What fleets need to know about the truck driver market

Speaker 1:
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Matt Cole:
Where the truck driver market stands today and what it could look like for the rest of 2026.

Jason Cannon:
Hey everybody. Welcome back. I'm Jason Cannon and my co-host is Matt Cole. The freight market conditions over the last few years have sort of put a damper on the idea of a driver shortage, but fleets are still in competition to hire the best quality drivers in the market.

Matt Cole:
With the freight market appearing to be turning around, it's as important as ever for fleets to make sure they're positioning themselves in the best way possible to attract and retain top talent. The driver market has been heating up since late 2025, but the conflict in Iran has brought with it uncertainty that slowed things down so.

Tim Crawford:
I'm Tim Crawford. I'm one of the co-founders and currently CEO here at 10 Street. We are a driver lifecycle management company. And what that means is we make software that helps connect carriage and drivers kind of across the lifecycle. So recruiting, hiring, onboarding, safety management, kind of all things driver, all things carriers work with all different types of fleets and drivers across the industry. It's been a really interesting 18 months or so as this kind of freight recession has drug on. And what we saw that was really interesting is for the bulk of 25, what we saw, what most of our clients saw was that fewer drivers in the market doing a lead form, like a really basic introductory app, but more drivers doing full applications. And we took that for the bulk of 25. Fewer drivers in the market, but the drivers that were in the market were really motivated job seekers.

And then what happened started happening in the fourth quarter of 25 and it continued up until we started the Iran war was a real sea change, a really big sea change where the number of drivers doing lead applications really ballooned. It was really strong in the fourth quarter, ballooned in relative terms. It was still Christmas season. So total volumes were not in absolute terms off the charts, but really high relative to what the seasonal norms we'd typically see across the platform. That continued even accelerated early in the year where the number of drivers doing leads were up 20%, 25% year over year, which is a really big shift. But the number of drivers doing full applications actually dropped a bit. So where drivers were thinking about it, the drivers that were on the market were more cautious, less committed to making a job change. And then over the past six weeks or so, that has cooled pretty markedly.

As there's a level of uncertainty, it seems in the market, the number of drivers doing any applications in relative terms has dropped. And while at the same time, we're seeing decentish freight volumes and spot rates in some markets have been really, really good, especially compared to recent history. And so it's been interesting as people have ... I think you can sort of see in the numbers, drivers trying to figure out what's going on.

Jason Cannon:
Tim says the freight recession that we've seen in recent years has bucked traditional trends when it comes to finding drivers in the market.

Tim Crawford:
The other interesting thing that's happened over 25 and into 26, in a normal economy, a normal market, what we see is that when times are tougher, like they've been in freight market for the last couple years, what we normally see is drivers are quicker to move from one fleet to another. They're unhappy with their miles. They're trying to find somebody who's got some freight, that sort of thing. And that points to overall trends typically of lower tenure at their current carrier. We can see how long that driver's been at their current carrier. That tenure number has continued to go up quite a bit. More drivers are much more cautious. They are staying longer at their current carriers and thinking about things a little differently. And what that sort of projects going forward in our view is normally when times get better, drivers stay longer. We don't think there's room in the numbers for that.

What we think is going to happen is as we get a sustained recovery, either because enough capacity leaves the market or because volumes pick up or some combination of the two, we suspect that there's a lot of drivers at carriers that they wouldn't be at in other times and are probably going to look to find someplace else as soon as they have enough confidence that they're not going to get caught out short right after they make a move. So I think there's a lot of uncertainty right now and sort of still coming off sort of the post- COVID hangover and we'll see what happens. But those are some of the big things we've been seeing lately.

Matt Cole:
What should fleets expect to see in the driver market through the rest of 2026?

Tim Crawford:
I think there's obviously a huge wildcard in the Middle East. A lot more people today know where the straits or horror moves are than ever thought they would know before. And with that wildcard on the side, what we see happening structurally in the market is enough capacity coming out of the market that even if freight volumes continue at lat to really, really modest growth, putting enough capacities coming out of the market that drivers are going to become a pretty scarce resource going forward. And where carriers over the past couple years have raised hiring criteria and been a little choosier and drivers have kind of had to pick and choose a little bit more those that were on the market. What we think is going to happen is drivers are going to have a lot more leverage and we think driver hiring is going to become more competitive and it's going to pick up.

