what if you have no work history

It's actually only three years if you never drove before the last three years legally. It's not just for drivers with no experience. Even with the 10 years, you only have to legally provide them with employers at which you operated a CMV, not every single employer not involving driving in the last 10 years. Everyone will ask you for 10 years every time regardless of whether it's legally required though.

 

What company are you working for?

Also, how did you get on with a trucking company when so many people are trying to fulfill their 3 year to 10 year employment histories?

God bless you and your family! God bless the U.S.A.!

 

It's essentially that they verify what you were doing, not that you actually worked. Some companies might not hire you for extended unemployment purely from the viewpoint of your reliability or lack thereof.

Most people try to claim it's so they know you're not a terrorist and all of that. It's all about if you've driven somewhere or not in a commercial vehicle. That's what they need to know. If you have a gap that can't be verified you could be trying to hide the fact you drove for someone and there's a reason you don't want them to find out.

 

391.23 (c)(4)

"Exception. For drivers with no previous employment experience working for a DOT regulated employer during the preceding three years, documentation that no investigation was possible must be placed in the driver history investigation file, after October 29, 2004, within the required 30 days of the date the driver's employment begins."

383.35(3)(f)

"Before an application is submitted, the employer shall inform the applicant that the information he/she provides in accordance with paragraph (c) of this section may be used, and the applicant's previous employers may be contacted for the purpose of investigating the applicant's work history."

391.23(c)(2)

"The investigation may consist of personal interviews, telephone interviews, letters, or any other method for investigating that the carrier deems appropriate. Each motor carrier must make a written record with respect to each previous employer contacted, or good faith efforts to do so. The record must include the previous employer's name and address, the date the previous employer was contacted, or the attempts made, and the information received about the driver from the previous employer. Failures to contact a previous employer, or of them to provide the required safety performance history information, must be documented. The record must be maintained pursuant to §391.53."

My interpretation of the above is the DOT does not require you have any work history or demand any proof of it. They simply require the carrier to investigate it in a reasonable way. It seems to me the regulation is intended to reveal whether or not the applicant has had problems in another jurisdiction with another CDL or has had some other driving related problems with a former employer--not whether or not you were a deadbeat living off of drug money. LoL

It makes no sense that the DOT would give a rats posterior whether or not you had been employed or not previously. After all, you could have been living with your mother and not needed to work. Why would this preclude you driving commercially?

 

Believe it or not, there are grown men and women in their 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, and even in their 70's, who are living with their mothers for a variety of reasons as stated below:

1) The man or woman may be back with his or her mother due to health issues in which the mother needs help. I personally went back home, in 2006, to help my 2 sisters care for our elderly mother right up to the time she passed away, about a year later, in 2007.

2) The man or woman may be working either full time or part time, but does not make enough money to afford a place of his or her own. This frequently happens in many of your high cost areas as New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, along with a whole slew of other high cost areas with PROHIBITIVELY HIGH RENTS.

3) The man or woman may be unemployed through job loss or unemployable due to his or her character, background, or some form of disability.

4) Laziness on the part of the man or woman in which he or she refuses to get a job, his or her mother simply continues to support him or her on her retirement income.

There are probably a number of other reasons that are not listed, some good, some bad.

SADLY, myself, along with a whole slew of other people, have parents that are both deceased. Going back to live with them is NOT an option. May they rest in peace.

God bless every American and their families! God bless the U.S.A.!