Driver Record And CDL Job Placement
Topic 6581 | Page 1
Mitchell, it's gonna be tough for you right now. You can always try, but you are going to have to apply like crazy. Reckless driving tickets are really frowned on by the trucking companies. I don't think any of the Company-Sponsored Training programs are going to touch you, which means you would need to go to a private school. Before you spend any money on schooling you need to first make sure that you are hire-able. Take a look at Understanding Pre-Hires and make sure you have some pre-hires before attending a private school.
Another option for you is to just put your trucking career on hold for a few years and make sure you keep a clean driving record for the next three years. Then you will have a little better time at trying to get in, but there will still be some companies who won't touch you. In a driving career it is a serious matter when it comes to protecting your license. Prospective employers want to see that you have taken that matter seriously, or else they may think they would be wasting their time with you.
CDL:
Commercial Driver's License (CDL)
A CDL is required to drive any of the following vehicles:
- Any combination of vehicles with a gross combined weight rating (GCWR) of 26,001 or more pounds, providing the gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of the vehicle being towed is in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any single vehicle with a GVWR of 26,001 or more pounds, or any such vehicle towing another not in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any vehicle, regardless of size, designed to transport 16 or more persons, including the driver.
- Any vehicle required by federal regulations to be placarded while transporting hazardous materials.
Pre-hire:
What Exactly Is A Pre-Hire Letter?
Pre-hire letters are acceptance letters from trucking companies to students, or even potential students, to verify placement. The trucking companies are saying in writing that the student, or potential student, appears to meet the company's minimum hiring requirements and is welcome to attend their orientation at the company’s expense once he or she graduates from truck driving school and has their CDL in hand.
We have an excellent article that will help you Understand The Pre-Hire Process.
A Pre-Hire Letter Is Not A Guarantee Of Employment
The people that receive a pre-hire letter are people who meet the company's minimum hiring requirements, but it is not an employment contract. It is an invitation to orientation, and the orientation itself is a prerequisite to employment.
During the orientation you will get a physical, drug screen, and background check done. These and other qualifications must be met before someone in orientation is officially hired.
Pre-hires:
What Exactly Is A Pre-Hire Letter?
Pre-hire letters are acceptance letters from trucking companies to students, or even potential students, to verify placement. The trucking companies are saying in writing that the student, or potential student, appears to meet the company's minimum hiring requirements and is welcome to attend their orientation at the company’s expense once he or she graduates from truck driving school and has their CDL in hand.
We have an excellent article that will help you Understand The Pre-Hire Process.
A Pre-Hire Letter Is Not A Guarantee Of Employment
The people that receive a pre-hire letter are people who meet the company's minimum hiring requirements, but it is not an employment contract. It is an invitation to orientation, and the orientation itself is a prerequisite to employment.
During the orientation you will get a physical, drug screen, and background check done. These and other qualifications must be met before someone in orientation is officially hired.
Company-sponsored Training:
A Company-Sponsored Training Program is a school that is owned and operated by a trucking company.
The schooling often requires little or no money up front. Instead of paying up-front tuition you will sign an agreement to work for the company for a specified amount of time after graduation, usually around a year, at a slightly lower rate of pay in order to pay for the training.
If you choose to quit working for the company before your year is up, they will normally require you to pay back a prorated amount of money for the schooling. The amount you pay back will be comparable to what you would have paid if you went to an independently owned school.
Company-sponsored training can be an excellent way to get your career underway if you can't afford the tuition up front for private schooling.
Thanks for the reply Old School.
I have looked further into this and have found I can receive a 4 point credit on my Driver Record if I complete some driver safety classes. Is this something that could aid my quest for employment? In a related sense, would cleaning my record completely (with the aid of legal representation) positively affect my ability to be hired? Also, in the case that I do get hired, would my *future* work history bear more weight than my driver record?
Thanks again for any and all information.
10/07/2013 4* Speeding 80/60
What does the "4*" stand for? I just want to make sure I understand your record completely.
I'm not sure if the point deduction at school or legal representation will help any unless the actual charges were reduced. Fortunately the one ticket is from 2009 so some companies won't consider that but others will because it's a reckless driving charge.
At this point I think applying for pre-hires and going through private school is going to be your only option. But make sure you have at least two or three pre-hires before you even commit to attending a private school. You certainly don't want to spend your time and money in school just to find out you can't land a job. It happens, so be aware of that.
Pre-hire:
What Exactly Is A Pre-Hire Letter?
Pre-hire letters are acceptance letters from trucking companies to students, or even potential students, to verify placement. The trucking companies are saying in writing that the student, or potential student, appears to meet the company's minimum hiring requirements and is welcome to attend their orientation at the company’s expense once he or she graduates from truck driving school and has their CDL in hand.
We have an excellent article that will help you Understand The Pre-Hire Process.
A Pre-Hire Letter Is Not A Guarantee Of Employment
The people that receive a pre-hire letter are people who meet the company's minimum hiring requirements, but it is not an employment contract. It is an invitation to orientation, and the orientation itself is a prerequisite to employment.
