How a mini-ownership model improves driver retention for fleet owners (with Marina Ivanov)

A driver quits with two weeks’ notice. The truck sits while hiring starts over. At a small carrier, one open seat can stall a lane for weeks and eat into the margin on every load that truck was supposed to move.

In a recent episode of Behind the Freight, Todd Waldron and John Howland sat down with Marina Ivanov, CEO of Apex Transit Solutions. Marina grew up as the daughter of an owner-operator, and she and her husband started Apex in survival mode before building it into a people-first operation.

Her approach to keeping drivers leans less on pay bumps and more on ownership, honesty, and knowing what each person needs. On the episode she walks through how that took shape.

Access the full conversation on Behind the Freight:

• Apple Podcasts
• YouTube
• Spotify

How Apex got started

Marina did not set out to build a trucking company. In 2012 she was a dental hygienist who planned to become a dentist.

She had grown up experiencing the hard side of the business up close. She still remembers being stuck in a broken-down truck for three days in a random town, and for a long time she wanted nothing to do with trucking.

When she and her husband started Apex, there was no plan to run a hundred trucks. They were trying to pay the bills and keep the lights on.

In those early days Marina did most of the work herself, from invoicing to hiring to payroll. She taught herself accounting software from videos online, with a simple goal: grow enough that one broken truck could not sink the whole company.

Give managers a stake in the numbers

Doing all of that herself left Marina with a close feel for the numbers. As Apex grew past what one person could track, she wanted her managers to have that same view instead of leaving it in her head.

Her answer was to give each fleet manager their own P&L. Every manager runs a group of trucks and sees exactly what those trucks earn and what they cost to run.

Because the manager shares in the upside when the number is positive, she says they start to think more like an owner than an employee. Her reasoning is that good people still do not see the business the way the owner does, because they do not own a piece of it.

She has found that once a manager has something real riding on the outcome, they tend to care more about keeping their drivers happy and about finding freight that pays without racking up empty miles between loads.

Learn what motivates each person

Marina does not assume one motivation lever works for a whole team. She has every team member take a short quiz to find out what drives them.

Some people respond to words of praise. Others would rather have someone sit down and help with the actual work.

Knowing what each person responds to lets her manage them individually, which she says builds steadier relationships than treating the whole team the same.

Another fleet owner might take something simpler from it: ask each person what keeps them going instead of guessing.

Respect and steady benefits keep drivers around

Marina believes drivers tend to stay where they are treated like people. She added paid time off and parental leave, both uncommon at small carriers.

She also set a tone where drivers are not shouted at over the radio. She credits that combination for a lot of why her drivers stay.

Her point is not that benefits are cheap. She thinks a driver who feels respected and gets a steady paycheck has less reason to chase the next carrier promising an extra nickel a mile.

“You don’t have to be yelled at in a trucking company. You can be treated with respect and dignity.”

Match your service level to what the business can carry

Over-delivering can quietly drain a small carrier, and Marina learned that the hard way. She once sent a truck a hundred miles out of route to cover a single load, on the theory that working harder would earn higher rates down the line.

Her own team eventually told her the effort was costing the company more than it brought in.

What she settled on was balance, paired with honesty. When something goes wrong on a load, she has found that telling the customer why tends to build more trust than pretending everything is fine while the company eats the cost.

“It’s okay to let a customer down because you’re hurting your own company.”

Choose curiosity over judgment with your people

Marina spent years signing emails under her husband’s name because she did not think brokers would take a woman seriously. She eventually decided her empathy was a strength in a field that runs mostly on men, not something to hide.

These days she uses her voice to push for driver safety and better truck parking, and she leads her own team by trying to understand a situation before assigning blame.

“Curiosity over judgment every time.”

What retention really comes down to

For Marina, keeping drivers is less about any single tactic and more about ownership, honest communication, and treating people like people. Giving managers a stake in the numbers, asking what motivates each person, and setting a service level the business can actually carry are the pieces that worked for Apex.

Whether they fit another carrier depends on the shop, but the thread running through all of them is respect for the person doing the work.

Listen to the full episode for Marina’s take on dignity, ownership, and leading with empathy in freight.

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