For-hire driver turnover hits 44.2% as pay gap with private fleets hits $15,000

For-hire trucking lost 44.2% of its drivers in 2025 — nearly three times the 17.1% turnover reported by private fleets, according to ATRI's latest Operational Costs of Trucking report and the National Private Truck Council's Benchmarking Survey. The gap is not a mystery. It is measured in dollars and dwell time.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics counted roughly 2.2 million heavy- and tractor-trailer drivers in 2025, against 3.5 million registered tractor-trailers tallied by the Federal Highway Administration. That imbalance shows up directly in utilization: ATRI puts the driver-to-truck ratio at 0.9, meaning for every 10 trucks in for-hire fleets, only nine could be put to work. The ratio peaked at 1.03 in 2020 and normally sits between 0.92 and 0.98; the freight recession has dragged it steadily down.

BLS projects the economy will generate 214,500 truck driver openings each year through 2035, mostly replacing drivers exiting the field rather than adding net capacity.

Where the churn concentrates

ATRI's data shows turnover is not evenly distributed. The largest truckload fleets bled drivers at a 70.7% annual rate, while small specialized fleets held turnover to 13.9%. That spread carries a price tag: ATRI found that a $5,000 increase in a driver's annual pay correlated with a 2.9% drop in average turnover.

Money is not the whole story. An additional 30 minutes of average dwell time correlated with a 5.4% rise in turnover — an association that raises an unresolved question about whether fleets paying for dwell would change the equation. ATRI's report does not answer it.

What drivers actually earn

Across truckload, specialized and LTL, the average for-hire driver wage was $0.818 per mile in 2025, plus $0.210 per mile in benefits, per ATRI. Specialized fleets paid slightly more per mile than truckload; the largest truckload fleets — those with the worst churn — paid the most in their segment at $1.007 per mile.

Driver wages rose only 2.5% in 2025, trailing general inflation for a second consecutive year. The ATA's 2024 Driver Compensation Study put median truck driver pay at $76,420; a 2.5% adjustment brings 2025 income to roughly $78,330.

Private fleet drivers, by contrast, averaged $93,528 in 2025 — about 19% above the ATA for-hire figure — and their pay grew faster, up 3.1% year over year. NPTC's survey drew on 2025 operational data from 89 private fleet respondents.

Why the pay bumps are landing now

Carriers can afford raises because rates moved. Broker spot rates measured by DAT Freight & Analytics grew 3.4% monthly from October 2025 through September 2026, while the average load-to-truck ratio ran 69% higher than the prior year — an average of 9.55 loads to every truck. Capacity attrition from regulatory enforcement and mass carrier closures did much of the work.

The margin base, though, remains thin. ATRI's 2024 data showed for-hire operating margins dipping negative at the recession's trough; 2025 margins recovered to just 0.4%. Werner, J.B. Hunt and Schneider National have all announced driver pay increases this year, per FleetOwner's coverage — but a 0.4% margin leaves little cushion if costs keep rising.

What private fleets buy with their money

NPTC's data sketches a different operating model:

• 58% of private fleet drivers get home every night.
• Class 8 purchases split 69% day cabs to 31% sleepers.
• Fleets ran 58% heavy-duty, 19% medium-duty and 23% light-duty power units.
• 71% also hold for-hire authority, often to cover backhauls.
• Only 34% consider themselves profit centers.

Shippers keep these fleets for service, not rate arbitrage: 85% cited improved customer service, 73% control over the supply chain, 66% transportation cost control and 65% hedging against outside carrier capacity.

With BLS projecting 214,500 openings a year through 2035 and roughly 572,692 registered multi-truck carriers competing for the same driver pool, the market's leverage question is whether rising spot rates — and the pay increases they fund — will outpace the inflation that eroded driver earnings in 2024 and 2025, or whether a 0.4% margin caps how far raises can go.