Top 7 Reasons Truck Drivers Decline Jobs

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Just like any other employees, truck drivers consider a variety of factors when deciding which company to work for. Some factors are obvious, such as compensation and benefits. Some other factors may surprise you. As a recruiter, you may think that you’ve all but sealed the deal on a new candidate but then they end up declining the job. Drivers may not be open with you about why they declined the job, but it is useful for recruiters to have this information.

Drive My Way’s unique service matches drivers with companies based on professional qualifications and lifestyle choices. Sometimes our drivers turn down these offers by employers. We’ve asked our drivers why they turn down the jobs, and the results may be eye-opening. According to our Drive My Way drivers, here are the top seven reasons truck drivers decline jobs.

1. Another Job

The number one reason why drivers decline jobs is because they got scooped up by someone else. They were offered another job by a competitor and they thought the offer was too good to pass up.

As a recruiter, you know this is always a possibility you should try to avoid. Always be in touch with top prospects and know when is a good time to offer the position and sign them on. If you wait too long, you’re more than likely to lose the candidate to a recruiter from another company who was just quicker. In the Drive My Way database, over 3,200 drivers cited this as the reason they decline other jobs.

2. Salary

Okay, this one shouldn’t come as a major shock—drivers care about compensation. Considering the reality of the driver shortage, drivers have considerable bargaining power to be able to look for a better deal elsewhere. In the Drive My Way database, a whopping 1,500 drivers declined jobs because of the compensation.

The average yearly salary for truck drivers is around $41,000. But industry average doesn’t paint the whole picture. Driver pay should be dependent on a number of factors including years of experience, type of haul, and the overall benefit package. Offering packages above the industry average is the best practice, but make sure to take into account other factors when crafting a compensation package.

Bottom line, if drivers aren’t being payed as much as they think they deserve, they will not think twice about declining your job offer and looking elsewhere.

3. Hours, Schedule & Home Time

The third most cited reason truck drivers decline jobs is work schedule and home time. The average driver works 70 hours a week and goes 8 days before taking a day off.

That’s a tough schedule, especially for those with families. Finding time to spend with family can be difficult enough, but is especially rough for OTR truck drivers. In the Drive My Way database, over 1400 candidates cited schedule as a reason they declined job offers.

When recruiting candidates, take care to offer packages that will suit their schedule preferences. Drivers aren’t looking to slack off half the week—they’d just like to keep some time for home time. Get to know their family situations, lifestyle, work habits, and keep these in mind while offering packages. Keeping home-time a consideration not only shows drivers that you care about them as employees but builds a more productive and motivated workforce. Drivers are more likely to be retained long-term if they are happy with their work schedules.

But wait, I thought there were 7 driver decline reasons?

These are just the top three reasons truck drivers decline jobs offered by recruiters. But, this is just the tip of the iceberg. For the complete list of reasons that truck drivers decline jobs, download the complete ebook below.

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4 Tips for Recruiting Truck Drivers

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Given the shortage of drivers currently facing the truck industry, there’s a constant need to keep recruiting truck drivers. Hiring, training, and retaining drivers over the long-term is crucially important. At the end of the day, it all begins with recruitment of the right candidates.

If you can’t attract talent and recruit them into the organization, you won’t be able to even think about retaining them to meet the demands of the market. These four tips will help you improve truck driver recruiting.

1. Make your Marketing Driver-centric

Remember that drivers are going to find information about prospective companies and fleets on the regular marketing channels. So, good recruitment actually begins with good marketing presence and carefully curated content.

What kinds of content currently exists on the company website and Facebook page? If it is only information about how successful the company is, it won’t be of much use to a prospective employee. Ideally, much of your content is also driver-centric—that is, it details what kinds of benefits the drivers can get from that company.

Ultimately, a driver wants to know that the company will treat their drivers with care and provide the benefits they are looking for.

Highlight any wellness programs and culture initiatives that differentiate your company from the rest of the competition. Clearly provide information on schedules, work-life balance, fleet amenities and the rest.

The best marketing also includes testimonials from current drivers who have been satisfied with the experience so far. When designing the content, remember the drivers will always ask, “what can they do for me?” Making your marketing driver-centric will ensure that you provide an excellent answer to that question and will form a strong impression in their minds

2. Target the Right Audience

Before you start moving prospective drivers through the recruiting pipeline, you must make sure you’ve selected the right pool of candidates for the job.

Many driving fleets will have very specific needs and requirements that not all candidates would be ideal for. Targeting the precise segment of candidates can make the process more efficient and effective.

With the aid of databases, you can select drivers based on driver type, years of experience, haul experience, geographical location, or other factors. Focusing on any one of these particular segments ahead of time will save you time and energy as a recruiter. It also increases overall effectiveness of converted drivers. Not optimizing this part of the process means you’ll spend potentially hours chasing leads which were never well-suited for that particular fleet or job.

If you don’t have data on prospective drivers, Drive My Way can help you target the specific segment of drivers needed for your particular situation.

3. Use the Latest Digital Recruiting Methods

Use the latest and smartest, strategies to attract and recruit the talent you’re looking for. Social media is growing as a tool and drivers use these platforms to research companies, read comments, and evaluate employers. When viewers like, follow, share, or comment on your content, it can increase the audience exponentially.

Making sure you’re advertising job postings on social media isn’t enough. Post engaging content on your platforms which drivers will want to view. In addition, search engine optimization of your content will ensure that your website is receiving as much traffic as possible.

Use software such as Google Analytics or Google Keyword Planner to optimize your posts for trending phrases and words. Since drivers are on the road often, they’ll use their mobile devices instead of laptops to search for job leads.

Making the application process simple and easy will go a long way toward removing recruiting bottlenecks. Make sure that the applications are short and mobile-friendly.

