How Cheema Freightlines Cut Truck Driver Turnover in Half (Without a Recruiting Machine)
By DriverOpenDoor Insights
TL;DR
Cheema Freightlines operates approximately 500 trucks with only two recruiters. Instead of constantly replacing departing drivers, the fleet focuses on keeping the right drivers by listening every week, responding quickly, and making sure serious concerns reach the leaders who can act on them.
Cheema Freightlines operates approximately 500 trucks with only two recruiters. Instead of constantly replacing departing drivers, the company focuses on keeping the right drivers by listening every week, responding quickly, and making sure serious concerns reach the leaders who can act on them.
Their experience demonstrates why driver retention is not simply a recruiting problem. It is often a communication problem.
A company built by truckers, for truckers
When Harman Cheema helped start Cheema Freightlines with his father 20 years ago, he was a sophomore in high school.
His father was a driver and owner-operator. They did not know the company would eventually grow to approximately 500 trucks, but they knew what kind of company they wanted to build.
A company started by truckers, for truckers.
That principle still shapes how Cheema Freightlines approaches its drivers today.
We can't do it without our drivers. That's the most important piece of the puzzle that we have here.
For many fleets, growth creates distance between leadership and the people behind the wheel. Cheema Freightlines is using technology to close that distance before it becomes a retention problem.
The industry keeps filling the bucket instead of fixing the leak
When driver turnover rises, the standard response is often to hire more recruiters.
More job postings. More advertising. More sign-on incentives. More drivers moving through the same revolving door.
Cheema Freightlines took a different approach.
The company operates approximately 500 trucks with only two recruiters. Cheema says the recruiters do an excellent job and will always play an important role, but the fleet does not need a recruiting department of 10 people because it focuses on retaining the drivers it has already worked hard to hire.
We've always looked at things differently. Let's worry about the retention, which is the leaky bucket, and not necessarily keep filling it with water from a recruiting standpoint.
Recruiting will always be necessary. Drivers retire. Families relocate. Business needs change.
But when a good driver fits the fleet's culture and customers, the first question should not be how to replace that driver.
It should be what the fleet can do to keep them.
Sometimes the answer is a better lane. Sometimes it is more predictable home time. Sometimes it is a pay issue, a maintenance concern, or a breakdown in communication.
The problem is that leadership cannot fix an issue it never hears about.
Knowing your drivers' names is not a retention strategy
Many fleet leaders genuinely care about their drivers.
They know their names. They celebrate birthdays. They maintain an open-door policy. They believe drivers can call whenever something is wrong.
The intentions are real.
The turnover can still be 100%.
Jeff Friesel, senior vice president of corporate operations at Cheema Freightlines, has spent 30 years in the trucking industry. He oversees the safety, maintenance, and driver-services sides of the business.
His experience has taught him that drivers will be honest, but only when fleets give them a practical and trusted way to communicate.
When you're simply asking, 'How's your day?' it can be, 'It's great,' or, 'It's terrible, and here's why.'
Cheema sends its drivers a DriverOpenDoor check-in every Wednesday morning. The feedback begins arriving immediately.
Some of it is positive. Some of it is not.
The negative feedback is often the most valuable because it gives the fleet an opportunity to act while the driver is still employed, still engaged, and still open to a conversation.
A driver's experience can change quickly. The load they picked up, the miles they received, last week's paycheck, a maintenance problem, or something happening at home can turn an otherwise normal week into the moment they begin considering another job.
Your driver could love you every day. But that one time they're not happy and you can't make that touch point, that human connection with them, they're already looking for another job.
The moment that matters is often invisible
Drivers rarely announce their resignation weeks in advance.
They signal it.
The signal might be frustration about miles. A comment about dispatch. A sudden change in tone. A message that never explicitly says, "I quit," but clearly communicates that the relationship is breaking down.
Cheema Freightlines experienced this during a holiday weekend.
A driver submitted feedback that showed significant frustration. The driver did not use the word "quit," but the message suggested that they were considering leaving.
DriverOpenDoor's critical-alert system identified the risk and immediately emailed the Cheema team.
The fleet could see which driver needed help and reach out immediately, even though it was a holiday weekend.
