May 2009
Almost every day a driver tells me "if I could just explain my situation to someone" or "the DOT says I'm qualified why isn't that enough" or "how I'm supposed to get the experience if no one will hire me".
So who sets the hiring criteria for these trucking companies?
While the DOT establishes minimum criteria for a commercial driver, individual employers are free (within certain legal requirements) to establish higher standards for their business.
For a trucking company, hiring drivers is about balancing risks with operational needs. It often is a moving target that changes as the business changes. Rarely are standards fully decided by one person, whether its the company's safety department or an insurance underwriting group, an attempt is made to balance operational needs with safety risk factors to determine a set of criteria that keeps trucks full at the lowest cost.
The simple reality is that the folks who set the hiring criteria for trucking companies are never going to explain to you or me exactly why their criteria was set where it was or why it may be different from another company's. Nor in most cases are they going to listen to a plea (deserved or not) to deviate from the set criteria. As long as it meets the DOT minimums and doesn't violate employment or discrimination laws, companies are free to hire those employees that best match up to whatever standard they've come up with that they think will allow them to run their companies in a profitable manner. And the folks who head up recruiting and safety departments didn't get where they are by risking their jobs or their company's profits making exceptions to the rules for individual drivers.
In a down economy like today, those minimum hiring standards have gotten tougher because companies believe it will save them money at a time when freight is slow and the number of drivers who will meet higher standards is plentiful.
So, what can you do?
Instead of trying to convince someone to make an exception in your case or continuing to beat your head against the wall - instead target your job search based on a realistic assessment of your personal situation. One thing is for sure - the hiring requirements are not the same from one trucking company to another - nor are they the same for large and small or interstate (multiple states) and intrastate (within one state) carriers.
Generally, a review of a driver's qualifications will come down to the following areas:
- MVR and driving history including moving violations, DUI's and accidents (accidents as reported on your mvr). As a professional driver if your MVR is bad and you have too many serious moving violations, DUI's, accidents or suspensions - then you really need another line of work until the issues age and go away. No company hiring truck drivers or their insurance company wants to hire someone as a professional driver who has a bad recent driving history.
- Criminal convictions have consequences. How or why are secondary to the fact of the conviction itself. So, if you have a recent felony, targeting your job search to large interstate companies hauling other people's freight that puts you in unsupervised contact with their customers and the general public is pretty much a waste of time cause it's not going to happen. Instead concentrate on smaller intrastate haulers, many times hauling their own products - logs, coal, grain, waste, fuel, aggregates, heavy equipment, machinery, etc., whose requirements may be different because the job is different.
- Experience matters and just as important is how relevant that experience is to what the prospective employer does. Driving the truck is not all there is to the job. So, if you've spent your career driving a fuel tanker locally for a local chain of convenience stores, an OTR freight hauling company may not be willing to consider that experience as relevant to anything they're doing. And if you're new to driving, you have to recognize that it costs less for a company to put an experienced driver to work right away than it does to train you. Hiring freezes affect the least experienced drivers first - a fault that may be traced more to the driving school that charged you thousands of dollars for a non existant job than the company that's trying to survive tough times.
- Work history bears some similarity to experience. A large company hauling general freight interstate may think 5-6 jobs over 3 years is pretty common, but a lot of companies that hire truck drivers will see that as a serious job hopper and won't even consider your application. On the other hand, if your work history is excellent with only one or two employers, some companies may not put as much emphasis on your whether your experience is relevant, figuring you're the kind of person who will stick around for awhile. And if you have a work history problem or several property damage incidents on DAC, while it may prevent you from being hired by a couple hundred of the larger freight haulers, there are literally thousands of employers hiring truck drivers who don't use DAC or care what it says and whose hiring decisions are made by insurance underwriters looking at public records and your MVR.
I'm not telling you to mislead an employer with your application, in fact I'm saying the exact opposite - DO NOT LIE and answer every question asked truthfully. But, recognize that different employers have different criteria in what they're looking for in an employee and two companies may not see the same issue in the same light. So instead of trying to scam the system or lie your way into a job or hoping you can convice someone to make an exception in your case - concentrate your job search on prospective employers to whom your particular background issue may not be as much cause for concern.
