Stay interview questions for truck drivers: 40 questions, grouped by topic

A stay interview is a short one-on-one conversation with a driver who still works for you, about why they stay and what could make them leave. Good stay interview questions for drivers cover pay, home time, dispatch, equipment, safety pressure, respect and their plans. Pick 8 to 10 per talk, listen more than you talk, and act on at least one answer.

The 40 questions below are grouped into eight topics:

1. Why they stay
2. Pay and settlements
3. Home time and schedule
4. Dispatch and the driver manager
5. Equipment and maintenance
6. Safety and time pressure
7. Recognition and respect
8. Growth and what's next

Each topic opens with the research that makes it worth asking about, then gives five questions and one follow-up to use when an answer is vague.

1. Why they stay

Start here. Drivers find it easier to say what works than what doesn't, and the answers tell you what you must not break while fixing other things.

1. What's the main reason you're still driving for us?
2. When you tell another driver about this job, what do you say?
3. What would you miss most if you left tomorrow?
4. Think about a good week here. What made it good?
5. Have you talked to another fleet in the past six months? What made you stay?

Follow-up: "If we changed one thing and you'd leave over it, what would that be?"

2. Pay and settlements

Pay is on drivers' own list. In the American Transportation Research Institute's (ATRI) Top Industry Issues survey released October 18, 2026, truck driver respondents ranked Driver Compensation in their top three concerns, alongside Fuel Prices and Truck Parking (ATRI, Oct. 18, 2026). The National Academies' 2024 report on long-distance trucking also found that more variability in weekly earnings is associated with higher turnover (National Academies, 2024). So ask about how steady pay is, not only how much.

6. Do you understand how your pay is calculated each week?
7. How often is your settlement different from what you expected? What's usually behind it?
8. How much does your pay swing from week to week, and how much does that bother you?
9. Is there work you do that you feel you aren't paid for?
10. When there's a pay problem, how fast does it get fixed?

Follow-up: "Walk me through the last settlement that surprised you."

3. Home time and schedule

Long-distance truckload drivers "tend to have highly irregular work schedules, work long hours per week, and have uncertain and limited time at home," the National Academies report found. Promised home time that doesn't happen is one of the clearest early warnings you can catch in a stay interview.

11. Are you getting the home time you were told about when you were hired?
12. How much notice do you get before you head home, or before a trip runs long?
13. What happens when home time slips? Who tells you, and how?
14. Is there a day or event coming up that you need to be home for?
15. If you could change one thing about your schedule, what would it be?

Follow-up: "How many times in the last three months did a planned home day move?"

4. Dispatch and the driver manager

The research on supervisors is consistent. The National Academies summarized studies finding that effective frontline supervisors, often dispatchers at smaller fleets, are associated with lower driver turnover and ineffective ones with higher turnover. The same report notes that drivers assigned to a regular customer for a long stretch had lower turnover than drivers dispatched to loads at random, even at the same pay.

16. How well does your dispatcher or driver manager know your preferences and limits?
17. When you call in with a problem, how quickly do you get a real answer?
18. Do the loads you're given make sense, given your hours and where you want to be?
19. Do you feel you can turn down a load that doesn't work without paying for it later?
20. What's one thing dispatch could do that would make your week easier?

Follow-up: "Tell me about the last time you and dispatch disagreed. How did it end?"

5. Equipment and maintenance

A truck that breaks down costs a driver time and, under mileage or percentage pay, money. A repair that gets written up and never fixed tells a driver the report didn't matter.

21. How do you feel about the truck you're in right now?
22. When you report a defect, does it get fixed, and does someone tell you when it's done?
23. How long did your last breakdown keep you off the road?
24. Is there anything in the cab that would make your days or nights better?
25. Does the shop treat you like a customer or an interruption?

Follow-up: "Which repair have you reported more than once?"

6. Safety and time pressure

Ask whether the job ever pushes drivers to choose between the load and the rules. Ask it plainly and make clear there's no penalty for the answer.

