Many fleet operators and human resources professionals agree that driver turnover and a lack of qualified applicants available to fill open positions is an ongoing challenge for motor carriers.
This issue was addressed during a panel discussion hosted by the Women In Trucking Association. Molly Raynor, senior talent acquisition specialist for KeHe Distributors, served as the moderator, with panelists Tracy Rushing, executive director of safety and recruiting for R.E. Garrison Trucking, and James Hazelton, employer partnerships manager for FreeWorld.
“We know we need more drivers, and frankly, we know we need more women drivers,” Raynor said. “But today we’re talking about a specific, often overlooked, talent pool.”
That demographic is drivers with criminal records, or “justice-impacted” applicants.
Raynor kicked off the session with a staggering statistic: Nearly 80 million Americans have a criminal record. That averages out to almost one in three adults.
Because many employers won’t even consider hiring an applicant with a criminal record, “that leaves a third of our American workforce on the sidelines,” she said. That’s where the practice of fair chance recruiting comes in.
Fair chance recruiting
For those unfamiliar with the term, fair chance recruiting — sometimes called “ban the box” — is the practice of evaluating an applicant’s skills and qualifications before having them “check the box” noting any criminal history. Proponents say this approach, while not the right choice for every employer, allows job seekers to be judged on their merit rather than their rap sheet.
According to Raynor, justice-impacted applicants are “ready, willing, able, and often highly motivated to rebuild their lives behind the wheel.”
It’s important to note that practicing fair chance recruiting does NOT mean putting safety on the back burner.
“Any discussion of hiring must begin and end with safety,” Raynor said, noting that carriers that are considering fair chance policies should ask themselves some hard questions, both about hiring practices in general and about safety.
“Are our current hiring policies truly safety policies, or are they simply policies of exclusion? Are we mistakenly filtering out some of the most determined, dedicated and safety-conscious future drivers?” she said. “A past mistake — often tied to abuse, trafficking or economic survival — can create a permanent barrier.”
Through organizations like FreeWorld, Hazelton said, people with criminal histories can earn a commercial driver’s license (CDL) and get help finding a job.
Fostering retention
There’s no question that hiring drivers with criminal records is a risk; however, that risk can pay off in loyal, dedicated employees that genuinely appreciate having a chance to rebuild their lives.
Rushing, Raynor and Hazelton all report seeing higher retention rates among justice-impacted employees.
In fact, Rushing says, turnover is 40% lower for this demographic at R.E. Garrison.
“For many of them, we are the first company that had a ‘yes, we can’ attitude (regarding their legal history),” she said.
“We are very transparent. It’s very important to us that every driver, whether justice-impacted or not, understands that other individuals who have made a commitment to us have to be protected,” she continued. “With some individuals, we have to say, ‘yes, we can — but should we? Are you the right choice for our fleet?’”
When the answer is “yes,” however, Rushing says companies have a chance to help build families and communities.
“When we create an opportunity for a justice-impacted individual to be successful, (it goes beyond) the driver’s seat,” she said.
The recidivism factor
Recidivism — the likelihood of someone with a criminal background to commit repeat offenses — is a very real factor for employers with fair chance hiring practices. According to Hazelton, more than half of offenders released from incarceration go back to prison within three years.
The question for motor carriers becomes: What if we hire a former felon as a driver and they re-offend while on the clock?
Hazelton says it’s important to review the available data, both about the individual and about recidivism. However, he also notes that in his experience serious offenders may actually be less prone to recidivism than those convicted of misdemeanors.
“They’ve been in prison for a very long time; they’ve learned their lesson,” he explained.
Hazelton has a personal motivation for helping others through Free World.
“I’m actually justice impacted myself,” he shared. “About 15 years ago, I got in trouble, stealing some stuff when I was in college.”
Unlike many participants in the Free World program, he says, he received strong support from his family.
“When I got out, I finished my degree, got out into the job market — and found out really quickly that nobody wanted a communications major with a theft charge,” he said
Luckily, a family member helped him earn his CDL and become a professional driver.
“I worked my way up into operations management across the oil field, construction, general freight. I got into the recruiting side of this space — and now I’m doing this great job where I get to help folks go through that same journey,” he said.
Hazelton says FreeWorld has graduated about 3,000 CDL holders over the past five years, with only a 5% recidivism rate.
Beyond the box
Practices in some places go beyond the box which is an area on an employment application that asks specifically if a person has a felony conviction.
“It’s bias, right?” Raynor said, offering an idea about how hiring might proceed in an unbiased manner.
“At KeHe, we have a very strict adjudication process that our compliance team reviews for individual cases,” she said. “Not all criminal cases are apples and oranges.”
Raynor’s company takes into account numerous factors, including the type of offense and the severity of the infraction.
Hazelton says KeHe’s numbers bear out the results, noting that participants in the company’s fair chance program have a lower turnover rate.
“They actually read responses to those pre-adverse notices, right, that most of us maybe just sit and expect to never see back,” Hazelton said. “But they’ve had 20% better retention.”
“So it just goes to show you, you give someone a good job, you give them a fair chance, maybe, and you get built-in loyalty,” Hazelton said. “You get someone who is grateful.”