One of the things we look at is the level of driver to recruiter messaging that happens across the platform as a pretty good marker for the level of activity, not just, "Hey, I submitted an application, but how much back and forth there is? " Either trying to qualify the driver or the driver trying to qualify the carrier, frankly, around, "Hey, what is the offer?" And that number has just really, really climbed over the last 90, 120 days. And we see that continuing as that activity level continues to go up.

Jason Cannon:
Obviously pay matters to prospective drivers, but Tim says more so than that, today he sees that fleets that are maintaining a human connection with their drivers are having the most success with hiring and retention. And

Tim Crawford:
What we consistently both hear both from drivers and carriers and what we see in the data really consistently is that for the vast majority of carriers, the vast majority of drivers, a personal connection is really, really important. And there can be a tension there sometimes between the search for operational efficiency and sometimes tempting to crowd out kind of that human touch. And what we see time and time again, no matter how we look at the data, no matter how we look at it, the carriers that inject or maintain that human contact throughout the recruiting process absolutely continue to win and have better engagement with the better drivers and have better conversion on their advertising spend. The carriers that force their drivers to jump through a lot of hoops, who make the process really impersonal, who have a slow and impersonal process, tend to not do as well.

And so our message I think would be, look, it feels like, and it seems like in the data, the market and the back half of the year for drivers is going to be more competitive. What you did to fill your recruiting classes in 25 probably isn't going to work in the second half of 26, and trying to find better ways to make connections to drivers is going to become even more important.

Matt Cole:
When it comes to retention, the ability for drivers to get consistent miles and therefore consistent pay is just as, if not more important than their pay rate. Fleet's maintenance practices play a big role in that.

Tim Crawford:
While drivers all get it, things are going to break. I mean, I think there's a great deal of realism from professional drivers. I think when drivers see carriers not doing PMs on time, cutting corners a little bit, that speaks to drivers, I think, in a really meaningful way. I think the other thing that happens a lot in that retention is it's tempting when carriers think about retention to just think about what happens within their four walls because that's what they control. And I think that's important and 100% right, that is what they control. But I think what driving a lot of retention decisions, a lot of, "Hey, do I go and look for my next job decision from an individual driver is what that driver's beliefs are about the market." And over 25, I think the beliefs about the market were, for the most part, pretty pessimistic from drivers.

Rates were down, rate, miles were down. If those rates change, now all of a sudden that readjusts the whole system that everything has to rebalance. And so while consistency around equipment, absolutely important, 100% agreement, it's absolutely necessary. Is it sufficient? I think it might've been sufficient in 25. I would have doubts if it's going to be as sufficient in 26 and beyond. It feels like the pendulum is shifting a little bit, and I think the smart carriers are going to start making, figuring out, okay, what do we need to do now to make sure that as things recover, we don't get caught out in the cold.

Jason Cannon:
With the federal government's crackdown on English language proficiency, non-domiciled CDLs, training providers, and chameleon carriers, will enough capacity leave the market to bring back the driver shortage narrative?

Tim Crawford:
I was never a big fan of ... I think shortage as a sort of buzzword is tough because I don't think it captures the dynamic of what actually happens day-to-day all that well. I think there's just a lot of nuance there. I think with the numbers that have been bandied about of the number of non-domicile drivers in the hundreds of thousands, if you think that there's a reasonable chance that rounding off 10% of the driver capacity come out of the market, that's a really big number in conjunction with the aging demographic of drivers overall and losing drivers to retirement without a lot of drivers, enough drivers arguably coming in through the trucking schools with the crackdown on the ELDT stuff. I do think you're going to see drivers harder to find, and I think carriers are going to have to work more around them. Whether the answer to that is, "Hey, we're going to shorthand it as a shortage or not.

" I'm not smart enough to tell you. I would say if you define it as, "Hey, how many of our clients would gratefully take a few more drivers into orientation on Sunday?" I think that number's going to continue to go up. I don't know if you call it a shortage or not, but I think that the value of getting people seated in orientation and the difficulty in doing it's going to continue to rise.

Jason Cannon:
That's it for this week's 10-44. You can read more on ccjdigital.com. While you're there, sign up for our newsletter and stay up to date on the latest in trucking industry news and trends. If you have any questions or feedback, please let us know in the comments below. Don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell for notifications so you can catch us again next week.