Drivers will usually not have enough time to fill out long applications in one sitting. So make a shorter version with only basic information required, with the option to complete the remaining later.

Digital tools for recruitment and advertising are constantly improving, so keep and eye out for the latest and use your judgment on whether it would be useful.

4. Re-engage Old Leads

One unique challenge in the trucking industry is the unusually high turnover rate for drivers. This presents a difficulty for recruiters which isn’t faced in most other industries or sectors of the economy.

By re-engaging old leads and cold leads, recruiters can continually bring people into the pipeline even if they had dropped out before.

Many prospective drivers who were previously unavailable or chose to drive for a different fleet may be available soon. Leads and prospects that have gone cold or did not convert into driver status should not be forgotten. Instead, keep them in mind for the future.

While you don’t want to constantly pester them as to their status, you do want to make sure you follow up from time to time. Use drip marketing or engaging content on blogs, social media, or newsletters to stay connected with them and keep them in your radar. This leads to your fleet being fresh in their mind, and on their radar, when they’re considering a new employer.

While recruitment and HR management in the trucking industry presents unique difficulties, it also provides some opportunities through these tools and tricks. Master these four tips and recruiting truck drivers for your company will become less daunting.

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Bad Dispatchers Contribute to the Truck Driver Shortage

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Organizations across the country are rethinking their hiring and retention strategies for truck drivers. They are revamping benefit programs. Companies are making sure their compensation is competitive in the market. Fleets are putting bonus and incentive programs in place.

But what about taking a closer look at the relationship between dispatchers and drivers?

Truckers report that their relationship with their assigned dispatcher greatly contributes to their level of satisfaction with their job and with the trucking company. As an employer, here are some tips to keep in mind when evaluating dispatchers.

Train Dispatchers in the Trucking Industry

Some truck drivers are paired with a dispatcher who lacks industry experience and a clear understanding of the work. If the dispatcher and driver aren’t on the same page, there will be a disconnect, frustration, and oftentimes, quick turnover.

Some companies hire dispatchers who lack industry experience but know how to operate complicated dispatch software—allowing the company to pay them lower wages due to the level of experience.

Instead of throwing them to the wolves, companies need to make sure the dispatcher is fully trained before working with truckers. The dispatcher needs to get to know the drivers, understand the work, and feel confident about the industry before jumping in.

Ensure Dispatchers Are Honest with Their Drivers

Dispatchers with a lack of industry experience sometimes make claims to truck drivers that stretch the truth. Some of these statements could include:

  • I’ll definitely get you home this weekend
  • Your load will be waiting for you when you get back
  • You have plenty of time to make this delivery

It is the company’s responsibility to monitor these conversations in order to quickly correct false statements and ensure a good-standing relationship between the dispatcher and driver. The dispatcher is oftentimes the driver’s main point of contact at the organization, so if the dispatcher isn’t being truthful, the company will quickly earn a bad reputation.

Encourage Dispatchers to Share Driver Feedback

If a driver shares unsatisfied feedback with a dispatcher regarding their job, it is the dispatcher’s responsibility to share that feedback with the organization.

To encourage this, companies need to have frequent conversations with dispatchers to ensure they have a current pulse on driver satisfaction and areas of improvement.

This will reduce drivers feeling unheard and will improve communication across the organization as a whole. In turn, dispatchers can also share areas of improvement for drivers, and this can be used for driver incentive programs.

Overall, companies need to consistently evaluate the quality of their dispatchers. The relationships between drivers and dispatchers should be consistently evaluated and improved.

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Hiring More Drivers Won’t Fix the Truck Driver Shortage

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Truck driver shortage increases are continuing to cause pain for companies across the United States. Currently, the shortage of truck drivers throughout the country is up to 48,000. It will likely continue to increase and is estimated to reach 175,000 by 2024.

To deal with this overwhelming truck driver shortage, some companies believe that they simply need to hire more drivers before other companies do. Unfortunately, this is a small band-aid on a much larger issue. Here are two reasons why fixing the truck driver shortage will take much more than just hiring more truck drivers.

1. Drivers and Employers Aren’t on the Same Page

There are not enough drivers to go around. But, there is also not enough time in the day for companies to find qualified drivers for their jobs. Day after day, recruiters face the process of sorting through the weeds to find drivers that meet their requirements. An overwhelming 88% of fleets report that most applicants are simply not a fit for their jobs.

This results in time wasted on both sides. Drivers are frustrated because they can’t find a company that meets their professional qualifications and personal lifestyle preferences. Employers are frustrated that they can’t find drivers that meet their needs.

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To spend less time searching for qualified drivers, employers need to make sure their job descriptions are accurate and optimized for their ideal driver. Exaggerating pay, benefits, or home time only results in retention issues and a damaged company reputation. Consider including driver testimonials, offering a driver referral bonus, or utilizing digital marketing to reach a broader audience. Each of these ideas can help increase the number of potential candidates that match the company’s ideal driver target market.

2. Employers are Focusing on Hiring, Not Retaining

Some employers have figured out how to attract qualified drivers for their jobs, but retaining them is another story. In this market, employers who offer great benefit packages, competitive pay structures, and performance incentives see a better long-term retention rate for drivers than companies who are just average.

However, aside from the pay and benefits, drivers also want to work for companies who treat them with respect, offer challenging and meaningful work, value their efforts, and find a way to get them home with their families more.

In other words, retaining qualified drivers in this market requires companies to consistently and creatively implement ideas to make sure their drivers are happy and engaged with their work.

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Ultimate Guide to Retaining Truck Drivers

You work so hard to recruit the best truck drivers for your fleet. The trick is retaining them. This guide is packed with tips for retaining your fleet.

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