During the orientation you will get a physical, drug screen, and background check done. These and other qualifications must be met before someone in orientation is officially hired.
Pre-hires:
What Exactly Is A Pre-Hire Letter?
Pre-hire letters are acceptance letters from trucking companies to students, or even potential students, to verify placement. The trucking companies are saying in writing that the student, or potential student, appears to meet the company's minimum hiring requirements and is welcome to attend their orientation at the company’s expense once he or she graduates from truck driving school and has their CDL in hand.
We have an excellent article that will help you Understand The Pre-Hire Process.
A Pre-Hire Letter Is Not A Guarantee Of Employment
The people that receive a pre-hire letter are people who meet the company's minimum hiring requirements, but it is not an employment contract. It is an invitation to orientation, and the orientation itself is a prerequisite to employment.
During the orientation you will get a physical, drug screen, and background check done. These and other qualifications must be met before someone in orientation is officially hired.
Brett,
The 4* refers to the 4 points that are still on my record currently. All other points have fallen off and are no longer active. To clarify, is it your opinion that an expunged driver record is still not adequate enough? From what I have found, it is possible to completely expunge your driver record in Indiana. Even if expungement is not attainable for me, would postponing my CDL career ( until the violations are considered 'old' by company standards) be a sufficient way of securing employment?
In other words, what course of action would you take?
Thanks again for all the information.
CDL:
Commercial Driver's License (CDL)
A CDL is required to drive any of the following vehicles:
- Any combination of vehicles with a gross combined weight rating (GCWR) of 26,001 or more pounds, providing the gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of the vehicle being towed is in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any single vehicle with a GVWR of 26,001 or more pounds, or any such vehicle towing another not in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any vehicle, regardless of size, designed to transport 16 or more persons, including the driver.
- Any vehicle required by federal regulations to be placarded while transporting hazardous materials.
Even though it is possible to get it expunged from your driving record it still may be found on a criminal record. Some trucking companies go through extremely thorough screening in order to see what type of person they are hiring. That said, don't give up you need to honest with these companies even if it does get expunged. If you leave it off your app because you have had it expunged and they find out through the back door they may not hire you because you weren't honest with the disposition of the case. Also to get it expunged will take the help of an attorney with can set you back 400 to a 1000 dollars.
I had to research option myself on a wreckless back in 1991. I was arrested for a DWI and blew a 0.0 4 times. They still convicted me of wreckless.
DWI:
Driving While Intoxicated
Here's an update:
I have recently talked to Werner and was informed (through mostly implication, not anything worth quoting in the free press) that my moving violations are technically NOT reckless driving, since under the description on my driver record it only states "Speeding".
Now, I am not sure that this is something that is accurate across all companies, but I thought it would be worth mentioning in case it helps to shed light on my scenario (or potentially other's) and aid anyone joining the conversation in understanding the 'situation'.
MB
Apply like crazy to get pre-hires. If companies give you pre-hires , be sure they are saying they've looked at your MVR and you passed that requirement. Read the understanding prehire section here.
Good luck!
MVR:
Motor Vehicle Record
An MVR is a report of your driving history, as reported from your state Department of Motor Vehicles. Information on this report may include Drivers License information, point history, violations, convictions, and license status on your driving record.
Pre-hire:
What Exactly Is A Pre-Hire Letter?
Pre-hire letters are acceptance letters from trucking companies to students, or even potential students, to verify placement. The trucking companies are saying in writing that the student, or potential student, appears to meet the company's minimum hiring requirements and is welcome to attend their orientation at the company’s expense once he or she graduates from truck driving school and has their CDL in hand.
We have an excellent article that will help you Understand The Pre-Hire Process.
A Pre-Hire Letter Is Not A Guarantee Of Employment
The people that receive a pre-hire letter are people who meet the company's minimum hiring requirements, but it is not an employment contract. It is an invitation to orientation, and the orientation itself is a prerequisite to employment.
During the orientation you will get a physical, drug screen, and background check done. These and other qualifications must be met before someone in orientation is officially hired.
Pre-hires:
What Exactly Is A Pre-Hire Letter?
Pre-hire letters are acceptance letters from trucking companies to students, or even potential students, to verify placement. The trucking companies are saying in writing that the student, or potential student, appears to meet the company's minimum hiring requirements and is welcome to attend their orientation at the company’s expense once he or she graduates from truck driving school and has their CDL in hand.
We have an excellent article that will help you Understand The Pre-Hire Process.
A Pre-Hire Letter Is Not A Guarantee Of Employment
The people that receive a pre-hire letter are people who meet the company's minimum hiring requirements, but it is not an employment contract. It is an invitation to orientation, and the orientation itself is a prerequisite to employment.
During the orientation you will get a physical, drug screen, and background check done. These and other qualifications must be met before someone in orientation is officially hired.
Prehire:
What Exactly Is A Pre-Hire Letter?
