Truck Driver Turnover Rate: What the Number Actually Measures

FMCSA has published two different national driver turnover rates in three years. The March 2019 advance notice on the employment application used 63 percent (84 FR 8497). The March 2022 Record of Violations final rule used 77.1 percent (87 FR 13192). Both are weighted averages of the same three segments, and in each case the segment rates ran from the low teens to the low nineties.

That spread is the story. A turnover rate is not a measurement of the trucking industry. It is an average of populations that behave nothing alike, over a window somebody chose, divided by a denominator somebody defined.

Where does the quoted truck driver turnover rate come from?

From figures a trade association reports by segment, reweighted by whoever quotes them. FMCSA showed its arithmetic in the 2022 rule: “The turnover rate is derived from turnover rates reported for three categories of motor carriers by ATA, which are over-the-road (OTR) carriers at 92 percent, truckload (TL) carriers at 74 percent, and less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers at 14 percent.” The shares used to blend them came from somewhere else entirely — a 2020 ATRI operational-cost report — and the two federal documents disagree on both halves.

Look at the LTL row. The rate barely moved — 13 to 14 percent — but the share of drivers assigned to it fell from 40 percent to 15 percent, and that reweighting accounts for most of the 14-point jump in the national figure. Nothing about driver behavior changed. The denominator did. FMCSA was not hiding this: the 2019 notice asked the public, as question 10, whether its own sources and methodology “result in a reasonable estimate of the 63 percent turnover rate.”

Why does one industry produce a 14 percent rate and a 92 percent rate?

Because those are different jobs, and the federal labels do not mean what carriers mean by them. Read the 2022 rule’s own definitions of its buckets before comparing any fleet to any of them:

The OTR category is made up predominantly of CMV drivers transporting general freight on behalf of for-hire motor carriers. The TL category is made up predominantly of CMV drivers transporting specialized freight on behalf of for-hire motor carriers. The LTL category is made up of CMV drivers transporting the property of their motor carrier and drivers engaged in specialized operations analogous to LTL operations.

So in the federal calculation, “less-than-truckload” is private fleets — drivers hauling their own carrier’s property — plus operations the agency treats as analogous to them. That is not what an LTL carrier means by LTL. And “truckload” is specialized freight, not dry van. Benchmark a dry van for-hire operation against that 74 percent and you have benchmarked against the wrong population.

How is a turnover rate computed, and why do two honest fleets get different answers?

Separations over a window, divided by average driver headcount over the same window — and every term in that sentence is a choice no regulation makes for you. Six decisions move the result:

None of these choices is wrong. Drifting between them is: a trend line built on a moving definition measures your accounting rather than your fleet — the same discipline behind any credible cost of a bad driver hire calculation.

One consequence catches people out: a rate above 100 percent is arithmetically normal, not a typo. Turnover counts separations, not people. A hundred-seat fleet that fills the same twenty seats six times over in a year books 120 separations against 100 seats — 120 percent, with 80 percent of the fleet never having moved.

Does FMCSA collect or use your turnover rate?

It does not collect it, nothing in part 391 asks for it, and it is not among the safety rating factors in 49 CFR 385.7 — but the agency uses an industry-wide figure to price your paperwork.

The National Academy of Sciences report Improving Motor Carrier Safety Measurement, commissioned consistent with section 5221 of the FAST Act, recommended FMCSA collect carrier-characteristic data including “information on driver turnover rate, type of cargo, method and level of compensation.” FMCSA answered that it would first “simulate the impacts and value of driver turnover rates” in its model “before proceeding with an information collection” (82 FR 40828). A year later it was still asking carriers what turnover data they would be willing to share (83 FR 42354).

Where the industry-wide rate does bite is the Driver Qualification Files information collection, OMB control number 2126-0004, which prices the burden of the files required by 49 CFR 391.51. Turnover sets how many new files get built, so the assumption drives the estimate — and the estimate is unstable. FMCSA’s December 23, 2024 notice raised the burden from 14.23 million hours to 18.39 million, “primarily the result of a larger driver population and a higher driver turnover rate” (89 FR 104604). Four months later the agency corrected itself: that notice “contained incorrect estimates,” hours “were reported as 18.39 million hours instead of 14.15 million hours,” and the real direction was a decrease, “the result of a decrease in the driver population and a decrease in the driver turnover rate” (90 FR 15782). Same collection, four months apart, a four-million-hour swing.

What can a carrier actually act on?

What your turnover number cannot tell you

It tells you that drivers left. It does not tell you whether the next one will. And the record you are required to build on an applicant does not close that gap either.

The mandated investigation under 49 CFR 391.23 is narrower than people assume. Paragraph (d) requires previous employers of the preceding three years to be asked for “general driver identification and employment verification information” and the accident record specified in 390.15(b)(1). Paragraph (e) covers alcohol and controlled substance violations. That is the list. Nothing in it asks whether the driver finished a contract, answered dispatch, returned equipment or gave notice — which is the entire content of a turnover problem. The safety performance history request guide covers what the required inquiry reaches, and DOT employment verification covers the dates-and-titles layer. So the same driver can appear in four carriers’ turnover statistics in two years and arrive at the fifth with a clean qualification file.

That is the layer cdlscan is built for: reviews written by carriers who actually employed the driver, tied to the period they employed them, covering conduct the federal record has no field for. Our overview of how carrier-written driver reviews work covers the format, and what carriers see in a DAC report covers the employment-side record.

Say the boundary plainly: this sits on top of the required checks, never in place of any part of them. The investigations under 391.23, the inquiries under 391.25, the Clearinghouse queries under 382.701 and the file under 391.51 are legally required, and nothing here discharges any of them. If you intend to rely on third-party information about a driver as a factor in an employment decision, ask the provider which category of information they consider it under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and confirm which obligations attach with your own counsel first.

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