Western Non Compete Contract

Ok let's chill for a minute and think this through.

Let's start by remembering what our mission is:

• Help people understand the trucking industry and decide if trucking is the right career choice for them
• Teach people what it takes to get their trucking career off to a great start
• Help new drivers develop into top tier drivers

I'm on year 6 as the Recruiting Director at GO Express, so I can tell you first hand about anything regarding the application process through orientation.

Here's what is required to hire a driver (not including any advertisements, job postings, social media, benefits, etc):

• A full 10 year application, signed, with permission to contact all employers within the last 5 years.
• We must contact (usually via, fax, email, or Tenstreet) each company from within the last 5 years and get an Employment verification. Companies are required to respond within 30 days or they risk hearing from the DOT. (remember that part, it will come up later) Even if they are out of business, there is supposed to be someone holding the records for at least 3 years. If we cannot find anyone to verify that employment, and we can document at least 3 good faith attempts to reach that company, we can fill out a huge form and use a "Secondary Verification Method", usually W2/1099's or 1st & Last Paystubs.
• We must contact each company from within the last 3 years to get Accident Information & Drug&Alcohol testing results (this 2nd part may change after January 2023 with the Clearinghouse)
• We must run an MVR for every state in which a driver held a license in from the last 10 years
• We run the PSP Report which lists every DOT interaction with that driver, from inspections to accidents.
• We run the DAC Employment History report - it lists all employers from the last 10 years that subscribed to DAC. (Contrary to popular belief, Its just a simple program with pull down menu answers. There isn't any spot where they can write in their "opinions" about a driver on the DAC report)
• We run a CDLIS+ report- this lists all Licenses in all states that a driver has held.

After all of that, we have to go through everything and make sure the application the driver filled out matches the paperwork perfectly. If we add any employers that the driver 'forgot' about putting on their application, or any tickets/accidents that they didn't list on the application, we have to add them manually, fill out a DOT form, email the driver to re-sign their application, and all before we can continue processing the application.

Applications usually take 3-6 hours of work to process. Some take much longer (the more job changes? The longer it takes. Basically add 30-60 minutes for each job change, and another 30-60 minutes for each company we have to verify that can be described as one of these:
• 1099
• small O/O (who also drives and never answers calls from numbers they don't recognize and doesn't have a fax machine, or is never in the office to fill out the paperwork for "some driver who doesn't even work here anymore")
• Out-Of-Biz/Closed
• "Shady Corrupt Trucking, LLC" (that, if we're being honest, you knew was going to be shady and the deal they offered was too good to be true") that keeps changing names and DOT#'s every couple months to avoid being shutdown by DOT.

The 2-6 hours, that's a cumulative total - almost never done all at once. Its done in 5-10-15 minute chunks as reports and verifications come in.

Lets do that math. I'm an office nerd now, so there are only 40-60 hours during the week. With that being said, I can only seriously process 20-40 applications per week. I get 50-100 Applications per week. So there is a need to be able to quickly and efficiently prioritize which applications to focus on 1st.

Guess which applications and drivers get 1st priority? HINT: It's not the apps that are going to require 10+ hours to finish.

Guess which applications also fall to the bottom of the pile?
The ones where we get a letter like this:

This is just the CRST version of the "non-compete" letter, but any company that has contracts has their own version
(and not all of them call out JB Hunt, lol! ).
BUT... going back to what I asked you to remember about the 30 day deadline, they still have to respond to employment verifications within 30 days like everyone else or they get reported to the DOT. Unlike every other company that typically responds within 1-7 days, the companies where a driver is still under contract will wait until day 29.9999 to respond. So, as a company trying to prioritize driver apps, that ones that we know are going to take at least 1 month to fully process don't make the top of the pile either.

Just a few more reasons to take that first year or two seriously, and especially if you sign a contract.

I'm sure some of you noticed I didn't mention safety/accidents in there at all. I was just trying to stay as close to the thread topic, but of course, that factors into the prioritization as well. Its just that its not the first step because we haven't verified all of the incidents/violations yet. So work history and experience are the 1st two things we are looking at when we prioritize our applications.

It is a whole 'nother step in the process, once we get everything back. We have to go through and make sure there are not any disqualifying incidents or too many total accidents/violations in the last 1-5 years. Of course, that also eliminates a chunk of those applications, but that is a step further down the line.

Drive Safe!