Pre-hire letters are acceptance letters from trucking companies to students, or even potential students, to verify placement. The trucking companies are saying in writing that the student, or potential student, appears to meet the company's minimum hiring requirements and is welcome to attend their orientation at the company’s expense once he or she graduates from truck driving school and has their CDL in hand.
We have an excellent article that will help you Understand The Pre-Hire Process.
A Pre-Hire Letter Is Not A Guarantee Of Employment
The people that receive a pre-hire letter are people who meet the company's minimum hiring requirements, but it is not an employment contract. It is an invitation to orientation, and the orientation itself is a prerequisite to employment.
During the orientation you will get a physical, drug screen, and background check done. These and other qualifications must be met before someone in orientation is officially hired.
Ya know...it's a bit tricky because it also depends on how they ask about your record, what you tell them about it, what exactly "expunged" means (that can vary from state to state), and what they can figure out on their own.
Say you had your record completely expunged. You pull up a report and it shows a blank - no violations of any sort. So the company says on the application, "List all moving violations you've had over the past 3 years." Well technically expunged means it's wiped clean like it never happened. But it did happen and there's an excellent chance the company will be able to figure that out one way or another. So if you say you have no violations but somehow or another they find out you did, how will they interpret that? Did you lie? Technically, yes. But expunged means it's like it never happened so why should you have to admit to something that's not on your record, right? Right!
So the question is did you lie by saying you had no moving violations? I'm not really sure about the answer to that.
So to be honest I'm not sure exactly how to handle that. I do know that if a company interprets it as a lie your application immediately goes in the garbage and you get flagged in their system. That's bad. Maybe you would have gotten the job anyhow, maybe not, it's hard to say.
I think maybe you should ask the companies directly. Just ask them, "If I had a violation expunged from my record do I have to list it?" I really don't know what they'll say. I mean, the companies are desperate for drivers and the recruiters really want to bring you in. It's not like they're trying to eliminate people. They're trying not to eliminate people. So you might be better off asking them how to handle it. You don't have to say what those violations were. You're just asking a generic question.
I'll say this....if you ask them how to handle it and they say you have to list the violations then you can be pretty certain they would have found them and they would have expected you to list them. In other words, if they want to know about them anyhow then they would have interpreted "no violations" as a lie and that would be the end of that opportunity.
Dm:
Dispatcher, Fleet Manager, Driver Manager
The primary person a driver communicates with at his/her company. A dispatcher can play many roles, depending on the company's structure. Dispatchers may assign freight, file requests for home time, relay messages between the driver and management, inform customer service of any delays, change appointment times, and report information to the load planners.HOS:
Hours Of Service
HOS refers to the logbook hours of service regulations.
Brett,
Thanks again for your response.
I have been completely upfront with all of the recruiters I've talked to and will continue to communicate in a manner such as the one you mentioned. So far, it has been received very positively and should aid tremendously with attaining pre-hires before attending school.
Thanks again for your time,
MB
Pre-hire:
What Exactly Is A Pre-Hire Letter?
Pre-hire letters are acceptance letters from trucking companies to students, or even potential students, to verify placement. The trucking companies are saying in writing that the student, or potential student, appears to meet the company's minimum hiring requirements and is welcome to attend their orientation at the company’s expense once he or she graduates from truck driving school and has their CDL in hand.
We have an excellent article that will help you Understand The Pre-Hire Process.
A Pre-Hire Letter Is Not A Guarantee Of Employment
The people that receive a pre-hire letter are people who meet the company's minimum hiring requirements, but it is not an employment contract. It is an invitation to orientation, and the orientation itself is a prerequisite to employment.
During the orientation you will get a physical, drug screen, and background check done. These and other qualifications must be met before someone in orientation is officially hired.
Pre-hires:
What Exactly Is A Pre-Hire Letter?
Pre-hire letters are acceptance letters from trucking companies to students, or even potential students, to verify placement. The trucking companies are saying in writing that the student, or potential student, appears to meet the company's minimum hiring requirements and is welcome to attend their orientation at the company’s expense once he or she graduates from truck driving school and has their CDL in hand.
We have an excellent article that will help you Understand The Pre-Hire Process.
A Pre-Hire Letter Is Not A Guarantee Of Employment
The people that receive a pre-hire letter are people who meet the company's minimum hiring requirements, but it is not an employment contract. It is an invitation to orientation, and the orientation itself is a prerequisite to employment.
During the orientation you will get a physical, drug screen, and background check done. These and other qualifications must be met before someone in orientation is officially hired.
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To TruckingTruth members,
I'm currently researching a career as a truck driver and just recently located my driver record.
Here is what it looks like :
Date Pts Offense
10/07/2013 4* Speeding 80/60
11/15/2011 6 Disregarding Stop Sign
6/26/2009 2 Speeding 45/30
I am wondering if anyone has any knowledge regarding the potentiality for someone with such a record to find employment. I understand that the two speeding charges are considered reckless. Any and all information you would be willing to share is greatly appreciated.
Thanks for your time,
MB