Employer guideRead at source, 8 September 2026
Truck Driver Shortage 2026: What the Numbers Say, and Why Empty Seats Are Usually a Reach Problem
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 367,200 truck driver openings a year over 2025 to 2035 — 214,500 for heavy and tractor-trailer drivers and 152,700 for delivery drivers and driver/sales workers. Employment across both occupations grows by 186,800 over the whole decade, which is about 18,680 a year. Do the subtraction and 95% of those annual openings are replacement: seats reopening rather than seats being created. The most quoted shortage figure, 80,000, comes from a trade association and describes one segment of the industry. Against 3.7 million people already doing the job, the seat you cannot fill is far more often a seat the right driver never saw.
What 367,200 openings a year is actually counting
Two numbers sit on the same government page and are almost never printed together. The first gets quoted constantly: about 214,500 openings each year for heavy and tractor-trailer drivers. The second gets left out: employment in that occupation is projected to grow 4% across the decade, from 2,221,200 to roughly 2,305,000, a change of 83,800 people in ten years.
Divide that decade change by ten and you get about 8,380 new seats a year against 214,500 openings. Roughly 96% of the annual openings in the long-haul occupation are replacement — a person who used to hold the seat and does not any more, whether they moved to another carrier, moved to a local run, or left driving entirely. Delivery and driver/sales work is growing faster, at 7% over the decade, and even there replacement accounts for 93% of annual openings.
Why growth and replacement are different budget lines
If the problem is growth, a bigger pipeline is the answer and advertising is an investment. If the problem is replacement, a bigger pipeline refills a bucket with a hole in it, and what decides the return on the same money is how long the drivers you seat stay seated. The federal projection says replacement by roughly nineteen to one. That is not an argument for advertising less. It is an argument for treating the advertising budget as a running cost you size accurately, and for putting the improvement effort on the rate that sets it. We put a dollar figure on the churn side in truck driver turnover costs and retention.
| Measure | Heavy and tractor-trailer | Delivery and driver/sales |
|---|---|---|
| People employed, 2025 | 2,221,200 | 1,511,400 |
| Projected openings a year | 214,500 | 152,700 |
| Employment change, 2025 to 2035 | 83,800 (4%) | 103,000 (7%) |
| Growth openings a year | About 8,380 | About 10,300 |
| Replacement share of openings | 96% | 93% |
| Median pay, 2025 | $58,640 a year, $28.19 an hour | $43,950 a year, $21.13 an hour |
| Typical entry-level education | Postsecondary nondegree award | High school diploma or equivalent |
The 80,000 figure, and what sits under it
The number almost every article opens with comes from the American Trucking Associations. On 25 October 2021 its chief economist put the shortage at 80,000 drivers, an all-time high at the time, and said that on demographic and freight trends it could pass 160,000 by 2030. That is an industry estimate produced by a trade association, which does not make it wrong and does mean it should be read next to the federal data rather than instead of it.
The federal data disagrees, and it did so in public. In March 2019 the BLS Monthly Labor Review published an analysis by Stephen Burks and Kristen Monaco asking whether the market for truck drivers is broken. Their answer was that as a whole it works about as well as any other blue-collar labor market, that drivers respond to pay differences across occupations in the ordinary way, and that the problems the trade press describes are concentrated in long-distance truckload freight, which holds between one-sixth and one-fourth of all heavy and tractor-trailer drivers. ATA published a rebuttal on 19 March 2019.
What the two sides actually agree on
Read the rebuttal and the agreement is larger than the argument. ATA said in that statement that it has long emphasised the shortage is generally contained to one segment: the over-the-road, long-haul, for-hire truckload segment. The BLS authors said the same thing in different words and put a size on it. Both sides say the shortage is a segment problem, not an occupation-wide one. If you run local, regional, dedicated, private fleet or delivery operations, the number in the headline was never describing your hiring in the first place.
There is a third reading worth having, from the industry itself. The American Transportation Research Institute publishes an annual Top Industry Issues survey; the 21st edition, released 26 October 2025 with more than 4,200 participants, ranked the economy first, lawsuit abuse reform second, insurance cost and availability third, truck parking fourth and driver compensation fifth. Motor carriers led with the economy and insurance; drivers led with compensation and parking. A driver shortage does not appear in either list. When the industry ranks its own problems, the thing written about most is not the thing being voted for.
