Most driver recruiting is sold as a placement fee: a fixed amount when someone is hired. It is simple to quote and simple to invoice. It also pays the vendor exactly the same whether the driver stays a year or quits before his second settlement.
What a flat fee rewards
Under a placement fee, the vendor’s job finishes at the hire. Everything after that is your problem. If the driver was oversold on home time, or the pay was described loosely, that cost lands on you and the vendor has already been paid.
We are not claiming bad intent. The incentive simply points that way, and incentives win over intentions across a few hundred hires.
What a daily fee rewards
Our fee runs only while a driver we found is on your roster and assigned to a truck. He leaves, it stops that day. That single mechanic changes several things at once:
- Overselling a seat becomes expensive for us, not just for you
- A driver who was never going to fit is a loss on our side of the ledger
- There is a reason for us to call him on day 7 and day 30 and find out the truth
It also caps out. After 365 paid days a driver is yours at no further charge, so a long-staying driver does not turn into an annuity.
The honest downside
Per day costs more than a cheap placement fee if the driver stays a long time. A driver who runs for you all year, at $25 a day, is about $9,000. That is more than most flat fees.
Two things make that trade worth taking, but you should weigh them rather than take our word:
- A driver who runs all year brought in roughly $200,000 of revenue, per ATRI’s 2026 cost figures. The fee is a few percent of that.
- The driver who quits in week three costs you nothing at all, and that is the case a flat fee punishes you for.
If your turnover is genuinely low, a flat fee may well be cheaper. We would rather say that here than have you work it out after signing.
What we never do
The fee is yours, not the driver’s. It cannot be deducted from his pay or from an owner-operator settlement. Any vendor who takes money from the driver side as well as yours is being paid twice for the same seat.