Is 1 year really enough anymore?

Why would companies be raising their standards if their is a"driver shortage?"

It makes no sense; somebody must be lying.

 

I guess I've been mainly looking at smaller companies.

 

Yes. It can be very difficult to get hired by a small company with less then 3 to 5 years. Not impossible just difficult.

 

I know a guy that got hired by Shaffer right out of school (they're site says 4 months required)

 

We're a small outfit and do a lot of different kinds of hauling. We like to see a guy have at least five years of experience. Our insurance company likes that too.
We figure that a driver with five years in will have made most of the rookie mistakes already and torn up somebody else's equipment while he was learning.
That doesn't always hold true but most of the time it works out pretty well.

 

You can't fault a company for "wishing big" and posting rather lofty requirements in ads. This helps to weed out some but the fact is, most can be "very flexible" in who they hire but bottom line it comes down to the impression you can make. For some, they are better off mailing in an app and hoping for the best, for others, a personal visit to the office will probably get them many extra points (clean cut, can read an application in full, seems to have all their ducks in a row, not wishy-washy, in reasonably good health, doesn't smell like an ash tray, displays confidence, etc)

Carriers HR people always have to collectively hold their breath to see what walks in the door on orientation day. Drivers license photos are rarely accurate representation of the individual.

 

Yeah, but if he has those "learning experiences" on his DAC, you are going to put his job application in the circular file, lol

 

Not always. First of all, we don't use DAC. There are enough ways to check on a driver's history without having to read something that some disgruntled employer put down out of spite.
If the driver has a history of accidents or tickets we'll know about it. If he doesn't list them on his application we'll want to know why.
We don't hire drivers very often. When we do it's usually somebody local that we already know or somebody that one or more of our drivers will vouch for. Our drivers usually stay with us until they retire or die.
But no DAC. Most small outfits like ours don't need or want it.

 

The largest reason the smaller (less then 25 trucks) carriers don't use DAC is most are not driver mills and go by word of mouth and for this reason are not high volume customers. However no matter their size all carriers have to establish driver qualification files that show they satisfied all the requirements set forth by the FMCSA when hireing and every year later checked. I have seen some smaller carriers that don't normally use DAC buy an ad hoc reports from time to time. Yes it is true that small carriers ( and some larger ones) don't use DAC, however it don't mean they don't know how to get a report.

 

Exactly right. The files we have to keep on each driver are extensive. They're required by law.
We can get information from DMV, from DOT, and our insurance company.
One good way to check a driver's history and one of the few questions we can legally ask former employer is "knowing what you know about this driver would you rehire him?" If the answer is a resounding NO or something like "not even in a parallel universe" or a burst of hysterical laughter we'll probably want to dig a little deeper into his history.