26. Do you ever feel pushed to run when you're tired or out of hours?
27. Are delivery windows realistic for the miles and the traffic?
28. Is there a customer, lane or facility you dread? Why?
29. Do you feel safe reporting a near miss or a mistake?
30. Do you have what you need to find safe parking at the end of your day?

Follow-up: "If you saw a safety problem, who would you tell, and would anything happen?"

Truck parking sits in the same ATRI 2026 driver top three as pay, so question 30 isn't filler.

7. Recognition and respect

Respect comes up when drivers explain why they leave. In the OOIDA Foundation's 2022 member survey, leased-on owner-operators ranked low pay, lack of respect and lack of freight as the top three reasons they left a carrier (OOIDA Foundation, May 2022). Those are owner-operators, not company drivers, but the question works for both.

31. Do you feel the people in the office respect the job you do?
32. When did someone here last thank you for something specific?
33. Is safe, clean work noticed here, or only problems?
34. Does management listen when drivers raise issues? Give me an example.
35. How are you treated when you come into the terminal?

Follow-up: "What would respect look like for you, in practice?"

8. Growth and what's next

Asking about plans shows you who is close to retirement, who wants to go local, and who could train new drivers.

36. Where do you want to be in a year: same seat, different job, or off the road?
37. Is there a route, schedule or freight type you'd like to try here?
38. Would you be interested in training or mentoring new drivers?
39. What would make you recommend this job to a friend, or what stops you now?
40. What's one thing we could do in the next 30 days that would make a real difference to you?

Follow-up: "If a recruiter called you tonight, what would they have to offer to get you to leave?"

How to run a driver stay interview

A stay interview works when the driver believes the answers will change something. Here is a simple way to run one.

1. Pick the right person. Ask someone the driver trusts who isn't the cause of most of the problems. Often that's the driver manager's manager, a safety lead or an operations leader, not the driver's own dispatcher.
2. Time it well. Hold the first one after 60 to 90 days, once the driver knows the job, then once a year. Don't hold one during a pay dispute or right after an incident.
3. Make it easy to attend. Meet at the terminal during a reset, or by phone at a time the driver picks. Keep it to 20 or 30 minutes and pay for the time if it falls outside working hours.
4. Choose 8 to 10 questions. Start with question 1 or 40, add one or two from each topic that fits the driver, and use the follow-up questions.
5. Listen and take notes. Write down the driver's own words. Don't argue, explain or defend policy during the talk.
6. Close with a commitment. Tell the driver what you'll look into and when you'll come back.
7. Act within 30 days. Fix one thing, or explain honestly why you can't. Then tell the driver.

A stay interview is not anonymous, so some drivers will hold back on sensitive topics such as a manager. For those, an anonymous driver satisfaction survey catches what a face-to-face talk misses.

What to do with the answers

Answers only help if you can count them. After each interview, record:

• The topic each concern belongs to, using the eight topics above.
• Risk level: staying, unsure, or looking.
• One action, its owner and its due date.

Review the log monthly. If five drivers under one driver manager raise dispatch, that's a pattern. Compare the topics with the reasons departing drivers give in exit interviews. Where the two lists match, you've found what to fix first. Then watch your quit rate. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts quits as employees who "left voluntarily" (BLS JOLTS definitions), and that's the part of turnover stay interviews can move. Our guide to the truck driver turnover rate shows how to measure it.

Stay interview vs exit interview vs survey

Mistakes that make stay interviews backfire

• Asking and not acting. A stay interview with no follow-up tells the driver nothing will change. That's worse than not asking.
• Making it a performance review. Keep discipline and coaching out of the room.
• Defending every answer. If the driver says home time slips, don't explain why. Ask how often.
• Only interviewing the drivers you like. The quiet driver who never complains may be the one already talking to a recruiter.
• Asking all 40. Eight to ten good questions beat a checklist read aloud.

For the full retention plan the answers feed into, see how to retain truck drivers and driver retention without raising pay.

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