The extended trucking downturn the industry has gutted out since the end of the pandemic is, by many accounts, winding down. And we can only hope we’ve reached the “make-hay-while-the-sun-shines” point of the freight cycle.

What that may mean for many fleets is that they will put idle trucks back in service and address all those less critical maintenance issues they’ve been putting off—kind of like how I procrastinate in writing this monthly column until everything else is done.

Lucky for me, I can write whatever I want, and if it’s bad, only my fragile ego is damaged. Shops don’t have that luxury. Fleets have little time to determine if their maintenance teams can answer the call to handle the influx of demand.

For the most part, I believe they will. The waxing and waning of freight demand is nothing new to the industry. But a newer wrinkle has arrived this time around: the onset of Peak 65. That’s the term for this current era of 4 million or more Baby Boomers annually hitting the age of 65. The trend runs through 2027 and amounts to over 11,000 people reaching retirement age every day. And the impact on the skilled trades, such as vehicle repair, will be noticeable and likely detrimental.

Many of those retirees will leave leadership gaps that need to be filled, often by technicians moving up from the shop floor. With two out of three diesel shops already reporting being understaffed during the Great Freight Recession, based on a 2025 ATRI survey, what will they do when trucks start to accrue more miles and need more maintenance?

They’ll need to hire more techs, obviously. In the short term, perhaps they will entice technicians unhappy with their current situation with higher pay and better benefits. The longer game is reaching out to vocational schools and finding some apprentices to train, or the “grow your own” approach. Still, these don’t address the central issue of understaffing: turnover.

And if you don’t solve the root cause of your shop’s turnover, then any overpaid vet you hire, or raw recruits you mold into serviceable techs, will still leave, continuing an all-too-familiar vicious cycle.

The good news about turnover is that the decision to quit takes time, excusing things out of your control like life changes. It develops gradually, like a leak dripping onto your electrical system, quietly corroding connections until something finally snaps.

Christopher Lawson, the founder of Technician Find, a consulting and marketing business for independent shops that offers creative ways to hire techs, said these snaps happen after a series of communication breakdowns with management.

He gave the example of a technician repeatedly reporting a broken lift. If management never acts, eventually the technician stops reporting problems and starts looking elsewhere.

“When I talk to a tech who’s leaving, or they’re shopping for a new job, the top reason is disgust,” Lawson said. “They’re basically disgusted with themselves, because they’ve tolerated this situation for so long.”

Kenneth Eggen, an executive fleet consultant and founder of K.M.E. Services, said this is a common sentiment: “Technicians don’t feel like anybody cares about them out there.”

And when they lack consistent, good leadership, they stop caring, he said.

“Apathy is a real thing; people feel beat down,” Eggen offered, citing the three-year-long downturn, during which investment dried up, and corners started getting cut.

And lack of care during a brake repair or tire change is far more dangerous than a mid-shift walk-out.

“If the management is bad or apathetic, then everything downstream is going to be that magnified by 10,” Eggen warned.

Eggen and Lawson, though, make their living turning shops around, not complaining about them. There are several ways to do this, such as improving the amenities in your shop, but both say culture is the real differentiator.

“Culture is becoming an amenity, because the cultures are so bad in so many places,” Eggen lamented. He should know, having managed, in his estimation, hundreds of them in the past 40 years.

And by culture, I do not mean the performative corporate B.S. version defined by some twit who thinks The Last Jedi was the best Star Wars movie; I mean real meat-and-potatoes culture: treat employees with respect, listen to their concerns, fix what you can, and be transparent about what you can’t. Trust and honesty, to put it simply.

“The shops that I see really run the most smoothly are the ones where everything is transparent,” Lawson said. “They go over their [profits & losses] with their team, share how much revenue they brought in, where everything went, and the bonus pool.”

That turns apathy into accountability because everyone is pulling in the same direction.

“When you get everybody on the same side, they aren’t wasting shop supplies anymore; they aren’t throwing rags away in clips, because they can see how their role fits into creating profitability,” Lawson offered.

For managers wondering if they have a culture problem, Lawson and Eggen offer the same advice: ask the tool distributors who regularly visit your shop. They see dozens of operations and can spot a good or bad culture right away—and also hear the best gossip.

Lawson said a quick talk with the tool guy prevented one shop from losing its best tech. He gave a heads up that the tech was looking around, and the manager finally had a heart-to-heart.

“He was going to leave because of a couple of issues that had been stacking up,” Lawson said. “He never had the opportunity to vent or to communicate that, because that wasn’t part of their culture.”

And culture is the one thing even small shops can excel at to fight turnover.

“National chains can always outspend you, but you can out-culture them,” Lawson finished.  

For more tips on improving shop culture, read: 

• The case for investing in shop amenities
• Cool approach to technician retention
• Four ways for understaffed shops to improve culture and retention
• Staying staffed by growing talent from within