Is There a Truck Driver Shortage? 2026 Counts and Turnover

There is no national truck driver shortage in 2026, with 2.22 million drivers at work

Heavy and tractor-trailer truck driver jobs numbered 2,221,200 in 2025, by the tally of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which projects about 214,500 openings a year through 2035. Growth accounts for only 83,800 jobs over the whole decade, so about 96% of each year’s openings replace drivers who retire, switch careers or move on, by our arithmetic. The workforce churns; it is not running out of people.

The federal safety regulator reads the market the same way. In its final rule on non-domiciled licenses, published in February 2026, FMCSA said it does not agree that the rule will cause a shortage of drivers, because the freight downturn that began in April 2022 left carriers parking trucks and drivers running fewer miles. The agency added that the trucking industry’s trade association has moved away from the shortage claim, and that driver shortage fell out of the top 10 of ATRI’s annual survey of trucking’s critical issues for the first time in the survey’s 21 years.

The shortage figure itself belongs to the American Trucking Associations (ATA), which put it at 80,000 drivers in 2021, the highest it had published. What remains in 2026 is a turnover problem concentrated in 1 segment, and a licensing rule that shrinks the pool of eligible drivers for reasons unrelated to pay or hiring.

How the sources count truck drivers

The headcount depends on what each source counts. A license, a professional driver and a job in 1 occupation are 3 different things, and the 4 figures below run from 3.8 million down to just over 2 million.

Count	What it measures	Figure	Year	Source
Active interstate CDL holders	Licenses valid for interstate driving, whether or not the holder drives for a living	3.8 million	2024	FMCSA final rule
Professional drivers	ATA’s count across every segment of trucking	3.58 million	2024	ATA, American Trucking Trends 2025
Heavy and tractor-trailer driver jobs	1 BLS occupation, employees and self-employed	2,221,200	2025	BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook
Heavy and tractor-trailer drivers on payrolls	The same occupation, wage-and-salary jobs only	2,070,480	May 2024	BLS occupational employment survey, as cited by FMCSA

US truck drivers by source, in millions

• Active interstate CDL holders, 20243.8 million
• ATA professional drivers, 20243.58 million
• BLS heavy truck driver jobs, 20252.22 million
• BLS payroll heavy truck drivers, May 20242.07 million

Source: FMCSA final rule (February 2026); ATA, American Trucking Trends 2025; BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook and occupational employment survey

Delivery van drivers, including the drivers at the contractors that deliver Amazon’s packages, belong to a separate BLS occupation for light and delivery drivers and fall outside both BLS figures.

Whether those drivers are too few is a separate question, and each source asks it differently:

Source	Question it asks	Answer
ATA shortage model, 2021	How many more drivers carriers want than they can hire	80,000 short, an all-time high, rising past 160,000 by 2030
BLS economists, 2019	Does the driver labor market behave like one short of workers	No: it works like other blue-collar markets, tight but with no long-term shortage
National Academies, 2024	Why long-haul truckload turnover stays high	Piece-rate pay in a business where carriers accept churn to stay profitable
FMCSA, 2026	Will removing non-domiciled drivers leave freight uncovered	No: the downturn since April 2022 left drivers underused
FMCSA rule, 2026	How many licensed drivers lose eligibility	About 194,000 over about 5 years

ATA’s driver shortage estimate: 80,000 in 2021

ATA’s estimate measures something narrow: the gap between the drivers carriers want to hire and the drivers they can get. In an October 2021 release, its chief economist put that gap at 80,000, an all-time high, and said it could pass 160,000 in 2030 as the workforce aged and freight grew. ATA said the industry would need to recruit nearly 1 million new drivers over the decade, and that driver pay was rising at 5 times its historic rate.

That estimate came at the top of a freight boom. FMCSA’s 2026 rule records what followed: interstate motor carriers grew nearly 20% in 2021 and interstate CDL drivers 6%, then rates, load volumes and the number of carriers all fell once the downturn began in April 2022. ATA’s own trucking trends release for 2025 shows trucking revenue down to $906 billion in 2024 from $1.004 trillion in 2023, and puts professional drivers at 3.58 million without mentioning a shortage.

