mandated.

Could employee turnover affect the financial performance of a big, corporate motor carrier? You bet.

Are the big carriers disclosing turnover information to the SEC? Don’t be silly. Of course not.

I checked annual reports from the biggest publicly held truckload carriers, Knight-Swift, J.B. Hunt, and Schneider National. None provided more than off-handed acknowledgments of driver turnover. There was minimal reference to its cost and no clue at all to its enormous scale.

Apparently, the SEC wasn’t thinking of huge truck fleets when they asked about human capital. Maybe they should start thinking about them.

Meanwhile, someone should absolutely require individual carriers to accurately report driver turnover numbers. Making those numbers readily available is not a crazy idea at all.

There could be no cheaper, more effective incentive for individual carriers to address the driver retention issues in their own fleets in their own way. No government intervention. No inspectors, no fines. Just a naked, unadorned number that stands as a warning to drivers, shippers, and investors – or as a matter of pride for the carrier. LL