Hire Truckers Podcast

00:00 - 00:08
Ginger Craddock: Welcome to the Hire Truckers Podcast, the show for fleet executives, HR leaders, and recruiting professionals. I'm your host, Ginger Craddock.

00:09 - 01:06
Aaron Craddock: And I'm your host, Aaron Craddock. Each week, we share actual insights, market trends, and premium strategies to help you grow and thrive. Welcome to the Hire Truckers Podcast and I'm your host Aaron Kraddock. So the trucking market is heating up and a regulatory reset is coming. So what I mean by that is I spoke with 20 plus large fleets, attended the Mid America Trucking Show, And then heard directly from the Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy and the FMCSA administration over the past week.

01:06 - 01:37
Aaron Craddock: And so what's coming next is bigger than most realize. So starting with what fleets are experiencing. And so when I'm talking to fleets, what I'm hearing and talking to 20 of the top fleets in the country is they often have trucks on the fence or trucks on order, and not enough drivers. And I should give a qualifier on not enough quality drivers. Is what they're really looking for are safe experienced English speaking with a legal CDL.

01:38 - 02:11
Aaron Craddock: So really just focused on safety, keeping insurance rates low, as low as they can. And getting those experienced drivers that have a good clean driving record. And so kind of the focus right now that I'm hearing from the nation's top fleets. And so they have pressure to fill these trucks fast as they suddenly have more opportunity than they've had the last three years, just through the great freight recession. So it would seem that the freight recession is over by all the metrics I see.

02:12 - 02:47
Aaron Craddock: And then really it's the perfect storm of fewer drivers in the market and then more competition over those drivers. The market shift that we've seen is that spot rates are rising really fast. At the same time rejection rates, tender rejection rates spiking. We've seen that against reefer, dry van, of course, was all led with flatbed, but really across the board, spot rates going up and contract rates are already being renegotiated based on that. There's news daily, you'd kind of have to be living under a rock to have not seen the shift.

02:47 - 03:13
Aaron Craddock: And then if you're at a fleet, let me know if you've seen it. The only market that I've talked to where we haven't fully seen it yet is in LTL. And so seeing some increase but not as heavy as the truckload side. So truckloads leading which is typical in an industrial build out or cycle like we're seeing. But the data centers, the re industrialization of The United States.

03:14 - 03:52
Aaron Craddock: So regulatory reset. So Sean Duffy, when he spoke at the Mid America Trucking Show, all the chairs were filled and then all the booths around and then out maybe 50 people deep on the show floor of people eager to hear just what transportation secretary would say, as they're feeling this market shift. So the morning after Sean spoke, the transportation secretary, I sat in a meeting with five leaders of FMCSA. And so they shared some stats as well. And so I wanna give you guys some specific stats.

03:52 - 04:26
Aaron Craddock: So one of the regulatory pieces is the English proficiency. And so already they gave a number, they just hit 17,000 drivers that have been put out of service from the English proficiency. And there were talks by Sean of standardizing the test around only English speaking CDL tests. And testing for that proficiency on the issuance of the CDL. And so that's number one.

04:26 - 05:20
Aaron Craddock: Number two is the non domicile CDL issue, where they're seeing if we have any They've done studies across FMCSA has done studies across 30 states to see what are the percentage of these non domicile CDLs that were issued by the states that are illegal. So that don't fit the criteria, like don't line up with the dates that the different drivers that their docs to be in the country that those dates don't line up. And some of the notable results was it was over fifty percent in New York. Now when I really looked into that, that was a sample size of 200 non domicile CDLs and it was a little over 100 that were illegal. And then in California, it's estimated that 25% based on their audit.

05:20 - 06:00
Aaron Craddock: And in Illinois, 20% of those CDLs are illegal according to FMCSA should be revoked. There's also another regulatory thing is crackdown on carriers tied to a single address that look illegitimate allegedly. And so like for example, the FMCSA gave an example of a like 700 small fleets associated with one address in California. And so just looking at things like that, like where is there fraud? Where are people disobeying the rules?

06:00 - 06:27
Aaron Craddock: And yeah, really cracking down on that is a real focus. Now some of that even off on a federal level, they wanna execute these things. Ultimately, they have to rely on their state partners. And so there's really a focus like when they distilled it down to a few key principles, it was they want to be transparent. Here are the rules.

06:28 - 06:55
Aaron Craddock: And they want to be consistent and fair. Consistency in enforcement and fairness. And a lot of these things are just enforcing rules that were already on the books and they just haven't been enforced. And there really should be no surprise when they're enforcing these things. They're trying to get as clear as possible, consistent across the board, and then work with the states on enforcing that.

06:55 - 07:32
Aaron Craddock: So what this means is the market is improving while driver supply is decreasing. So again, have supply like demand. So on the carrier side, they need to haul more freight. They're rejecting more of it when you see those tender rejection rates go up. And then on the supply side, they need more quality drivers.

07:32 - 08:00
Aaron Craddock: And what I mean by quality is safe, experienced, and have been working for a while. So that's kind of the general consensus. They want experienced safe drivers with a good record. And that can come onto their fleet that aren't violating any laws with their, the way they obtained their CDL. And so at the same time where these drivers, so again, they're tightening their requirements.

