So, what of a driver applicant’s record can a carrier see?

many companies have thier own reporting for accidents, and incidents, and dollar values assigned to both.

when a potential employer calls the present (or former) employer, this is where information can and will be exchanged.

one may not have a recordable accident on an MVR/DMV, but the employer will certainly have it on file.

so the best advice here...do not leave information off the application. on each application i ever filled out, it'll ask "accidents"/ if YES, describe on a seperate piece of paper. if it was on private property, and the police showed up, there should be/could be a police report, the new employer WILL WANT that.

so do not ever hide anything

 

Difference is Accidents vs Incidents.

Accident: An accident is a situation that results in an injury or consequence. Companies aim to avoid accidents at all costs. Incident: An incident refers to an unwanted situation that could have resulted in an accident had safety prevention measures not been utilized.

every accident can be an incident. However not all incidents can be termed as an accident.

running over a curb and busting a wheel is an incident, but it is absolutely avoidable.

 

I would consider any case in which the driver is responsible for causing damage to equipment or property while operating the vehicle a preventable accident. All of those type of accidents are recorded and listed as "recordable" and/or preventable" by the carrier. These could be minor incidents, but as a driver you can't assume to downplay it. If you hit a curb, bollard, fence, another trailer etc., and you caused visible repairable damage it should be reported as a "preventable accident."
Just because no one else is involved, or the police are not notified, doesn't mean it not an "accident." Pulling away from a trailer with the pigtails attached and breaking the lines is still a preventable accident, even if you didn't hit anything. You should report any instances in which you caused damage to equipment or property to the company you apply for. Honesty is the best policy.

 

They can go back to kindergarten if they want. That girls pig tails you put in the inkwell? The dog you picked up by its hind legs? All goes on your permanent record, and you couldn't prove it otherwise to me. So if you have something not cool, be ready for it to rear its ugly head once again.

 

Everything that's on the reports.

Not really, a rim on the curb isn't important to either a good fleet owner or their insurance, if you have parking lot damage where you left the scene, then yes it is important to know that, or if you took out a bollard, as one truck did and blocked in 20 trucks for hours, yep that's important.

When apply I would rather see the truth than omittance. When we do background checks and talk to the previous employers, and something is omitted, the application is usually tossed.

I have several drivers who had incidents and preventable but because they were up front, I hired them, they have overall done very well. I had one guy who listed a preventable accident as a deer hit, he took out a guard rail, and another listed as hitting a gator and taking out a hydraulic oil tank - both were greenlighted by my insurance company because they didn't see how these were preventable.

 

I was under the thought that a former employer is only allowed to say wheather or not you'd rehire said driver and not allowed anything else.
Also heard most of the time former employers don't eve bother to reply

 

Technically you're right. There's a whole bunch of questions that you're not allowed to ask of a previous employer. However, sometimes wording can be changed or a question can be asked in such a way as to give the information and keep both parties out of trouble.
Anybody that thinks his prior acts and his employment history are confidential is living in a dream world.
My all time favorite answer to my "would you rehire this person" question was " NO, not even in a parallel universe." I wasn't exactly sure what he meant but the tone was clear.

 

The majority of the time the carriers see the basic summary. Dates worked, the reason for leaving followed by rehire status. They will pull your DMV records also at some point. If there is anything in the summary they don't like they will pull the entire file or ask the correct or past carrier for more information.

 

You never put anyone down.

The drivers who are genuine pains in the butt tend to get neutral reports because you don't want them to come back...

Many requests are for the same few guys over a year or two after they moved on -or- a name in the data base that predates your tenure and all you have, maybe, are the dates of employment.

The only thing a bad report creates is the omission of the company on this person's next application.

Shortly after starting at the second port carrier; I had a couple of guys filling out applications and one of them was a former driver from the prior company that never was introduced to me at that time.

Since he was clearly at fault fro the first fatality I handled and that company wasn't reflected on this application, I just failed to process it due to falsification that only I would have known..

Those guys were just fishing and we were not pushing to add drivers but it goes to show you can's believe everything written on an application.