Half of drivers are still looking — and home time, not the mileage rate, is what they want most

More than half of surveyed drivers are still looking for another job, and competing employers are reaching them at least once a week — that is the headline of the Fall 2026 Truck Driver Survey from Conversion Interactive Agency and People. Data. Analytics, released on Nov. 12 and reported by The Trucker on Nov. 12. In the survey, 51.2% of respondents said they are currently looking for a truck driving job. That is a decline from 58.1% in the Spring 2026 survey, but it still means a majority of the drivers a carrier employs are, by their own account, in the market — and 55% report being recruited by other employers at least once a week.

What those drivers are looking for is not, first, a bigger mileage rate. Among drivers looking for a new job, improved home time is the leading motivation at 69.1%, followed by predictable or higher pay at 65.1%. The wording of the pay item matters: it pairs predictability with level, so the driver complaint it captures is as much about earnings that swing week to week as about the rate itself. Better benefits ranked third at 48.6%, up 9.8 percentage points from spring — the largest single move in the survey, and a sign that the competition is widening beyond the paycheck into the parts of the package drivers price when they compare offers side by side.

The home-time finding goes deeper than a preference ranking. When drivers were asked whether they would prefer a local driving job with slightly lower pay if it meant being home more often, 60.2% said yes. Read against the pay numbers elsewhere in today's market coverage — carriers raising mileage rates, driver cost per hire up sharply in the third quarter — the survey describes a trade a majority of drivers are willing to make in the other direction: give back some pay for a schedule that gets them home. A carrier competing for experienced drivers with rate alone is bidding on the second-ranked motivation while the first-ranked one goes unaddressed.

The retention findings are the part of the survey a fleet can act on this week, because they describe a window. Nearly three in four respondents — 73.1% — said they are very or somewhat likely to tell someone at their company about a problem and give the carrier an opportunity to fix it before leaving. More than half, 52.7%, said they would typically allow more than two weeks for an issue to be resolved before starting another job search. "A driver raising a concern is giving the carrier an opportunity to keep that relationship," said Scott Dismuke, vice president of operations at People. Data. Analytics. "The response needs to go beyond acknowledging the complaint. Drivers need someone accountable for addressing it, clear updates and follow-through. These findings show there is often time to intervene, but carriers have to use that time well."

The competition is not only from other carriers. A combined 44.3% of respondents said they have considered leaving truck driving for another skilled trade or are already pursuing a job in one — including 9% already pursuing opportunities in fields such as construction, plumbing, HVAC, electrical work or welding. That is the survey's quiet warning for the driver pool the whole industry is recruiting from: nearly half the current workforce has at least looked at the exit that leaves trucking entirely, at a moment when federal enforcement has been shrinking the pool of qualified drivers and fleets are paying more to hire from it.

The search itself is changing, too. Reported use of AI search tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity to find driving jobs rose to 26.4%, compared with 24% in spring. Established platforms remain prominent — Indeed and Glassdoor at 57.3% and trucking job boards at 40.2% — but more than a quarter of job-seeking drivers now start with an AI tool, which answers from whatever pay, home-time, benefits and qualification information a carrier has made findable. "Carriers need to be specific about what makes their opportunity better, from expected earnings and benefits to when drivers will get home," said Brian Johnston, president of Conversion Interactive Agency. "Delivering on those promises is what connects successful recruiting with stronger retention."

For drivers, the survey's practical read is about leverage and how to use it. A majority of your peers are looking, recruiters are calling weekly, and the carriers answering those calls know the two things drivers rank first are home time and predictable pay — so an offer conversation that stays on the mileage rate is leaving the top item unpriced. The survey also says most drivers give their current carrier a chance to fix a problem before they search, and typically more than two weeks: raising the issue, with a specific fix and a date attached, is what the majority of drivers in this survey say they already do. And for the 44.3% weighing the skilled trades, the comparison to run is the full one the survey frames — earnings predictability and home time included — not the hourly wage alone.