Who answers when the ad finds the driver
This is the part we can measure, because it is our own campaign data. Across 30 Boostpoint-managed CDL campaigns run between November 2025 and mid-2026, the blended cost was $13.57 per applicant, with the typical campaign between $8 and $24 and the median campaign at $12.94. The finding that matters here is not the price. It is who showed up.
| Age band | Share of impressions | Share of applicants | Conversion index | Cost per applicant |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 to 24 | 2.7% | 0.6% | 0.22× | $27.26 |
| 25 to 34 | 10.3% | 4.9% | 0.48× | $14.54 |
| 35 to 44 | 17.4% | 9.1% | 0.52× | $15.50 |
| 45 to 54 | 23.5% | 20.9% | 0.89× | $13.60 |
| 55 to 64 | 29.7% | 38.2% | 1.29× | $12.95 |
| 65 and over | 16.3% | 26.4% | 1.62× | $13.29 |
Drivers aged 55 and over produced 64.6% of the applicants and were the cheapest to acquire. The 65-plus band saw 16.3% of impressions and delivered 26.4% of applicants, converting at more than 1.6 times its exposure, at $13.29 an applicant. The 18 to 24 band converted at 0.22 times its exposure and cost more than twice as much.
Set that against the workforce as the federal household survey measures it. In the Current Population Survey annual averages for 2025, driver/sales workers and truck drivers had a median age of 46.4, and of the 3,583,000 people in that category, 1,104,000 — about 31% — were 55 or over. Our applicant pool is roughly twice as old, by share, as the workforce it is drawn from. That is not a targeting artefact, because targeting by age is not available for employment ads. It is a statement about who is reachable when an ad goes to people who were not looking.
The number we do not have
We can tell you what a CDL applicant costs and how old they are. We cannot tell you what share hold the endorsements you need, what share pass a background and MVR check, what share are still seated in week twelve, or whether a dollar spent on pay and home time returns more than a dollar spent on advertising. No one selling advertising can tell you that, because platform data stops at the form submission. That number lives in your own records, and on this occupation it decides more than anything on this page.
What one empty seat costs in advertising
Shortage arguments usually die because nobody puts a number on either side. The advertising side has a number and it is ours, so here it is with the arithmetic exposed rather than asserted. Enter your own cost per applicant if you have one; the default is our blended CDL figure, not a promise.
Price the refill
Why thin markets are cheaper to reach and dearer per applicant
The rural finding in our data looks like a weakness until you take it apart. Campaigns run for agricultural co-ops in North Dakota and South Dakota cost about three times the blended figure per applicant. The auction, though, was far cheaper: a CPM of $14.87 against $40.32 in denser markets. What changed was not the price of attention but how many different people there were to pay attention. Average frequency ran 5.4 against 2.3, which is the same drivers seeing the same ad twice as often.
That is the reach problem in media terms. A thin market is not expensive because nobody wants the job. It is expensive because the pool that can legally hold the seat is small, you saturate it quickly, and after that you are paying to show the same people the ad again. Widening the radius, changing the offer or accepting a longer fill time are the levers; spending more into a saturated market is not one. There is a channel-by-channel version of this in CDL driver recruiting costs by channel.
Check the reach your budget buys
Three things this changes about the ad itself
Advertise to people who are not looking. An occupation refilling itself 367,200 times a year is not short of people who have heard of it. Job boards charge for the small pool that is actively searching this week, and every carrier in the radius bids on the same pool, which is why board costs rise exactly when hiring gets urgent. The mechanics of running it the other way are in CDL recruiting.
Write for the driver who is 55, because that is who answers. Two-thirds of our applicants were 55 or over and they were the cheapest to acquire, in a workforce where about 31% are that age. Creative built for a 24-year-old career-changer is being shown, in practice, to an experienced driver deciding whether your home time beats the one they have. Lead with pay and home time, then equipment, then requirements.
Do not assume the technician shortage is the same shortage. Fleets that hire drivers usually hire diesel and maintenance technicians too, and the two markets behave differently: the technician pool is smaller, credentialed differently and priced differently, and a campaign built for drivers will underperform on it. We set that out separately in diesel mechanic recruiting.
