Keeping a Crew, in Numbers: Turnover, Lifting Injuries, Heat and What the Evidence Says Helps

Updated September 2026

The crew is most of the cost of a hauling job and all of the risk. This guide collects what the government and the safety institutes publish about how often people quit, how often they get hurt, what that costs, and what actually reduces it — and separates that from the turnover-cost numbers that circulate without a source.

How often people leave

BLS’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey counts quits every month. For 2025, the annual-average quits rate was 2.2% a month in transportation, warehousing and utilities, 1.8% in construction and 2.2% across all private employers — roughly a fifth to a quarter of the workforce quitting over a year. Total separations, including layoffs and firings, ran 4.0% a month in both transportation and construction.

Median tenure with the current employer (January 2024) was 3.4 years in transportation and warehousing, 4.2 in construction and 3.2 in administrative and waste services, against 3.9 for all workers. For workers aged 25–34 it was 2.7 years; for 55–64, 9.6.

So the base rate is not dramatic: most people in these trades stay a few years. The crew that turns over every season is telling you something about the job, not the labor market.

How often they get hurt

BLS’s injury survey for 2024 gives the rate of recordable injuries and illnesses per 100 full-time workers:

Household and office goods moving — 4.3 (2.4 involving days away from work)
Waste collection — 4.7 (2.2 with days away)
Truck transportation — 2.9 (1.6 with days away)
Waste management and remediation overall — 3.5
All private industry — 2.3 (0.8 with days away)

Movers and waste crews are hurt at about twice the private-industry rate, and lose days from work at about three times it. A five-person moving crew at 4.3 per 100 can expect roughly one recordable injury every four to five years — and that is the industry average, which includes companies with real programs.

What hurts them: across private industry in 2023–24, overexertion and repetitive motion — lifting, in plain terms — was the largest cause of days-away cases at 26.8%, with falls, slips and trips close behind at 26.1%. The median overexertion case kept the worker out 14 days, against 8 for injuries as a whole. Liberty Mutual’s insurer index, which ranks causes by workers’ comp cost, has put "overexertion involving outside sources" first every year since 2001; its 2026 edition put it at $13.1 billion nationally. (An insurer’s study — but it is their claims data.)

What an injury costs

The National Safety Council puts the average cost of a medically consulted work injury at $48,000 (2024), and NCCI’s lost-time workers’ comp claims for 2022–23 averaged $47,316 across all causes. Those are averages across every kind of injury and employer.

OSHA’s "$afety Pays" estimator is built from NCCI claim data and is worth running for your own numbers. For a single lost-time strain, it gives $32,023 in direct workers’ comp cost and about $35,000 in indirect cost — $67,000 in all; a sprain about $64,000; heat prostration about $79,000. At a 3% margin, OSHA’s arithmetic says a business needs roughly $2.2 million in extra sales to pay for one strain. The claim data behind it is from 2015–17 policy years and covers lost-time claims only, so the direct figure is if anything low today.

The indirect half is the part a small operator feels: the truck that goes out one person short, the owner on the job instead of the phone, the hire made in a hurry, and a workers’ comp experience modifier that raises the premium on every payroll dollar for three years.

Lifting: what NIOSH says

NIOSH’s lifting equation starts from a load constant of 51 pounds — the most it recommends lifting under ideal conditions: load close to the body, at waist height, no twisting, a good grip, done occasionally. Every departure from ideal reduces that limit through six multipliers. A refrigerator, a sleeper sofa or a full contractor bag is not an ideal lift, and the recommended limit for it is a fraction of 51.

On back belts, NIOSH’s position has not changed in thirty years and no later study has overturned it: it does not recommend back belts to prevent injuries among workers who have never been injured, and says the remedy is to redesign the task, not to strap the worker. Dollies, straps, ramps, a second person and a lift gate are the redesign.

Heat: the first week is the dangerous one

From OSHA’s page on protecting new workers: almost half of heat-related deaths occur on a worker’s first day on the job or first day back after time away, and over 70% occur in the first week. (That comes from a review of OSHA’s own fatality investigations — a small case series, not a rate — but it is consistent and it is what the agency tells employers.) The reason is acclimatization: the body takes days to adapt to working in heat, and a new hire started on a July afternoon has none.

There is still no federal heat standard. OSHA published a proposed rule in August 2024, held hearings in mid-2025 and closed comments in October 2025, with no final rule as of September 2026 — but it runs a National Emphasis Program on heat, renewed in April 2026, and enforces under the General Duty Clause. Its advice is three words, water, rest, shade, plus shorter shifts and more breaks for anyone in their first days.

The turnover-cost numbers you have seen

"Replacing an employee costs six to nine months of salary — SHRM." We could not find any SHRM publication that says it. SHRM’s actual benchmark is a cost-per-hire of about $4,129 (2016, from its members), and one SHRM article quotes "50% to 200% of salary" without a study. The best-evidenced figure is a Center for American Progress review of 30 case studies: about 16% of annual pay for jobs under $30,000 and about 20% for jobs up to $75,000. For a $45,000 crew member that is roughly $7,000–9,000 — real money, but not nine months’ pay.

"Turnover costs 33% of salary." This is a consulting firm’s rule of thumb; its own site says it "uses" 33.3% as an estimate and does not show a derivation. Label it an estimate.

"Truck driver turnover is 90%." True, for one thing: annualized turnover at large long-haul truckload carriers, as surveyed by the American Trucking Associations, which counted every departure including layoffs and recruits who lasted days. It averaged about 93% at large truckload carriers and 78% at small ones over 1996–2023 — and 12% for less-than-truckload linehaul drivers who sleep at home. It never described local work, and ATA has not published it publicly since 2023.

What the numbers suggest doing

Start new hires slowly, and never alone in heat. Half of heat deaths are first-day deaths. Shorter shifts and more breaks for the first week are the cheapest safety measure in this guide.
Equip the lift, don’t brace the lifter. Dollies, straps, ramps, lift gates and a two-person rule for anything heavy or awkward. NIOSH is explicit that belts are not the answer.
Log every injury and near-miss the day it happens, with the job and the load. The pattern across a year is what tells you which task to change.
Run OSHA’s estimator once with your own margin, so the price of one strain is a number you know rather than a feeling.
Use the real replacement cost — 16–20% of pay — when deciding whether a raise is cheaper than a hire. It usually is.
Keep the record of hours and pay tidy. Turnover disputes are wage disputes; the money guide in this series covers what the law requires you to keep.

RelayPoint, in your trade’s words: Movers · Junk removal & hauling · Roll-off & dumpsters · Landscaping & tree service · Portable sanitation & septic

Sources

This is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice, and RelayPoint is not a law firm, an accountant or a compliance consultant. The figures are other organisations’ published findings, read in September 2026 at the addresses listed under Sources; they describe the businesses those organisations studied, not yours, and none of them is a result of using RelayPoint.