Safety of the line records

Hi all,

I am interested to know what normal procedures are in place by TOCs and FOCs in regards to candidates applying for Qualified Driver roles with incidents on their records. Do most companies only consider candidates with clean records or are some taken into consideration with 1, 2 or even 3 incidents depending.

There is also the consideration of time frame, if you have an incident on your record how long would you normally have to be incident free before applying for a role, does it depend on the TOC or FOC?

If you have a incident on your record, do you have to declare this on a form even if it was say 20 years ago, or would your record be seen as clean after say 5 years.

Im interested to know how companies normally see this and where it leaves a driver with future aspirations.

Cheers guys and gals.

Suspect there’s no hard and fast answer. The general answer will obviously be: “the fewer the better” but how it will affect any one individual will be down to demand and supply, and their personal history.

Clearly desirable TOCs in areas with a large qualified driver population will able to afford to be a lot more picky, simply because they will get more applicants to chose from.

I know one guy who moved to freight with four or five quite serious incidents in quick succession soon after passing out, but managed a year clean between his last incident (quite a serious SPAD) and getting his new role. But then freight seem to take just about anyone and he had been turned down by several other companies he’d applied to on the strength (or lack thereof) of his safety record.

Where I am most I’ve spoken to have (or claim to have!) squeaky clean records, or close to it, and those who do have incidents tend to be minor (think TPWS intervention) and several years ago.

Having a ten year career with one or two minor things will clearly look a lot better than having several things happen soon after passing out. Having the same type of incident repeatedly is also a bad sign as it suggests you haven’t learned from the mistake.

The record stays no matter how long it happened.

However, on my last application it asked for the last 5 years, where as a different company asked for all incidents.

I haven't had one *touches wood' but know of people who have ended up in a mess because of failing to declare and it coming up after they have handed in notice....