08:02 - 08:50
Aaron Craddock: Freight rates are up, fleets can actually make money now. And then when they go to get drivers to fill that excess capacity, they're harder to find. And so it's kind of a perfect storm in terms of demand increasing on the freight side, everybody wanting to add trucks, fill the trucks that are on the fence, increase capacity, secure more of these, when there's finally some good freight contracts to get. Secure these at the same time when there are some quality experienced safe drivers aging out of the driver population paired with drivers being removed for the English proficiency alone. And then for some of that already 17,000.

08:51 - 09:22
Aaron Craddock: So these aren't small numbers. And yeah, I really think it's the perfect storm. Like I think we really have a chance for fleets to really start making money, which is great. But then we kind of get to a new pressure cycle of, okay, we got to bring in drivers and we got to do it efficiently and quickly. So what's gonna happen next?

09:22 - 10:23
Aaron Craddock: And so when I start to see these dominoes, just being in the industry sixteen years, is you think it's never gonna happen that rates are gonna come back up and fleets gonna be profitable again, and they'll wanna add capacity. And then, we almost never thought it would happen when it's been over three years of a freight recession, but then out of nowhere, it accelerates really fast. And so what I would expect in the coming weeks and coming months is the driver, the shortage of experienced, safe, compliant drivers that these fleets are wanting that all of our fleet partners are wanting to bring on will it'll just accelerate the shortage of those and then competition is gonna increase. And so with that, in the event fleets don't innovate, like marketing cost is gonna go up. Now a quick note from our sponsor.

10:23 - 10:41
Aaron Craddock: Hiring CDL drivers isn't about more leads, it's about better ones. That's why serious carriers partner with Hire Truckers by Trucking Clicks. We don't sell ads. We bring clear strategy, straight talk, a relentless focus on quality drivers. Even in a tough market, our clients see improved performance month over month.

10:41 - 11:23
Aaron Craddock: By optimizing smarter and making every hiring dollar work harder. For honest insights, sharper targeting and results you can trust, visit truckingclicks.com or call (512) 982-0816. Hire Truckers by Trucking Clicks. Clarity, courage, results. What you've done the last twelve, eighteen, twenty four months in terms of improving processes, improving recruiter contact rates, improving outbound, like all of that, those disciplines the last few years and integrating and improving processes are gonna become really important in the next few weeks.

11:24 - 12:01
Aaron Craddock: And so, yeah, so speed and efficiency become super critical again. So in a slower freight cycle, you have drivers coming to you. One thing I heard really in the middle of the freight recession is one fleet saying like, I can whisper and get a driver that wants to come over and work with us. And where we're about to shift from a whisper to shout. So I need to shout, I need drivers, here is where we're best.

12:01 - 12:23
Aaron Craddock: Here is why our culture is best. There's gonna be importance on storytelling and importance on tech, marketing automation, leveraging the newest call automations, AI tools in the industry. That's where we're headed. Like I've seen this happen multiple times. I think it's not gonna happen, not gonna happen, not gonna happen and then it's here.

12:27 - 12:53
Aaron Craddock: And what are doing right now is winning the last two, three years, they've really focused on improving, improving. And so how do we improve our processes? How do we improve our marketing? How do we improve our creative and messaging? What automations, what tech changes we need to make?

12:53 - 13:19
Aaron Craddock: Do we need to make? What like marketing maybe vendor changes do they need to make? And what fleets are doing now that I think will win this cycle is they're moving fast. And so aggressively filling those trucks, increasing their fleet size, just not being too timid because the last three years have been so hard. And that's kind of hard.

13:19 - 13:44
Aaron Craddock: It's like sometimes we over adjust to the hard cycle and then don't scale up fast enough. That's definitely something I'm prone to as we've grown. Like we grew through the freight recession, like in terms of fleets we serve and overall budgets. However, it didn't grow as fast as we thought. So now we're entering a season like where we need to grow our team.

13:44 - 14:20
Aaron Craddock: So if you're interested in working with a rapidly growing driver recruiting company in the space that prides ourselves on being on the cutting edge, helping fleets with real problems, feel free to reach out to me or anyone on our team. So to wrap it all up. If your recruiting strategy hasn't evolved like in the last twelve months, you're probably not ready for this cycle. There's a tighter, more competitive market. And preparation also determines who wins.

14:21 - 14:38
Aaron Craddock: And so at the same time, I also wanna tell you, you're not too late. You can make the changes now. You can innovate, you can improve your processes. You can improve recruiter productivity morale. You can improve lead quality and conversion to hire.

14:38 - 14:57
Aaron Craddock: You can improve speed to contact. And if you're thinking about wanting to improve any of those things, please reach out to us at Hire Truckers. You can just go to hiretruckers.com shoot us a message or message me directly. I would love to hear what you guys are seeing in the market. I appreciate you joining us.

14:57 - 14:58
Aaron Craddock: Have a great week.

15:02 - 15:10
Ginger Craddock: Thank you for listening to the Hire Truckers Podcast, the show for fleet executives, HR leaders, and recruiting professionals. I'm your host, Ginger Craddock.

15:10 - 15:22
Aaron Craddock: And I'm your host, Aaron Craddock. Each week, we share insights, trends, and strategies to help you grow and thrive. If you found value today, please share the show and leave a review. Until next time, keep building top performing teams.