How to Screen CDL Truck Drivers: 9 Questions and What to Listen For Screening Interview Template

What class of CDL do you hold (A, B, or C), and what endorsements are on your license (Hazmat, Tanker, Doubles/Triples, Passenger)? Is your license active, which state issued it, and are there any restrictions on it?

What this assesses: Start here, because endorsements and restrictions decide which of your openings this driver is even eligible for, and both are things candidates routinely get wrong about their own license. Strong answers state the class and each endorsement precisely, along the lines of Class A with Hazmat and Tanker, no restrictions, issued in Ohio, and they know the expiration dates. The restriction half is where the surprises live. An E restriction means automatic transmission only, which rules the driver out of a manual fleet entirely. An L or Z restriction limits them on air brakes. A K restriction is intrastate only, which quietly ends the conversation if your lanes cross state lines. Candidates who volunteer those codes have read their own license recently and that is a good sign on its own. Be cautious with a driver who is fuzzy about what endorsements they hold, does not know whether an automatic-only restriction is on the license, or says they can add Hazmat later with no plan and no TSA timeline. A Hazmat endorsement requires a TSA security threat assessment that commonly takes several weeks, so later means your load sits. Also listen for whether a Hazmat or Tanker endorsement they used to hold has lapsed, since a driver who ran tanker three years ago and let the endorsement go is a retest and a wait, not a ready seat. None of this replaces checking the license itself. What it does is stop you from spending a recruiter call and an orientation slot on a driver who was never eligible for the lane.

How many years have you been driving commercially, and what types of routes have you run (OTR, regional, dedicated, local, or last-mile)? Which do you want going forward, and roughly how many nights a week are you willing to be out?

What this assesses: Route fit is the single best predictor of whether a driver is still on the truck in ninety days, and it is worth more weight than years of experience. Strong answers give concrete years, name the route types they have actually run with some texture about each, and state a clear preference with a real reason behind it, which is almost always family or home time. The nights-out number is the most useful thing in the answer because it is specific enough to check against the lane you are filling. A driver who says four nights out is fine but five is not has thought about their own life and is telling you where the job breaks. Be cautious in three directions. A candidate whose stated years do not line up with the jobs they list is either rounding up or leaving a carrier off. A local or dedicated driver signing up for OTR because the pay looks better is a real risk, and plenty of them come home after the second week out and do not go back. And a driver who says any route is fine is usually not flexible, just not engaged. No preference means they have not weighed the tradeoff, so the first time home time disappoints them they will take the next call. Going the other way, a driver coming off OTR who wants regional or local is one of the better bets in this pool, because they know exactly what they are choosing and why. Match the answer to the actual lane, including the realistic one rather than the posting, and say the hard parts out loud now while it is still cheap to lose a candidate.

Walk me through your driving jobs over the last three years: who you drove for, roughly what dates, and why you left each one. Are there gaps in there, and what were you doing during them?

What this assesses: This is the question most first calls skip, and it predicts retention better than anything else on the list. It also does double duty, because federal rules require you to investigate three years of employment history and request safety performance history from DOT-regulated previous employers under 49 CFR 391.23. Getting the carrier names and dates in writing up front makes that file faster to build and gives you something to compare the verification against later. Strong answers are chronological, name the carriers, give months rather than vague years, and attach a plain reason to each exit: the dedicated account lost the contract, home time was promised at every other weekend and ran at once a month, pay was per-mile on a lane that kept getting shorter, they moved. Honest unglamorous reasons are good answers. A driver who says they left because dispatch kept putting them on loads that would have broken their clock is telling you something useful about themselves. What you are watching for is pattern, not any single exit. Four carriers in two years means the next one is probably you for about five months, and it is worth asking directly what would make this job different. Be cautious with a candidate who cannot name a carrier they worked for last year, whose dates are suspiciously round and gapless, who describes every former employer as a liar, or who goes vague specifically around one job. Abandonment matters here too, since a driver who left a truck somewhere other than a terminal will usually have that on their employment history report whether or not they mention it, and mentioning it first is a meaningfully better sign than letting you find it. On gaps, ask what they were doing and leave it there. Plenty of gaps are a layoff, a family member who needed care, a stretch of local non-CDL work, or time waiting on a med card. Do not push into medical history or disability, and if a candidate raises a condition themselves, route it the way you normally would rather than digging in the screen.

Are there any accidents, moving violations, or DOT-recordable incidents in the last three to five years that would show up on your MVR or a PSP report? For anything you list, what happened and was it recorded as preventable?

What this assesses: A surprising share of driver offers die at insurance underwriting rather than at the interview, so it is worth knowing what the record says before you spend an orientation seat on it. Honesty here matters more than a clean record. Strong answers volunteer each incident with a date, describe what happened in a couple of sentences, say whether the carrier recorded it as preventable, and usually know roughly what is on their record because they have been asked this before. A driver who tells you up front about a two-year-old speeding ticket and a non-preventable rear-ending at a light is a safer bet than one who claims a spotless record you later contradict with an MVR. The preventability detail is the part most screens miss and it changes how an underwriter reads the file, so capture the driver's version now even though the carrier's version is what counts. Be cautious with evasion more than with incidents: a candidate who minimizes a recent at-fault accident as not their fault with no detail, who cannot date anything, who says their record is clean and then remembers a DOT-recordable when pressed, or who argues that an inspection violation was unfair rather than explaining it. Serious patterns deserve weight as well, including multiple speeding violations in the last two years, anything alcohol or drug related, a reckless or careless driving charge, or a logbook falsification violation, all of which your insurer may simply decline. Know your own underwriting thresholds before you screen and tell candidates what they are, because a driver who learns about your two-violation limit on question four has lost ten minutes and a driver who learns it after a road test has lost a week.

