Trucking has a huge drop rate among new drivers. Most new drivers will quit before they reach the end of their first full year in trucking.
Ever wonder WHY?
Here are 3 of the top reasons they quit;
- Pay Expectations Don’t Match Pay Reality – Often brand new drivers earn much less than they were hoping for and expecting. All too often the amount they actually earn is less than HALF what they were counting on – sometimes MUCH LESS than that even with some taking home as little as 1/4 of what they believed they would be making right out of the gate. This is such a shock when the reality comes that it alone is enough to send most right back out the door before the ink is even dry!
- Time Away From Family and Loved Ones – Being lonely and missing people they love is never easy. It’s not easy for any humans – people are generally social creatures for the most part and it hurts to be missing people you love. This is true in any job or career that requires periodic long separations. But when you add in the shock of adjusting to all that is trucking and the stress – throw in the pay issues – and that’s the end of that for most new drivers.
- Overall Expectations Not Met – This one includes number one and two and a whole lot more. Failure to Understand What Trucking Really is – as A Job, Lifestyle and Career – To put it plainly most have NO CLUE what they have actually gotten themselves into! Every expectation is wrong and not aligned with what actually happens to them. When the cold hard reality begins to set in it’s more than they can accept, or want to handle so they quit – throw in the towel and head home. Back to driving a desk or working in a factory or store or whatever they used to do before trucking.
So what can be done about it?
If you are contemplating going into trucking and becoming a truck driver yourself, do yourself a big favor and get some accurate information before you just jump in. Don’t just rely on propaganda either!
When you talk to or get information from ANYONE representing a trucking company or a truck driver training school you are going to get crap loads of propaganda. The type and kind of information is going to be primarily designed to meet their needs – to get you in their empty drivers seat or class opening – and it will accentuate and inflate the benefits while downplaying – if mentioning at all – the negatives of their offering.
That is sales.
There is also your first lesson – recruiting is a sales job.
It doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing either – in fact recruiting is absolutely necessary to the trucking industry and to every carrier both large and small.
But what you need to be critically aware of is that the information you get from such sources is NOT all the information that you need – and it will almost always be a best case scenario that you will probably seldom if ever see personally.
So dig a lot deeper.
Get more information from multiple other sources along with the propaganda that you will definitely get – and do your best to filter out the facts from the fiction and exaggerations.
Count on your pay being lower than anything you are told. Count on your time out on the road and away from home being much more than you are told too.
If it works out that you got a great recruiter and a great school and a great trucking company and everything is better than expected – then there will be no big problems and you will be much happier.
But if your expectations are too high based on erroneous and or insufficient information and assumptions – you too will soon be among those who quit before they even get started good.
So please don’t let that happen!
As of right now you already know better.
If you take just a little time and effort to look into what you are about to get yourself into then you will greatly improve your chances of being successful in trucking… and if its not the right career for you then you can save yourself the time, money and frustration of having to find that out the hard way.
Trucking can be a great opportunity – and a great career for some people.
The question is – what about you – is it the right choice for you?