Non DOT Safety Incidents

You didn't jack-knife, rollover, or have an accident on the streets and highways. If it were me, I wouldn't list any of those things. Hell a couple of those incidents I wouldn't have even confessed to in the first place.

 

As I understand it, and as I see the industry use the term, an accident is one vehicle hitting another, a crash. I think the what you describe are called Incidents.

You could apply at a company you will never work at, not list anything, and see if they find them. You can also apply at another company you will never ever work for and list everything you mentioned, and see what happens. When you apply at those 2 never-ever-gonna-work-there companies don't apply online. Apply on paper. Do not apply via Tenstreet or other "apply once, we'll send it to a thousand company" web sites.

 

What shows up on your DAC is what the employer reports. Some employers report tiny things and some don't report anything but start and end dates of employment. MOST employers don't use DAC. YOU CAN GET A FREE COPY OF YOUR DAC REPORT EVERY YEARS but it seems the one thing the worried people applying for jobs won't do is something that is free and easy.

 

I never heard of any safety performance history check. Trucking companies can join a network and report everything to each other if they want. There is also no downside to saying such a network exists even if it doesn't Try doing an internet search for this network. You are allowed to use the internet on your own.

 

Trucking companies are not all identical twins of each other. The answer to EVERY question about trucking companies is "some do, some don't". One great reason I like working at companies where I have friends is I can find out from them about situations like this without alerting the company with "hey I have this thing I hope you don't know about and was wondering if I did this last September at 2:47 pm on Highway 43 in Smith county will it hurt my chances of getting hired here?"

The way you are trying to use the The Truckers Report network to answer questions also works in real life with other drivers you work with. Turnover is high enough in trucking that if you just hold onto to driver friends you make at one company they will work at other companies soon and all of you can learn about companies and situations when something happens to one of you. The only caution is you have to screen people for honesty and bizarre exaggeration. It seems like every year the people entering the workforce become more and more timid about having a conversation for some reason. Some people cannot even have a phone conversation.

 

The employing carrier is supposed to do a background check with previous employers including specific drug/alcohol questions for those employers during the past 3 years.

Depending on the section of the industry; many such requests are ignored.

Local inquiries, possibly by phone 'cause someone knows someone 'over there' may occur and can discover said 'incidents'.

When I was in Chemical tankers, we always called; chances we already knew the former employer's safety guy from seminars and such but the average dock bumper wouldn't be treated that way.

Most carriers make an effort to comply and may only confirm dates of employment by legal advise....

Remember this old adage:

Don't sweat the petty stuff and don't pet the sweaty stuff.

PS. Stay away from TENSTREET anything they find never disappears and will be there for years.

 

If I am understanding 382.301 correctly, a hiring carrier can choose to drug test the driver themselves, OR check with that driver's past employer for drug testing history. Almost all the major carriers follow 382.301(a) and eschew the exception found in 382.301(b).

I will say I was more interested in that last point. People generally don't know or understand that many times the information required by 391 subpart C is not provided back to the requesting carriers. When this happens, the requesting carrier is supposed to follow the procedures spelled out in 386.12 to stay out of trouble with the FMCSA if audited. Because this is such a PITA, almost all carriers will choose not to hire if this happens. 391.23(c)(3) is simple and easy to understand.

There is a guy who operates around 10 trucks working a good contract. I had dinner with him and his wife back in the summer. He told me that when he comes across this situation and really likes the driver, he would follow all those rules. Then contact the FMCSA service center in Baltimore. The letter he gets back, a copy of that letter, is filed in that driver's DQF.

It absolutely befuddles me that a carrier will refuse to hire a driver based on things like this or with an employment history with gaps. There is not a single rule published by the DOT/FMCSA that I know of that requires a person to have a complete employment history with no gaps. A carrier with any questions can contact their assigned FMCSA service center to get guidance, but most would rather send the prospective driver away.