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Guaranteed pay has been a growing incentive for recruiting and retention. But is it right for your fleet? 

With enforcement of English-Language Proficiency regulations ramping up, motor carriers and private fleets must be aware not only of compliance with the rules and their associated regulatory risk — but also of the “significant exposure” to highway crash litigation should an event occur with a driver who may not meet ELP requirements.

Amid an upswell of market uncertainty in 2025, driver wages have shown surprising momentum, with one key metric showing its largest gain in over 2 years. Here are the highlights from summer 2025 driver pay data.

Sign-on bonuses saw their first dollar-amount increase since late 2022. Prevalence of sign-ons hasn’t wavered, hovering around 70% over the past three years. With sign-on bonus amounts bubbling again and despite their high prevalence, the question remains: Are sign-on bonuses an effective tool for your fleet to use? Particularly when it comes to retention? NTI explores those questions here.

Beginning in the late summer and continuing through the fall and winter, though, the holding pattern broke, and data from NTI surveys of motor carriers shows driver pay has entered what appears to be a new season as capacity shakes out of the market and as both spot and contract freight markets recalibrate. Here’s what survey data from NTI’s National Survey of Driver Wages shows for driver pay movement in early spring 2025.

Interest in technician pay benchmarking has swelled at The National Transportation Institute in recent years, including survey demand doubling last year for technician pay benchmarking reports as the challenge to hire and retain diesel technicians continues to become more difficult for trucking fleets of all types.