And the point the arithmetic keeps returning to: on the federal projection, the seats reopen either way. What decides your cost is how often they reopen and how many of the people who could fill them ever hear that you are hiring. The wider version of this argument, across every frontline industry, is on the labor shortage, and the rest of our driver material sits on truck driver recruiting.
Frequently asked questions
Is there really a truck driver shortage?
It depends which part of the industry you mean. The most quoted figure, 80,000 drivers, is an American Trucking Associations estimate published on 25 October 2021, and the association itself has said the shortage is generally contained to the long-haul, for-hire truckload segment. A 2019 analysis in the BLS Monthly Labor Review found that segment holds between one-sixth and one-fourth of all heavy and tractor-trailer drivers, and that the wider market works about as well as any other blue-collar labor market. So there is a real supply problem in one segment, and something closer to a churn problem everywhere else.
How many truck drivers are needed?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects about 214,500 openings a year for heavy and tractor-trailer drivers and about 152,700 a year for delivery drivers and driver/sales workers over 2025 to 2035, or 367,200 in total. That is not the same as needing 367,200 more people. Employment across both occupations grows by 186,800 over the whole decade, about 18,680 a year, so roughly 95 per cent of those openings are replacing someone who left the seat rather than adding a new one.
Why do fleets struggle to hire drivers?
Usually because of reach rather than supply. There are about 3.7 million people already doing the two truck driving jobs, and most of them are not searching a job board this week. A posting waits for someone to look for it, which limits you to the small pool that is actively searching in your radius at that moment, and every carrier nearby is bidding on that same pool. The second reason is qualification: applicants arrive without the endorsements or experience the seat needs, and recruiters spend hours disqualifying them by phone.
What does a CDL applicant cost?
Across 30 Boostpoint-managed CDL campaigns run between November 2025 and mid-2026, the blended cost was 13.57 US dollars per applicant, with the typical campaign between 8 and 24 dollars and the median campaign at 12.94. That is per applicant and not per hire, so multiply by however many applicants your process needs to produce one seated driver. It covers advertising inclusive of campaign management and excludes recruiter time, orientation and everything downstream of the application.
Does the driver shortage affect local routes?
Far less than the headline suggests. Both the trade association and the federal analysis place the shortage in the over-the-road, long-haul, for-hire truckload segment. Local, regional, dedicated, private fleet and delivery operations sit outside that description. Delivery driver and driver/sales employment is in fact projected to grow faster than long-haul, at 7 per cent over the decade against 4 per cent, so a local fleet that cannot fill seats is usually looking at a reach or an offer problem rather than a national supply one.
How old are the drivers who apply?
Older than the workforce, in our data. Across our CDL campaigns 64.6 per cent of applicants were 55 or over, and that group was the cheapest to acquire at about 13 dollars an applicant, while the 18 to 24 band produced 0.6 per cent of applicants at more than 27 dollars each. For comparison, the BLS Current Population Survey put 31 per cent of driver/sales workers and truck drivers at 55 or over in 2025. None of this was targeted: employment ads in the United States run under the Meta Special Ad Category, which removes age targeting entirely.
Do job boards work for truck drivers?
They work for the drivers who are searching, which is the smallest and most contested part of the pool. A board sells intent, so your posting competes with every other carrier hiring in that radius and your cost rises when freight demand pushes everyone to hire at once. The drivers who are not searching, including most of the experienced ones already seated somewhere, never see it. Boards are worth running; the mistake is treating them as the whole channel mix rather than the part that captures people already in motion.
How fast can a fleet refill a seat?
We do not publish a time to fill for CDL roles, because our data stops at the application and a fill depends on your screening, your background and MVR checks and your orientation schedule. What our campaign data does say is that the constraint is usually pool size rather than interest. In thin rural lanes we measured an average frequency of 5.4 against 2.3 in dense markets, meaning the same drivers saw the same ad twice as often, which is what saturation looks like before it shows up as a rising cost per applicant.
The seats reopen either way. Let us show you what refilling them costs.
Bring your driver headcount, your turnover rate and the lanes you run. We will show you what applicant flow actually costs there, and what the refill is costing you now.
Book a Demo