By FMCSA’s account, ATA has stepped back from the shortage figure as the freight market changed. The rule also cites ATRI, the industry’s research institute, whose 2025 survey of critical issues left driver shortage outside its top 10 for the first time.

Truck driver turnover by segment

Every kind of carrier recruits from a shared population of licensed drivers, yet the share of drivers who leave in a year runs from about 12% at less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers to nearly all of them at large truckload fleets.

Segment	Annual driver turnover	Period	Source
Large truckload carriers	94.0% average	1995 to 2017	ATA survey data, reported by Burks and Monaco
Large truckload carriers	81% to 90%	2016 to 2020	ATA data, cited by FMCSA
Small truckload carriers	69% to 79%	2016 to 2020	ATA data, cited by FMCSA
Truckload carriers, by size	44.3% to 72.1%	2024	ATRI cost study, cited by FMCSA
All sectors, weighted	48%	2024	ATRI cost study, cited by FMCSA
LTL carriers	11.7% average	2000 to 2017	Burks and Monaco, Monthly Labor Review

Annual truck driver turnover by segment

• Large truckload, 1995-2017 average94%
• Truckload, top of 2024 range by carrier size72.1%
• All sectors, weighted, 202448%
• Truckload, bottom of 2024 range by carrier size44.3%
• LTL carriers, 2000-2017 average11.7%

Source: BLS Monthly Labor Review (Burks and Monaco, 2019); ATRI Operational Costs of Trucking 2025 update, as cited in FMCSA's February 2026 final rule

A 2019 article by Burks and Monaco for the BLS journal found that long-distance truckload employs between 1 in 6 and 1 in 4 heavy and tractor-trailer drivers. Applied to the 2025 count, that is roughly 370,000 to 555,000 people, and the authors place the industry’s persistent hiring problems in that segment. LTL carriers, hiring from that same population, hold on to most of theirs. The authors concluded that the driver labor market functions much like other blue-collar labor markets: tight, but with no sign of a long-term shortage.

The National Academies’ 2024 study of long-distance trucking pay reached a related finding. Turnover at long-distance truckload carriers is universally and persistently high, and those carriers have to accept it to stay profitable. Their company drivers are usually paid by the miles they drive, a piece rate that pays for output rather than for time.

ATRI’s 2024 truckload range sits below ATA’s 2016 to 2020 figures for large carriers, though the 2 come from different surveys. The 2024 rates were measured more than 2 years into the downturn FMCSA describes, when carriers were parking trucks and leaving the market rather than adding seats.

The 2026 non-domiciled CDL rule and how many drivers it removes

A non-domiciled CDL is a commercial license a state issues to a driver domiciled outside the US. FMCSA’s rule limits who can get one to holders of 3 employment-based visa statuses, H-2A, H-2B and E-2, and makes states check that status against federal records at every issue, renewal, transfer and upgrade, with the driver present in person to renew.

Date	Step
September 29, 2025	Interim final rule published, in force the same day
November 10, 2025	The DC Circuit pauses it, and the previous rules apply again
November 13, 2025	The court stays it while the challenges are heard
February 13, 2026	Final rule published, reaffirming the interim rule with minor changes
March 16, 2026	Final rule in force; states apply it at each driver’s next licensing transaction

FMCSA estimates there are about 200,000 non-domiciled CDL holders and 20,000 holders of non-domiciled learner’s permits. Only about 6,000 non-domiciled CDLs a year will qualify under the statuses the rule keeps, so the agency expects the remaining 194,000 or so to leave freight over about 5 years as their licenses come up for renewal. Spread evenly, that is about 38,800 drivers a year by our arithmetic, on top of the 214,500 openings BLS already projects for heavy truck drivers each year.

