Trucking companies have to pre-screen their applicants. Trucking companies are governed by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s rules and regulations concerning this. The trucking company has to make sure that the applicant has properly filled out the application and has fully listed all moving violations that the drivers had within three years of the driver filing the application.
The trucking company has to make sure that the truck driver, in the application, has identified each and every trucking company that the trucker has worked for in the last 10 years. Once the trucking company hires the trucker then the trucking company has a duty, an affirmative duty, to check with the driver’s past employers and make sure that the company has a motor vehicle report on the truck driver for the preceding three years.
This motor vehicle report includes the driver’s moving violations in any given state where the truck driver was originally licensed. The trucking company specifically has an affirmative obligation, whenever they’ve hired on a new trucker, to check with previous employers as far as the truck driver’s alcohol use, drug use, abuse, any moving violations, any traffic violations, all of those things.
The trucking company, of course, also has to make sure that the truck driver is physically fit to drive and so they have an obligation when they’ve hired on a new driver to get from a truck driver’s previous employers all the medical record certificates which certify that the trucker has no disability which would impair or, in any way, harm members of the public on the road because the driver was not physically fit.
If you have questions in your case about whether the company, that is the trucking company, fully and faithfully performed its obligations, that is its pre-screening obligations, of the truck driver involved in your case, call me 770-792-1000.