NTI’s Shaver focuses on importance of recruiting to retain truck drivers

Truck drivers know her as the “sunshine girl” on Sirius XM radio. And if Leah Shaver were a professional driver, her CB radio handle would be just that.

“My husband calls me sunshine girl because I love the sun; I’m a Florida girl,” Shaver, president and CEO of the National Transportation Institute (NTI), told FleetOwner. “Drivers say, ‘you’re always so happy.’ They see it more as happiness and encouragement. Drivers like it in terms of the positivity.”

That positivity translates over to Shaver’s primary job at NTI, which works with fleets to attract the right employees for their operations. NTI also is known through the industry for its driver wage and compensation data.

When Shaver is working with fleet executives and larger trucking companies, she encourages them to reflect what they admire, letting them know that, in turn, they will attract what they reflect.

“If you’re only reflecting in your campaigns and your company the folks that have been with you the longest, they may all look the same, act the same, they may have had similar accomplishments, and there is a big gap between the folks coming in and the folks who have been in the industry for 20 or 30 years,” Shaver explained. “There is a lot of room to grow between that zero to 20, so I think our industry has to do a much better job of reflecting what we need. When we do that, we tend to attract more of what we are looking for—think women, minorities, the next generation of young people.”

Shaver got her start in the industry 21 years ago as a driver recruiter. She also worked in human resources and took on additional roles like employee benefits, risk management, and marketing. Overall, her career has been focused on the working lifespan of a professional driver—from pre-hire to retire.

“I felt like it was my life’s best match—helping professional drivers find the right company for them,” Shaver said. “I wasn’t a high-volume recruiter. I was more focused on longevity, which is still part of my whole platform: recruit to retain, not just to fill the seat today.”

Shaver worked in driver recruiting at the same company for 14 years before she met the founder of NTI. The two decided to collaborate after she pitched an idea of pairing recruiting and retention data with compensation and benefits.

Referring to NTI as the “dream fit” of all her work experience, Shaver and her husband, Mark, eventually bought the company in 2020.

Over the course of her career, regardless of her sunny disposition, Shaver dealt with some struggles along the way. Early on, being a woman in the industry wasn’t common or as encouraged as it has become today.

“If you’re a minority of any sort, and you look in the room and see faces and people who all look very different from you, you don’t necessarily think this is a place for me,” Shaver explained. “In the workplace women really thrive in an environment where they are safe, encouraged, led by other women, where they see there are opportunities for folks just like them to grow, mentor, and be mentored.”

With few female mentors at the time, Shaver turned to her father for guidance. Whenever she was feeling frustrated with work, her father reassured her that there will be aggravations wherever she goes, teaching her the importance of perseverance and sticking with the job she loves.

“Early on it was my father, and later on my husband and I ended up working together a lot,” Shaver said. “We really work well together. We pair each other’s strengths really well. I’ve had a lot of encouragement in my personal life.”

Shaver built on the encouragement from her personal relationships and used it to help other women in the industry. She joined the Women in Trucking Association in 2015 and WIT’s board in 2016. There, she began thinking about new ideas and opportunities to help other women in the industry advance. Inevitably, that helped her grow as well.

In 2019, Shaver joined Sirius XM radio as a guest host. Now, the first Thursday of every month she has her own show called “Payday with Leah Shaver.” During her show, drivers call in and ask Shaver advice on human resource issues, whether it be related to their paycheck or any conflicts with their manager or company.

During the show, Shaver helps drivers look at their frustrations from a different perspective and tries to help them tackle the problem head-on.

“I think back to my dad’s advice to me: Are these issues that exist everywhere and that we can work through, or is it something that really is a true problem,” Shaver noted. “I can think of only two or three conversations where we said to a driver, ‘that it’s really not a good situation.’”

Shaver also has become a staunch advocate of promoting trucking within her community, and she encourages all within the industry to do the same.

“Promote what we do so our kids are excited about their parents’ jobs and understand the significant contributions that trucking makes,” Shaver emphasized. “It’s something we are getting a lot better at, but there is still so much room to grow, and it’s an area that drivers especially want to be involved in. They want to mentor new drivers or young people that are even thinking about it. They want to share what they do. Drivers take a lot of pride in what they do, and we just need to give them opportunities to do that.”

Recently, Shaver had a baby boy, and from what she says, he has no choice but to get into trucking.

“We have a bookshelf full of books about trucking and construction,” Shaver said with a laugh. “I sent my husband a bookshelf that is shaped like a truck. We have been in the trucking industry for most of our professional careers, so of course, our son is going to be a trucker.”