Driver Selection and Qualification

DRIVER SELECTION AND QUALIFICATION

DRIVER SELECTION AND QUALIFICATION

Driver selection is the key to many areas effecting trucking companies today. The right driver will stay with a company for a long time and have a safe driving record. Every company has one of those drivers that they would love to be able to clone 50 times. But every company usually has several drivers that they wish they had never hired for various reasons.

These drivers, the “wrong” drivers, cost the company money in many ways. They often leave after only a short period of time and the company never even recovers the cost if took to hire and train them. They have accidents costing the company money in deductibles, lawsuits, and/or higher insurance premiums. They do not maintain the equipment or logbooks and get placed out of service leading to DOT audits. The list goes on and on.

The question is how do you hire the “right” driver and stay away from the “wrong” ones. With a little bit of luck and a good driver selection process you may not miss all of the wrong drivers, but you can greatly increase your chances of picking the right driver.

In a nutshell, a good driver selection process can be broken into two parts. 1) Know what kind of driver you want to hire and what kind you do not want to hire, and 2) Check them out to make sure which category they fall into. Both are very important. Not doing both is like playing Russian Roulette with the company’s future.

Part 1: Know what kind of driver you want to hire and what kind you do not want to hire

Written hiring standards…this is the basis for part one of the selection process. The DOT and the insurance companies like to see them. Why? By putting something in writing, it forces you to think about what you want and do not want. Of course there are minimum DOT requirements that must be met, but remember these are the minimums. Your insurance company probably has some recommended or maybe even required minimum qualifications as well. Again, remember these are minimum requirements. The higher the company’s standards the more protection it has from negligent hiring/entrustment suits.

Ask yourself several questions to determine what qualifications/qualities suit your needs.

-What minimum age?

-How many years of experiences?

-What kind of experience? (local, over the road, flatbed, van, reefer, etc.)

-Employment history? (how many employers, length of employment, etc)

-Accident history? (how many, preventability, severity, etc)

-Citation history? (how many, what for, DUI, excessive speed, etc.)

-Expected salary vs. what company offers?

-Expected home time vs. what company offers?

These are only a few questions to ask yourself. With some thought you should come up with a profile that will fit what the company is looking for. If the driver doesn’t fit the profile why waste anymore time? What is there to gain by continuing if the driver does not fit? All that will be gained is an unhappy driver and a disappointed company that will soon be parting ways. Or even worse, an unsafe driver who will have an accident and put the company at risk and cost the company money.

Once a written set of standards have been setup, use them as the pre-application screening process to weed out the undesirables early. Find out if the driver is willing to take the bad parts of the job with the good. If the driver’s expectations are more than what the company offers going in, they will be let down and will probably leave. Most people can accept the negative things about a job if they know to expect them ahead of time. If the driver fits the profile then proceed with the process.

Part Two: Check the driver out to make sure which category he/she fits into

Many drivers look good at first until a little background checking is done. That is when it comes to light that there are five citations and not two, two preventable accidents instead of none, etc. These little “red flags” would never be discovered if the applicant is not checked out, but an attorney will be sure to find them if an accident occurs. A thorough background check will provide enough information to make a sound decision based on what the driver has done up to this point in his/her career. The DOT has specific guidelines on what minimum checks must be performed(refer to sections 382 and 391 of the FMCSR). Use these guidelines as a discovery process to get the information you need to make a sound hiring decision.

The following are a few(NOT all) of the requirements that the DOT sets forth. After reviewing the information gathered during these checks an informed decision can be made about the driver as to whether they are one the company wants to hire or not hire. If so, then the remaining requirements can be fulfilled.

-Completed, dated, and signed application in accordance with 391.21

-MVR from each state in which the applicant held a license during the past three years in accordance with 391.23(a)(1)

-Written record of verification of all employment history for past three years in accordance with 391.23(a)(2)

-Written record of inquiries into drug and alcohol test history during the past two years in accordance with 382.413

The legal and regulatory climates have been changing in recent years. Lawsuits are more common than ever. Every driver you hire can potentially be a future witness for your company in a court case. Ask yourself this, is this driver someone I want to be a witness for our company? Is this driver’s record one that I can defend to a jury who is probably afraid of big trucks? Also, the DOT has vowed to double the number of compliance audits that they conduct each year. So far they are making much progress towards keeping that promise. Audit numbers are up as well as the number and dollar amount of fines. Can your files stand up to the eye of an inspector? A good driver selection program will help you do both. Marvin Johnson & Associates and SafeTracks can assist you with this process. Feel free to give us a call. We are here to help and protect you.

1