Entering June, fleets are facing a more competitive recruiting environment. Driver job search activity fell again in May as lead costs reached their highest level since 2022, and more companies are entering the market to compete for talent. We've also got surging spot prices and Class 8 truck orders, but I'll let Jason Miller deal with those two in his economic update. But to kick things off, let's dig into the recruiting numbers to see what's happening.

And all of this data, by the way, will be available in this month's 30 Day Reset download. I'll put that down for you below, and if you'd like access to the full, unredacted data and the ability to dig deeper into all kinds of recruiting metrics, well, you can do that with Stratas®. Also available below.

So what are we seeing in the recruiting data right now? Well, driver search interest on Google declined another 2% in May and now sits 21% lower than just a year ago.

Meanwhile, direct lead costs climbed 43% year-over-year.

And if lower interest and higher lead costs weren't enough, we're also seeing more competition continuing to enter the market.

New truck driver postings surged to their highest level since March 2022, while more than 15,000 companies were actively posting jobs in May. That's the highest level we've seen in years.

In short, fleets are competing harder at a time when drivers appear to be spending less time actively searching for new opportunities. And in this competitive recruiting environment, understanding the driver experience becomes even more important.

So we asked drivers what they would change about hiring and the onboarding process if they could.

When asked what part of the hiring and first 30 days process they would fix industry wide, nearly 45% said companies should be more exact and honest in job ads and first calls.

Another 43% said that the first 30 days should better match what was promised during recruiting.

We also asked drivers what makes a recruiter feel trustworthy, instead of feeling like they're simply trying to sell something. And more than 60% said recruiters earn trust by being honest about what they can't promise. Taking all this together, those responses point to something we've been talking about quite a bit lately. Reputation drivers aren't just evaluating pay equipment or home time.

They're evaluating whether what they're being told matches what they experience.

What you say matters. If a driver doesn't trust you and your reputation is working against you, you're facing a seriously uphill battle, especially in a market that's becoming more competitive by the month.

With driver interest down and recruiting costs rising, it's tempting to focus entirely on generating more leads. But the data suggests what happens after a lead comes in may matter just as much as how many leads you're generating in the first place.

If you want to dig into the data about how drivers are feeling right now and just how important your fleet's reputation truly is. Well be on the lookout for this month's Fleet Reputation Report. It's going to come out in just a few weeks. It's packed with surveys and poll data, takeaways, all kinds of great information.

In addition to that, Dave will be hosting another live digging deeper chat with some of our team, and you sign up and join the conversation. Dave and the team will be answering questions live and discussing what the data is telling us right now.

It's a live, free flowing chat format that can really be a lot of fun. So if you haven't joined us for one before, I highly recommend it.

Of course, recruiting doesn't happen in a vacuum. The freight market plays a major role in what we're seeing right now, and while fleets are facing higher recruiting costs and increased competition for drivers, we're also seeing continued strength and freight markets.

As far as the spot rate and volume numbers go, everything's up across the board. Load volume rose 57% year-over-year, while the overall all in broker posted rates were up 50% compared to the same week last year.

And the gains carried across to each of our major segments driven loads were up 53%, while rates increase 55%. Refrigerated saw year-over-year gains of 16% in loads and 50% in all in rates. Flatbed posted some of the largest increases, with load volume up 71% and spot rates up 49% year-over-year.

For a deeper look at what's driving those market conditions. Let's check in with Jason Miller for this month's economic update. So at the time of filming this, we've seen drive and spot rates, including feel they've been ripping upwards. Dat has about $3.09 a mile. That is putting us to near record levels. We're looking at Omicron supply shock in January 2022 type of levels. In terms of these rates. No, line haul rates aren't as high because of where diesel prices are at, but it's still the most profitable time we've seen to be in the drive driven spot market since, you know, early 2022.

On the flatbed side, you are looking, you know, near around record levels as we speak on the line haul basis. And we can see if we look at sort of taking dat's contract and spot data comparing the two. I mean, the market is very, very, very tight right now. So it's a carrier market right now. At the moment when we look at what's driving this overall, it really isn't so much a demand boom. We've seen manufacturing momentum improving based on new orders from ISM as well as Federal Reserve banks.

But it's not the type of strength we were seeing in 2017 and 2018. The big reason for that is certain sectors of manufacturing tied to AI infrastructure are doing very, very, very well at the moment. But sectors more tied to single family housing, consumer discretionary spending like major appliances, they're struggling at the moment. So it's not across the board manufacturing lift. What the story really is is this supply shock that we've seen. So the BLS administrative records for drive and truckload employment.

When you see just those out, we were looking in December to being right around 2012 early 2013 levels. So the challenge is now we're trying to move 2018 levels of freight with essentially 2012 2013 levels of capacity. We've also had the Montgomery ruling taking place, which seems to have caused further tightening of capacity, but it's too early to speak yet from a data standpoint where we're at with that ruling now in terms of capacity being added.

We do see that new Class 8 orders are up there, more than double from where they were this time last year. And so we are seeing those new orders increase. No, it's not though like it was in 2018. Part of the reason for that is just the uncertainty about finding driver supply, the uncertainty about where energy prices will be given the current situation in the Middle East. But what we can see is essentially a return to this very strong, positive relationship between spot prices going up year-over-year on a line whole basis in Class 8, new orders going up with that's telling me is you're likely to see very strong new orders for the month of June.

And then again, we'll see as we move into the second half of the year, sort of how the broader economic picture shapes out. But the good news for carriers is between now and July 4th, it's going to be a very strong time for you. So bid appropriately and be safe out there and in that summer heat, and will reconvene with you all on the other side of the fourth.

Thank you for that, Jason. Now, if you want any more info on anything, Jason cover today. All of the slides in his presentation are available in this month's 30 Day Reset download, as well as the full driver polling, freight data and more in-depth breakdown of searches. Click cost lead costs. All kinds of great stuff is in there.

We'll continue watching how recruiting competition develops through the summer months, but for now, the biggest takeaway may be this drivers aren't asking companies to promise more.

They're asking companies to promise what they can actually deliver.

And in a recruiting market that's becoming more competitive, that may matter more than ever.

Thanks for watching the 30 Day Reset. We'll see you again next month.