The 200,000 are about 5% of the 3.8 million active interstate CDL holders FMCSA counted in 2024. Before the interim rule, 47 states issued non-domiciled CDLs; Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia did not. FMCSA calls its figure of 194,000 carriers that could lose a driver an extreme upper bound, since it assumes no carrier employs more than 1 such driver; that would be 25% of the country’s 785,000 for-hire and private motor carriers.

The agency’s case that freight will keep moving rests on the last capacity test. In 2021, as spot rates surged, interstate carriers grew nearly 20% in a year and interstate CDL drivers 6%. In November 2025, BLS put unemployment in transportation and utilities at 4.4%, or 371,000 people, which FMCSA treats as the closest official proxy for idle CDL holders.

The licensing rule is 1 of 2 federal moves on driver eligibility. FMCSA has also stepped up enforcement of the English proficiency requirement for commercial drivers under a policy dated May 20, 2025.

Truck driver pay, hours and where drivers work

For May 2025, BLS reports a median wage of $58,640 a year for the occupation, $28.19 per hour. Trucking companies employ 40% of these drivers, about 888,000 by our arithmetic, and pay the highest median of the large employing industries.

Industry	Share of driver jobs, 2025	Median wage, May 2025
Truck transportation	40%	$60,320
Wholesale trade	12%	$58,550
Manufacturing	7%	$56,570
Construction	6%	$56,080
Self-employed	7%	Not published
All heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers	100%	$58,640

Where heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers work, 2025

• Truck transportation40%
• Wholesale trade12%
• Self-employed7%
• Manufacturing7%
• Construction6%

Source: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Heavy and Tractor-trailer Truck Drivers (2025 employment)

Pay has run ahead of comparable work for years. Burks and Monaco found that heavy truck drivers out-earned other blue-collar workers throughout 2003 to 2016, the span of wage data they studied.

Federal hours-of-service rules cap the working day. A driver can be on duty for up to 14 hours straight and drive for up to 11 of them, then needs 10 hours off. Driving also stops at 60 hours in 7 days, or 70 in 8, until a 34-hour break resets the clock. Interstate drivers are exempt from federal overtime, so a week past 40 hours earns no premium, and long-haul runs keep drivers away from home for days or weeks at a time.

BLS lists a postsecondary nondegree award, usually from a professional truck driving school, as the typical entry credential, and every driver also needs the CDL itself.

What the driver market means for a brand that ships freight

In 2026, truck capacity follows the freight cycle more than the driver count. The 2021 spike pulled nearly 20% more interstate carriers into the market in a year, and the downturn since 2022 cut trucking revenue by about $98 billion between 2023 and 2024. A brand buying truckload or LTL this year is buying in a market with spare trucks, and the useful planning question is how quickly that turns.

The licensing rule tightens supply slowly. Exits arrive at license renewals spread over about 5 years, so when a shipper’s carriers lose drivers, the effect shows up as fewer trucks offered on its lanes over months rather than a single shock.

Your dock is the part of driver supply you control. A driver has a 14-hour on-duty window, and a long-haul company driver is usually paid by the mile, so every hour waiting at a warehouse costs the driver income and the carrier usable time. A 3-hour wait to unload takes more than 20% of that window; add a 2-hour live load at the next shipper and 5 of the 14 hours are gone before the truck covers a mile. Carriers recover that through detention charges and through which shippers’ loads they choose to take.

Where inventory sits changes which drivers move it. Long-haul truckload is the segment with the worst turnover, while LTL carriers hold on to drivers far longer. A brand that splits stock across 2 or 3 regional warehouses moves more of its freight on short regional legs and less of it on the multi-day runs where turnover concentrates. At larger volumes, dedicated contract carriage, where a provider supplies trucks and drivers for 1 shipper’s routes, keeps the same drivers on the same lanes.

Most ecommerce orders reach customers through parcel carriers that sort millions of packages a day and move them between hubs on line-haul trucks. The inbound side of the business, the containers and pallets that restock the 3PL, is where a parcel brand buys truckload and LTL directly, and where dock waits and driver supply show up on its own invoices.