We still had that visibility right away.
That is the difference between collecting feedback and operationalizing it.
A comment sitting inside a quarterly report cannot save a driver who is leaving this weekend. A critical concern needs to reach the right person while there is still time to repair the relationship.
Growth creates distance unless you deliberately close it
When a fleet has 25 or 50 trucks, an owner may know every driver personally.
At 500 trucks, that becomes difficult.
At 1,000 or 10,000 trucks, it becomes impossible.
Cheema is candid about that reality. He cannot honestly say he knows every driver in the company by name. But fleet growth should not mean drivers lose access to leadership or stop believing that their opinions matter.
He recalled a story about a four-million-mile driver who was considering leaving his company. Despite his extraordinary experience and loyalty, the driver did not know who owned the fleet or whether senior leadership ever heard his concerns.
That is how a company can recognize a driver's mileage while still failing to make the driver feel recognized.
The solution is not for the CEO to personally handle every equipment complaint. The solution is to route feedback intelligently.
Day-to-day operational issues can go to driver services, safety, maintenance, or dispatch. Feedback from mentors, million-mile drivers, elite performers, or the safest drivers can also be routed to senior leaders who have committed time to hearing from those groups.
I think that's what sets this apart. We can actually have that feedback going directly to who needs to be able to see it.
Technology does not replace the human connection.
It makes that connection possible at scale.
Do not just ask general questions
Weekly check-ins help fleets understand the overall driver experience, but Cheema Freightlines also uses targeted campaigns to investigate specific operational questions.
The fleet has asked drivers for feedback about customers, industry conditions, fuel optimization, and tools designed to improve fuel efficiency.
The feedback was constructive because it came from the people experiencing those systems on the road.
This turns driver listening into more than a retention program.
It becomes an operational intelligence system.
Drivers see which customers create unnecessary delays. They know when a fuel solution produces impractical stops. They experience equipment problems before those problems appear clearly in a report. They understand where company policies make sense on paper but break down in practice.
A fleet that consistently asks for that knowledge can improve far more than turnover.
It can improve safety, maintenance, customer service, fuel efficiency, and the daily driver experience.
What other fleet leaders can learn from Cheema Freightlines
Cheema's advice to fleet owners is straightforward: the larger the company becomes, the easier it is to move further away from the driver who helped build it.
The answer is not necessarily another recruiting campaign.
Let technology handle the work of consistently gathering and organizing feedback. Then make sure people inside the organization are responsible for reading it, responding to it, and reconnecting with drivers.
That may even mean repositioning some recruiting resources toward retention, driver communication, or programs that strengthen the relationship after a driver is hired.
Because the goal is not simply to get drivers through the door.
The goal is to give good drivers a reason to stay.
Key Takeaways
- Retention over recruiting: Cheema Freightlines operates 500 trucks with only 2 recruiters by focusing on keeping drivers rather than constantly replacing them.
- Weekly feedback loop: Drivers receive an anonymous SMS check-in every Wednesday morning, giving leadership real-time visibility into driver sentiment.
- Critical alerts save drivers: DriverOpenDoor's AI identifies urgent feedback and alerts the team immediately — even on weekends — so no at-risk driver goes unheard.
- Intelligent routing: Feedback is routed to the right leader (dispatch, safety, maintenance, or senior leadership) rather than buried in a quarterly report.
- Beyond retention: Targeted feedback campaigns turn driver insights into operational improvements across fuel efficiency, customer service, and equipment management.
The bottom line
Cheema Freightlines did not reduce its dependence on recruiting by ignoring growth.
It did it by building retention into the way the company operates.
The fleet asks drivers how they are doing every week. It allows them to respond honestly. It uses critical alerts to recognize potential departures. It routes feedback to the leaders who can act on it. And it uses targeted campaigns to learn from drivers about specific parts of the operation.
Driver turnover is often treated as something that happens without warning.
It does not.
The warning is usually there. The challenge is hearing it, understanding it, and reaching the driver before another fleet does.
DriverOpenDoor sends weekly anonymous SMS check-ins to your drivers, analyzes their responses, and alerts your team when a driver may need immediate support.
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