Truck driver turnover rate: the real numbers and what they measure

The most quoted truck driver turnover rate, 90%, is the American Trucking Associations' (ATA) 2020 annual average for truckload carriers with more than $30 million in revenue. Smaller truckload fleets averaged 69% that year and less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers 13%. ATA kept surveying after that (the National Academies cites its data through early 2023), but we found no newer annual figure published on trucking.org as of October 2026. ATA says the rate measures drivers moving between carriers, not drivers leaving trucking.

Below: every dated figure we could trace to a primary source, what each one counts, why truckload runs so high, and how to calculate your own rate so the comparison is fair.

Truck driver turnover statistics at a glance

Each figure below comes from a page we opened in October 2026. Read the "covers" column before you compare your fleet to any of them.

For comparison, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) put the 2025 average monthly quits rate for all nonfarm jobs at 2.0% and all separations at 3.3%.

What the ATA turnover rate measures, and what it doesn't

The ATA rate is the share of drivers employed during the year who left employment, "including new recruits who may have spent only a few days or weeks on the job," as the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine describes it in its 2024 consensus report on pay and working conditions in long-distance trucking.

Four limits matter when you quote it:

1. It counts churn between carriers. ATA, which created the metric, says it "captures churn within the industry—not attrition from the industry" (ATA, March 25, 2022). A driver who leaves you for the fleet down the road counts. So does a recruit who quits in week two.
2. It covers for-hire carriers only. ATA surveys its member truckload and LTL carriers. It says nothing about private fleets, local delivery fleets or owner-operators running their own authority.
3. The sample is unknown. The National Academies notes that ATA does not report how many carriers respond or how many people they employ, which makes it "a self-selected sample of unknown representativeness." The same report also calls it the only long-running turnover series for for-hire trucking.
4. Quarterly figures are annualized. A quarter's rate projected to a full year swings more than the annual average. The Q4 2020 large-TL figure was 92%, while the 2020 annual average was 90%.

Turnover is also not the same as drivers quitting the job. The National Academies report cites research by Burks and Monaco (2019) using nationally representative data: about 82% of drivers in for-hire trucking stayed in the same occupation from year to year, which the authors judged a normal rate of attachment.

Is there a 2026 trucking turnover rate?

No primary source we could find publishes a 2026 driver turnover rate as of October 2026. The newest ATA annual figures we found on trucking.org are for 2020, and the National Academies long-run averages end in early 2023. Pages that quote "90%+ turnover in 2026" are usually repeating the 2020 number or citing vendor surveys whose samples aren't public.

What 2026 data does exist points to where retention sits on the industry's agenda. The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) released its 22nd annual Top Industry Issues report on October 18, 2026, from nearly 3,100 respondents (ATRI, Oct. 18, 2026):

• Driver Shortage ranked #5 overall, Driver Compensation #9 and Driver Retention #10.
• Truck driver respondents, owner-operators and company drivers together, ranked Fuel Prices, Truck Parking and Driver Compensation as their top three concerns.
• Motor carriers ranked Lawsuit Abuse Reform, Fuel Prices and the Driver Shortage as theirs.

For a dated, government measure of labor churn, use BLS JOLTS. It doesn't break out truck drivers. The closest series covers all workers in transportation, warehousing and utilities.

Why truckload turnover runs so much higher than LTL and private fleets

The gap between roughly 90% in large truckload and roughly 12% to 15% in LTL and private fleets has lasted for decades, so the National Academies treats it as a structural feature of the truckload sector rather than a passing problem. The report's summary of more than two dozen academic studies found these patterns:

• Irregular work. Long-distance truckload drivers tend to have irregular schedules, long weeks and uncertain time at home. LTL linehaul and private-fleet drivers mostly run fixed lanes between known docks.
• Pay that swings week to week. More variability in weekly earnings is associated with higher turnover. Higher per-mile rates coincide with lower turnover.
• Frontline supervisors. Effective dispatchers and driver managers are associated with lower turnover. Ineffective ones with higher.
• Regular assignments. Drivers assigned to one shipper for a long stretch had lower turnover than drivers dispatched to loads at random, even at the same pay.
• Referrals. Drivers recruited through referrals from current drivers appear less likely to leave.
• The freight cycle. Turnover rises in freight upturns, when recruiting brings in new drivers and sign-on bonuses tempt experienced ones, and falls in downturns.

The report adds that long-distance truckload employs only about one in five heavy truck drivers, so its turnover rate is not the occupation's turnover rate. Pay is on drivers' own list too: Driver Compensation was one of the top three concerns among driver respondents in ATRI's 2026 survey.

How to calculate your fleet's driver turnover rate

Use the method BLS uses for JOLTS: "The separations rate is computed by dividing the number of separations by employment and multiplying that quotient by 100" (BLS JOLTS technical note).

Annual driver turnover rate (%) = drivers who left during the year ÷ average number of drivers employed during the year × 100

Then split the total, because the splits tell you what to fix:

• Quits vs other exits. BLS counts quits as employees who "left voluntarily." Retirements and transfers go under other separations, and firings under layoffs and discharges (BLS JOLTS definitions).
• Tenure bands. Count leavers in their first 90 days separately from drivers with a year or more. Early quits and veteran exits have different causes.
• Terminal or driver manager. The research above links supervisors to turnover, so look at the rate under each one.

Illustration only, not real fleet data. A fleet averages 120 drivers over the year and 54 leave. The turnover rate is 54 ÷ 120 × 100 = 45%. If 36 of the 54 quit, the quit rate is 30%. If 20 of those quits came in the first 90 days, more than half of the voluntary losses happened before drivers settled in.

To compare a quarter with ATA's annualized figures, multiply the quarter's rate by four, and say that you did. To put a dollar figure on the result, use our cost of truck driver turnover formula, which runs entirely on your own numbers.

Which benchmark should you compare against?

Pick the figure whose "covers" column matches your operation, and treat it as context rather than a target.

Your own trend is the best benchmark. A fleet that goes from 60% to 45% has made more progress than a fleet that sits at 40% because its lanes are easy.

Turnover rate vs retention rate

Retention is the other side of the same number. A simple retention rate is the share of drivers on staff at the start of a period who are still there at the end. It is not always 100 minus the turnover rate, because turnover counts every exit, including new hires who joined and left within the year. Report the definition next to the number, every time.

For what to do once you have the number, see how to retain truck drivers and driver retention without raising pay. To find out why your drivers leave, pair truck driver exit interview questions with stay interview questions for the drivers still with you.

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