The line-haul driver turnover rate among large for-hire truckload carriers (fleets with at least $30 million in annual revenue) has experienced its first quarterly decrease in a year, according to information from the American Trucking Associations (ATA).
Small truckload carriers (fleets with less than $30 million in annual revenue) saw their average turnover rate decrease to 90 percent, marking the lowest annualized rate in two years. This is the first time that the small fleet turnover rate has been below 100 percent since the third quarter of 2005, ATA said in the report.
"Soft freight volumes and looser capacity during the quarter likely helped lower the rate of turnover," said ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello. "However, the rate still remains high and hasn't been below 100 percent since the fourth quarter of 2002."
The reductions came during the 2007 second quarter. Driver turnover is defined for employee, over-the-road, line-haul drivers only and does not include local drivers, such as for port operations.
ATA reported that turnover for large truckload carriers was at a 116 percent annual rate during the quarter, down from a rate of 127 percent in the first quarter of the year.
The less-than-truckload line-haul driver annualized turnover rate was just 13 percent during the 2007 second quarter, compared with 14 percent in the previous three-month period.
Both large truckload and less-than-truckload fleets experienced reductions in total employment during the second quarter of this year, a trend that started during the fourth quarter of 2006 for the truckload sector and in the first quarter of 2007 for the less-than-truckload industry. As freight has softened, carriers have tried to "right size" their operations, ATA said. The small truckload carriers had essentially no change in total employment during the quarter, but they did increase their line-haul driver pool by 1.4 percent.