Given that high turnover and shortage of skilled CDL-A holders remain among the top industry concerns, truck driver lead generation rings true to most asset-based transportation players. A great variety of modern-day sources, platforms, software tools, and 3rd parties’ services designed to help you build and maintain a steady pipeline of drivers can become confusing and frustrating, unless you know where to look.
Let’s break this article down into useful insights and tips aimed at enabling you to craft your own recruitment strategies.
Roughly speaking, all channels of acquiring trucking company leads can be divided into paid and organic media. The former includes online advertising, job boards and paid listings while the latter encompasses Social Media Marketing (SMM), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), networking, referrals and word-of-mouth.
Paid implies that you bear certain costs to reach out to potential employees and get your job offers in front of your target audience. Organic means that interested candidates find your company naturally, without you paying for placements or clicks to 3rd parties. We must make it clear that organic traffic isn’t built in a day, it involves long-term investments before you see the results. But from our experience it’s 100% worth it, and these efforts pay off within half a year. Paid media, on the contrary, works on a short-term basis and allows you to grow your driver pool within days.
Still the success formula for both approaches is the same: attract → engage → nurture → convert → reactivate. Leveraging automation tools like our Candidate GhostGuard Suite () to make this cycle more efficient is one of the best truck driver lead generation ways. Easier said than done because, if you lack talent acquisition skills and understanding of platform’s specifics, your efforts are likely to become a money drain and a waste of time.
Disclaimer: If you’re just embarking on a truck driver hunting journey, we recommend leaving this to professionals or using less risky methods like Pay-per-Hire and turnkey driver recruitment services or employing independent HR-professionals.
What sets each lead source apart is its hiring capacity and unique features. We’ve already covered the best truck driver recruiting strategies in one of our articles. Let’s just recap and provide a quick overview of the best performing channels based on our agency’s experience.
Social media channels allow you to literally have your bread buttered on both sides. Meaning, you can run paid ads and in parallel build your transportation business’ brand as well as promote a positive company image among your future employees. Importantly, social media advertising is a good fit for all types of companies: large, mid and small — everyone can get their own piece of the pie there.
Meta (Facebook and Instagram)
By far the most powerful digital channel with the highest potential for truck driver lead generation, provided that you’ve “been there, done that”. It has a lot to offer: quality candidates, tunable lead forms, enough space for A/B testing your most challenging ideas, a reasonably low Cost-per-Lead, the use of both static and video ads, an API integration possibility with your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) of choice.
It’s worth mentioning that we help 2 large clients consistently hire 40+ and 70+ drivers from Meta each month.
TikTok
Although having a lower capacity and higher Cost-per-Lead than Meta, TikTok is another great social media channel for CDL driver recruitment. Just be aware that you’ll need to produce and run short videos resonating with your target audience. In our case, driver video testimonials and reviews have proved the best performing ad type.
TikTok can be a good add-on to your recruitment mix, if you’re looking to hire 8-12 additional drivers per month.
Job boards are pretty similar in their mechanics, but they differ by the number of active users and traffic. So we decided to go with Indeed as the “first among equals”.
The major drawback of all job boards we would single out is a great number of unqualified candidates. Namely, you’re likely to get swamped with absolutely irrelevant applicants, like non-CDL holders, who apply for truck driving positions. It’s a waste of time, efforts and resources to screen them out. That’s why you should find a functional solution to this challenge — please read below for our implementation.
Indeed
Indeed’s strong brand presence has made it a top job board in the US, and it fully relates to targeting truck driver leads. Job seekers love its ”Apply Now” feature that ensures a fast, smooth and easy application process while employers can make use of a rich array of tools and analytics.
It is important to note that you can start with free postings and boost your listings on a paid basis once needed.
By seamlessly integrating Indeed with our client’s ATS we ensure that all candidates use our custom lead form instead of Indeed’s application, which rules out over 80% of unqualified applicants.
If you’re not familiar with ATS providers that streamline HR-processes in trucking and transportation, we’d urge you to take advantage of our comparative analysis of Tenstreet and DriverReach.
These ATS providers offer specific tools and features to generate, engage and convert trucking company leads. They also have compliance and background check integrations in place to simplify the hiring routine. Besides, both vendors provide functionalities to advertise and track the performance of driver vacancies on multiple job boards. Just keep in mind that Tenstreet and DriverReach charge an extra fee for using a certain functionality or feature, and, as a rule, you’ll need to contact their reps to get an estimation.
On our end, we’ve been successfully using Tenstreet’s Pulse Match to consistently hire 8-10 drivers per month for a client with 400+ trucks.
Engaging content helps hire truck drivers — that’s not a secret but a truism. We use the word “content” here in a broad term that comprises your company’s online presence, reputation, SMM and offline activities like networking, conferences, job fairs, etc.
Your corporate website and social media channels like Google My Business, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube are your major hallmarks in the digital realm. That’s why it’s crucial to keep them up-to-date and post appealing content on a regular basis. This may include but shouldn’t be limited to your corporate life news, social endeavors, active vacancies with detailed job offers, etc.
If you’re targeting drivers, make sure your pages contain driver video reviews and success stories like examples of career advancement. Remember that drivers prefer filling out a straightforward short form, so have it implemented on your website to collect candidates’ basic info in the first place and then follow up with a link to a Full DOT-compliant application.
Depending on a variety of factors like your company size, challenges, needs and budgets, certain sources may come into play or become redundant. For instance, small-fleet businesses can get satisfied with job boards’ listings and occasional social media advertising to staff their openings. While mid- and large players should engage several channels with a focus on SMM and brand development. The world is your oyster, just be reasonable and keep track of your efforts to gain insights into what’s working best for you.
Best of luck on your hiring journey!
