How to Write a Trucking Job Ad Drivers Actually Respond To

You posted a few trucking job ads. You go to check the response rate and find it lacking, to say the least. Sure, you might be getting a few candidates, but you find the overall pool of qualified and experienced truckers who responded a bit lacking. Part of the problem is you’re competing with many other recruiters who bombard truckers with job ads every day. Eventually, yours get lost in the crowd.

The average job ad only converts 6% to 10% of those who see the ad listing. How do you get a better conversion rate? Keep reading because we’re going to turn your job ads into an industrious response machine. We’re going to explore some of the top techniques that the best trucking recruiters use to attract, engage, and encourage the best talent to apply to your jobs.

Know Your Audience

Before you ever put a single word to your job listing, you should know your audience. You want to be highly specific because different types of truckers want different things. Let’s look at each trucker profile, so you will be better able to write ads to attract them:

• OTR Truckers: These types care the most about money, and they want the largest possible weekly paychecks. When you offer them a weekly guaranteed minimum pay, sign-on bonuses, and fuel efficiency incentives, you increase the likelihood of them responding. Most care about home time to some extent, but career OTR truckers will be more flexible than the other two types of truckers on this point. This type loves long-haul routes because it maximizes earnings.

• Regional Truckers: This type cares more about being home at least once a week, so home time matters more to them. They may not care as much if the pay is less as long as they can be home more, so you want to tailor your trucking job postings around that. Predictable routes and consistent home time also attract more of them.

• Local Truckers: This type of trucker wants to be home every night regardless of the pay. That is one of the big selling points, but the hourly pay, which is currently an average of $30 per hour, is one of the biggest attractions. Giving them a predictable routine for a good work-life balance is also important since they care the most about being back home with their families every night.

This gives you a general idea of who you want to write your trucking job ads for, depending on the type of trucker. Most drivers will care about pay, benefits, and schedule to an extent, but where it differs is the degree. When you understand their priorities, you can tailor the message and improve your response rate.

Opening Lines Must Grab Attention

You need to go beyond generic if you want to stand out and get a better response rate. Your headline is your hook and the first thing they see. Make it something that they care most about to grab their attention.

Good truck driver job descriptions will be clear, accurate, and relevant. Don’t add unnecessary words. Tell the freight type, the truck they will drive, and what their schedule would look like. An example is: don’t just say “Growth opportunities,” but include their direct pathways to promotion and their equipment upgrade schedules.

Appeal to the type of trucker that you need. You want to keep your title between 50-60 characters because most search engines will cut anything over that.

Channels to Tap into When Posting Trucking Job Ads

Experiment with a few different channels because responses can come from multiple channels. Remember to respond to candidates quickly because studies show that employers who respond to candidates within the first five minutes have an 80% higher chance of engagement, according to the talent engagement platform Sense. Let’s examine the channels.

CDL Job Boards

Now, we’re going to explain CDL job boards because knowing how they work will improve your response rate. Job boards prioritize the most recent job listings, so you want to keep posting weekly to keep the responses coming in. If you’re looking for regional drivers, check out regional job boards because many of the more experienced truckers want regional jobs to be home more often, so you'll find better talent there. You tend to get higher-quality candidates from this pool.

Social Media

Social media has become a powerful source as a recruitment tool. You could use a testimonial in your job listing to try to attract more candidates. You may want to even look beyond some of the most obvious social media platforms. Trucker Social is a platform built for truckers, which means that you attract trucking talent right from the get-go. Other platforms might have it, but they don't prioritize it the way we do, and a lot of people don't understand it in the same way that we do. Besides being a social media platform, we’re also one of the truck driving job posting sites.

The people on this platform are truckers, making it a great place to recruit talent. Niche social media platforms are also said to get up to a 60% higher response rate because the audience is more targeted and engaged, according to eMarketer.

Industry Networking and Trucking Schools

You might attend job fairs or go to trucking schools looking to recruit the talent there. Granted, not everyone wants to hire new drivers due to higher insurance rates, but we highlighted this as a point of where you could attract more trucking talent.

Sell the Experience

Where many trucking recruiters go wrong is they’ll create a regular job listing. What’s wrong with that? You need to treat your ad like it’s an ad. Do more than simply list the requirements to attract the best trucking talent. Make the driver feel the experience of working for you, and show them what they’ll get in return for working for you that goes beyond what everyone else is offering.

You also want to highlight your respect for drivers because hiring drivers is also about retention. When drivers don’t feel respected at a company, this is one of the big causes of them quitting and going with another trucking company.

Post a Job on Trucker Social

One of the great things about going with more of a niche social media platform like Trucker Social is that you can find candidates who weren’t necessarily looking for jobs on the other platforms. Your response rate is also going to be higher. Sure, Facebook and LinkedIn might have more truckers, but not all of them will be looking for jobs, and they might not even be interested in looking at trucking jobs. The truckers who visit our platform are looking to network and find jobs that can advance their career.

Trucker Social was created as a space by truckers, for truckers. If you want to draw from a community of truckers with more qualified talent, sign up for your profile today and get started pulling qualified and experienced drivers from our platform.