So ya wanna drive a day cab. (The beginners company guide to ltl)

@road_runner yep, 5 resumes at the ready. I've always done that. When I was in high school I became very close with an accounting/business/economics instructor that I took courses with every single semester from freshman to senior. She was instrumental in laying a respect for business etiquette, flexibility and teeing your self up for the next move, should the opportunity arose. I used all the resume skills she taught me and even offered resume services locally for extra cash up until about 2015.

I've never been a fan of companies running credit checks for applicants. It's never adversely affected me, but I've never been a supporter of it. Credit reports are *supposed* to help lenders gauge your ability and likelihood of debt repayment, not gauge the probability of criminality, although I understand how the argument could possibly be made that there is a correlation between the two.

The biggest thing that was a challenge for me to get over when I was new to LTL, when I would have to make one of those challenging backups as you described, was to remember that it doesn't have to be perfect... it just has to work. Once I got that mentality down, even the most challenging backing maneuvers were far less stressful and over time my backing improved greatly. It also helped being on a forced dock bid when I was on line haul and hitting jackpot being in a hostler all night.

 

I thought about this for a few days before wanting to give a measured response.

You provide a exceptional perspective, more so than most people would realize. You are absolutely right. Credit Reports and FICO score are specifically designed to gauge your ability to borrow and repay debt.

To your point, there are some legit ethical concerns with companies harvesting that data to gauge how trustworthy you are as an employee. You know, rental companies have been doing the same practice for decades. But they are loaning out something to you and want to see if you can honor your debts. The military also does credit checks for national security reasons, but for a private company to weigh in to use the data to basically profile you seems like they are manipulating the intent of your credit report.

Just to add to your point, anytime a company or really any entity makes an inquiry into your credit history, it adversely affects your rating. So realistically, you could be the perfect applicant applying to several jobs and let's say two or three of those are just collecting resumes; you could be possibly turned down for any number of reasons but still have them run credit checks on you potentially lower your rating and you have nothing to show for.

Looking back at it, my current employer basically doubled the pay from my previous employer, so I was more than happy to volunteer my credit history, but it does bring up some ethical and legal questions. Obviously you are "volunteering" your financial background as a prospective employee and signing away your SSN allowing them to dig. If you decided to decline that process, your application process would basically come to an end.

 

Thank you for your kind words.

I ultimately look at employment checks as another one of the slippery slope ideas that Americans have come to tolerate under the anathematic ideology of "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" or "it's for your safety". I get it in some instances, like banking/finance/investing and matters that do involve government clearance. I think it would be insanely negligent to let someone with poor credit underwrite or process mortgages etc.

However, right now we are tolerating credit inquiries for employment and it's being pitched to us that it is a form of risk/cost mitigation. Under that theme, at what point do employers begin to demand health record releases from primary care physicians about an applicant's health? After all, the argument could be made that an applicant in poor/declining health is going to cost the company more money in health insurance claims and put the company at higher risk to STD/LTD claims, WC claims etc.

I do believe that most if not all employers that run credit checks run the inquiry AFTER an offer is extended and accepted by the applicant, the cost would grow to be prohibitive even if they pre-screened the top 3 applicants for every job they ever posted.

The credit pull and impact to your report is another touch point. I wonder if the typical employer credit check runs as a hard or soft pull, and if it was a hard pull, could it be negotiated that the company remove the inquiry after hire or agree to delete it if the inquiry was disputed.