In addition to the increased chance of hiring a loyal, dependable employee, federal and state funding is available for employers, ranging from a $2,400 tax credit to reimbursement for on-the-job-training, wage reimbursement, retention grants and more.
This story originally appeared in the January/February 2026 edition of Truckload Authority, the official publication of the Truckload Carriers Association.
Bruce Guthrie is an award-winning journalist who has lived in three states including Arkansas, Missouri and Georgia. During his nearly 20-year career, Bruce has served as managing editor and sports editor for numerous publications. He and his wife, Dana, who is also a journalist, are based in Carrollton, Georgia.
This reporter is not a truck driver, in fact this reporter is a democrat woke activist trying to promote criminals behind the is a bad policy. No person with a criminal record should be able to get a cdl.
This approach to fair chance hiring gets many things right, but it treats the psychological and emotional demands of commercial driving as background conditions rather than core design constraints. If we truly want justice-impacted drivers to succeed and stay safe, mental health and emotional stability can’t be add-ons—they have to shape how we recruit, train, schedule, supervise, and support from day one.
The piece is correct about isolation. Long stretches alone, disrupted routines, and distance from support systems weigh heavily, and they can hit harder for people rebuilding their lives. But naming the problem isn’t the same as solving it. We could move beyond generic “support” by engineering human connection into the early months: structured team-driving starts, recurring live check-ins at predictable times, easy access to teletherapy on the road, and a simple, stigma-free way to say, “I’m not okay,” that triggers real-time help instead of discipline. That would turn isolation from a risk factor drivers must endure into a risk we actively manage.
Stress is also more than an abstract concept. Operating an 80,000‑pound vehicle on deadline requires constant emotional regulation. Many justice-impacted people have trauma histories or have coped with stress in ways they’re trying to change. Saying they need “robust coping strategies” is true but vague. We could do better by using proven tools: brief, app-based cognitive behavioral and mindfulness training; stress-inoculation exercises built into CDL finishing programs; clear crisis plans and 24/7 hotlines staffed by clinicians familiar with trucking; and, just as importantly, training dispatchers and fleet managers in trauma‑informed supervision so their decisions don’t inadvertently escalate stress.
Sleep and circadian disruption deserve more attention because they drive both mood and safety. Irregular shifts and poor parking options compound anxiety and depression. Instead of leaving drivers to figure it out, carriers could build fatigue risk management into route planning, commit to more predictable start windows where possible, fund safe-parking access, and teach practical sleep hygiene tailored to truck cabs. For justice-impacted drivers, aligning routes with probation or parole requirements and medical appointments reduces background stress that otherwise erodes resilience.
The article’s idea of realistic job matching is a good start, but it remains a suggestion rather than a structure. A clearer, graduated pathway would help: begin with day-cab or short regional runs that allow frequent home time and mentor contact; move to longer regional with scheduled check-ins and opt-in team driving; then offer solo OTR once a driver demonstrates readiness. That progression should be transparent, with opt-in at each step and a nonpunitive way to step back if the solitude feels destabilizing.
Community-building through digital platforms and terminal gatherings matters, yet informal communities often fade when schedules tighten. We could institutionalize connection by launching peer cohorts that start together and meet monthly, pairing each driver with a trained peer mentor, and integrating families from the outset with orientation sessions on what life on the road looks like, how to communicate across time zones, and how to spot warning signs. Even simple enablers—stipends for data plans so drivers can video-call their kids from the cab—pay emotional dividends.
The outcomes cited are promising. Lower turnover at R.E. Garrison and a 5% recidivism rate for graduates show what’s possible with support. Still, we should guard against survivorship bias and track leading indicators, not just lagging outcomes. Brief weekly mood check-ins, help-seeking rates, near-miss reports, schedule volatility, detention time, and intent-to-quit are early signals we can act on. Protecting privacy and making data use transparent builds trust while letting carriers improve programs iteratively.
Safety should always frame the conversation, but safety is enhanced—not compromised—by smart psychological screening and support. Individualized assessments that consider trauma history, substance-use recovery status, and current coping resources, paired with relapse-prevention plans and clear, nonpunitive self-report options, reduce risk on the front end. When drivers believe asking for help won’t cost them their livelihood, they speak up before a problem becomes a hazard.
We also can’t separate mental health from day-to-day operations. Emotional strain spikes with unpredictable income, unpaid detention, disrespect at docks, or dispatch decisions that ignore human limits. Guaranteed minimum pay, reliable detention compensation, realistic appointment times, and dispatcher KPIs that include driver well-being aren’t perks; they’re mental health interventions in disguise. Dignity at work is a safety feature.
What’s here is a solid starting point, but it still leans on generalities. A more complete model would combine trauma-informed management, evidence-based coping skills training, predictable scheduling practices, safe parking access, continuous tele-mental health, structured social connection, and rigorous, privacy-respecting measurement. Fair chance hiring can be both compassionate and exacting. If we embed psychological needs into how the job is designed—not just how it’s discussed—we’ll keep the safety promise, reduce turnover beyond the encouraging early numbers, and make redemption a stable road rather than a narrow lane.