New Drivers...from a former recruiter

Let me give you some information. I am a truck driver first and formost, but I also was a recruiter for a year...here is some advice.

An Open Letter from Recruiters to applicants:
I am a recruiter for a small trucking company, recruiting is part of what I do, I am also a customer service agent, a dispatcher, a mechanic, your best friend and your worst enemy. I have also driven over the road for big carriers and small alike, I know what you are going through, but here is some helpful information and I want to give a driver some insight on why it pays off to tell the truth on an application.

1. Tell the truth, whether you had a felony, or accident, or abandoned equipment, we will find out. When you fill out an application, it is the recruiters job to go back and get all the "details" to your work history. FMSCA says we are required to have 10 years history and verify the past 3, you tell me you worked for the same company 10 years and they tell me that you work for them 9.5 years, I have to ask you what you did for the other 6 months.

2.Disclose all charges against you criminally. Just because you had a felony for writing bad checks in 1997 doesn't mean you will be disqualified. I know at our company we look at everything on a case by case, if you have a pending domestic violence, of course we are not going to let you "run" you need to be here to handle your affairs, but if you had something in your past but have been clean for some years, I am willing to over look that.

3. PSP and MVR always tells the truth, if you got a roadside inspection for speeding, or lamps not operational, I know a couple of things from that, 1. You were speeding, 2. You didn't do your pretrip. Now I get things happen going down the road, but when you have 7 road side inspections and they same things pop up on those inspections, then maybe its you and not the truck.

4. DAC lies...and we know it, we are the ones putting things on there. When you abandon a truck with a large carrier, its no problem for them to re-power the load, they have the fleet capacity to cover this. When you abandon a truck with a small company, it costs us money to track the truck send someone to get the truck, deliver the already late load, take a hit financially from our broker, and hire someone to move into the truck that you left, all because you were mad that "you didn't get what you want" But we do talk to the company to find out why you abandoned the truck, and I make a decision on whether to hire you from that.

5. Dont threaten your dispatcher, Driver:: if you dont get me this ill do this"... dispatcher "fine, while you think you have the upper hand, all I have to do is get you home then let you go, and you are out of a job. You might hurt me for a min, but when you dont have a job, ill have the last laugh." If you are a company driver, dont threaten to not deliver a load, if you want to do this, get out of the truck close the door and look at the name on the side of the door, thats right it says the name of my company, not yours, you work for the company, while we work WITH YOU GETTING LOADS TO MOVE we DONT work FOR YOU TO WALK ALL OVER US!

6. Unplugging your tracking system does no good. I have several other ways to track you and your equipment, such as trailer tracking, fuel cards, macropoint, I always know where you are at, but trust me im not using it as big brother most of the time, its just to make sure you are where you need to be when you need to be there. I dont sit and watch you running up and down the road all day watching every time you stop.

I dont mean any of this in a negative, its just basic common sense, 90 percent of my drivers are great guys, I upset them occasionally, as they do me, but they make good money, have great equipment, and good hometime. Its push and pull, give and take, its trucking. I hope maybe you have some insight into why dispatchers and recruiters think like we do. We want to get you hired, we need drivers, but lying on your application will not get you there, if you lie to us now, we think what will they lie about later.