Cover Letters for Truck Drivers

Do cover letters really have to be specific to trucking? The basic cover letter uses a pretty standard format and there are tons of examples of that available online.

As for what your cover letter actually says, that's not really something you should ever copy and paste from an online template IMO. Two short paragraphs that highlight one or two of your strengths and show some enthusiasm for the job you're applying for are all that you should need.

 

Past experience is another couple of bullets and I would recommend no more than 4 bullets and keep it simple.

 

KISS is definitely the way to go. And original. Remember HR dweebes receive hundreds if not thousands of resumes. The longer the cover letter and the resume itself drone on, the less chance of ever being read they are.

You want to keep it short and to the point. HR people do NOT want to hear about how you were the class president in your kindergarten class. Nor do they give a #### that your hobbies include ham radio and pornographic photography. (Well, actually they might, but you get the picture.)

They don't care how many kids you have, or that junior is in the GATE program at school.

What they want to know is stuff relative to YOU and to the job you will do for them.

If you ever do get an interview, THEN is the time to impress them about how intelligent and talented you are. And how much you know about their company. And why you think you will be a good fit. And why they should hire you, over the hundreds of other applicants.

Something else to touch on here. I say they would like to see original cover letters and resumes. That does NOT mean they want to see phony attention grabbing crap like brightly colored paper, etc. Keep it professional.

 

+1000!

This cannot be stressed enough. They do indeed see tons of resumes per day. That means when you google cover letter, find an example and simply copy the text and change a sentence or two, they're going to know you didn't write it because they've already seen 100 resumes from shmucks who did the same thing with the same cover letter. You have to write it yourself. If you can't do that, get someone to help you but don't simply try to copy it from the web and change a few words. They'll know and they won't be impressed.

 

If you have MS Office 2007 you can open word and find several cover letter templates ready to go. Just load one up, fill in your contact info and replace the sample paragraphs with your own.

You can also find several ready to go templates on Google docs. Just download one and fill in your own content.

Here's a link.
https://docs.google.com/templates?q=cover+letter&category=17&type=docs&sort=hottest&view=public