Cost per hire for truck drivers: Indeed vs Facebook ads

The formula

Cost per hire is everything you spent to hire drivers divided by the number of drivers who actually started. Add ad spend, job board fees and agency fees, plus recruiter time if you can estimate it, then divide by hires. Two stages sit in the middle: the share of applicants you reach and qualify, and the share of those who start.

Because those shares are specific to your company, any market-wide number for “average cost per hire” hides more than it shows. We do not quote one. Calculate your own from a month of data.

What our clients’ numbers show, and what they do not

• Ruby Express: 1,134 driver applications at $0.60 each, through Meta Lead Ads. That implies roughly $680 of ad spend for the period (1,134 × $0.60).
• TRM Express: 790+ driver applications at under $1 each, through Meta Lead Ads, so under roughly $790.

Both figures come from each client’s Meta Ads Manager. They are costs per application. They are not costs per hire, because the number of hires depends on how fast and how well each company followed up, and we do not publish hire counts for clients. To see how the step from application to hire works, use the illustration below.

An illustration with made-up rates

Suppose, only for the arithmetic, that you pay $1 per application and that 1 in 20 applicants ends up hired. Then 20 applications cost $20 per hire. If only 1 in 50 is hired, the same $1 application means $50 per hire. The ad cost did not change; the follow-up did. These rates are examples, not data. Replace them with yours.

How Indeed and Facebook ads differ

• Intent. Indeed reaches people already searching for a job, so each visitor is closer to applying. Facebook and Instagram reach drivers who were not looking, which widens the pool but needs a clear offer.
• Pricing model. Indeed’s sponsored jobs are sold on a budget with its own pricing rules; check current terms on Indeed’s employer site, as they change. Meta bills for ad delivery and lets you pay for lead-form results at an auction price.
• Competition on the page. On a job board, your listing sits next to other carriers’ listings, and the same applicants see all of them. An ad leading to your own landing page shows only your job.
• Data you keep. With your own ad account and pixel, the campaign history and learning stay with you. A job board listing does not give you that.
• Targeting limits. Meta treats job ads as a special ad category with limited targeting (details).

Neither channel is better in all cases. Many carriers use both and compare cost per hire after a month. Indeed can be the right place for drivers who search; Facebook is how you reach the ones who do not.

How to compare them yourself

• Give each channel its own tracking: a separate form, link or question “How did you hear about us?”.
• Mark every applicant’s outcome: contacted, qualified, interview, hired, rejected.
• After 30 days, divide each channel’s total spend by its hires.
• Keep the channel that gets you hires cheaper, then test the next idea.

This is the reason our Telegram cards carry status buttons: they turn the daily flow into the data this calculation needs.

Where to go next

For the practical side, read CDL driver recruitment ads and how to hire CDL-A drivers fast. To see what the pilot includes, visit the truck driver recruiting agency page.

Sources and notes

Client numbers come from each client’s Meta Ads Manager, all time through November 14, 2026. For background on the role and demand, see the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics outlook for heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers. We do not publish market-average cost-per-hire figures because we could not verify one that applies to your company, and an unverified number is worse than none.