Is your DOT medical card current, and when does it expire? Have you ever failed or refused a DOT drug or alcohol test, and is there anything in the FMCSA Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse under your name?

What this assesses: This question verifies the driver is qualified today rather than in principle, and it is the one most likely to save you a wasted orientation. Strong answers name the med card expiration date without looking it up, mention any short-term certification and the reason it is short, and answer the drug and alcohol half directly with no hedging. Be cautious with a driver who does not know when their card expires, who has let it lapse with no appointment booked, or who gets suddenly careful and non-specific around the Clearinghouse question. A prohibited status in the Clearinghouse means the driver cannot perform safety-sensitive functions for anyone until the return-to-duty process is complete, and finding that after orientation costs you the seat, the recruiting spend, and the lane coverage you had already promised a customer. A short-term card is not a reason to pass on its own. Certifications issued for three months or a year usually mean a condition being monitored under a doctor's care, and the only thing you need from the screen is the expiration date and whether the driver has the follow-up scheduled, because an expired card takes the driver off your board until it is renewed. Do not ask what the condition is. Ask whether the card is current, when it expires, and whether they are DOT-qualified now. Two practical notes. A driver in the middle of return-to-duty who tells you so is being straight with you, and whether you can work with that is a policy decision rather than a screening one, so decide it before the question comes up. And this screen does not replace the pre-employment query you are required to run with the driver's consent, so treat the answer as a sequencing tool and run the query regardless.

What equipment have you driven: manual or automatic transmission, sleeper or day cab, dry van, reefer, flatbed, tanker, or doubles? Roughly how long on each, and is there anything you would rather not run?

What this assesses: This question matches the driver to what is actually in your yard, and two answers carry most of the weight. The first is manual transmission. A driver trained on automatics who has never run a ten-speed will fail a road test on a manual fleet, and if the license carries an E restriction they cannot legally drive one at all. If your fleet is mixed, know which trucks are which before you make the offer. The second is flatbed, because flatbed is not really a trailer type, it is a job description: chains, straps, corner protectors, tarping a load in the rain, and climbing on freight in February. Plenty of competent dry van drivers will do it once and quit, so a driver with real flatbed time and securement knowledge is worth more than their years suggest. Beyond those, listen for the operational detail that separates seat time from familiarity. Reefer drivers who talk about pre-cooling, setting continuous versus start-stop, checking pulp temperatures at the dock, and what they do when a reefer alarms at two in the morning have actually hauled temperature-controlled freight rather than ridden along with it. Tanker drivers who mention surge, baffled versus smooth bore, and braking distance on a partial load know why the endorsement exists. Strong answers name specific equipment with rough time on each and are honest about what they would rather not run, which is useful information and not a red flag. Be cautious with the driver who says they can drive anything, since that usually hides thin manual, flatbed, or tanker time and surfaces on day one of orientation rather than in the screen. Also ask about doubles and anything oversize if your freight needs it, since both are skills that fade without recent practice.

Walk me through how you plan a run around Hours of Service. Which ELD systems have you used, and tell me about a time your clock was going to run out before you got where you needed to be.

What this assesses: This question tests whether the driver plans around the clock or fights it, which is the difference between freight that arrives and a violation on your CSA score. Strong answers name the ELD systems they have actually run and then describe habits rather than reciting rules. Listen for scouting parking well before the fourteen-hour window closes instead of at hour thirteen, using the thirty-minute break deliberately at a stop they were taking anyway, using a split sleeper when the math works, watching the seventy-hour recap across the week rather than just today, and calling dispatch as soon as a shipper delay is going to burn the clock instead of after the appointment is already missed. The best answers treat running out of hours as a planning failure to be anticipated, and they tell you about a specific run where they parked short of the receiver and delivered first thing rather than pushing an hour they did not have. Be cautious with a candidate who is vague on the basic limits, who treats the ELD as buttons someone else told them to press, or who cannot produce an example in years of driving. The answer that should stop you is the driver who jokes about running around the logs, edits, or personal conveyance used creatively, because log falsification is a violation that lands on your carrier record and not just theirs. One more useful signal: a driver who asks what your detention policy is, whether you pay for layover, or how dispatch handles a load that cannot legally be made on time is evaluating whether your operation will put them in that position every week. That is a driver who intends to stay compliant, and the question deserves a straight answer.

Tell me about a time something went wrong on a run: a breakdown, a defect you found on a pre-trip, bad weather, or a shipper or receiver that held you up. What did you do, and how did you keep dispatch in the loop?

What this assesses: A driver alone at a receiver two states away is only as manageable as their willingness to pick up the phone, so this question is really about communication habits with composure as a bonus. Strong answers produce a specific situation and specific steps. Listen for getting the truck to a safe place first, calling dispatch early with a real updated ETA rather than an optimistic one, triangles out when the shoulder is the only option, and staying with the load. The pre-trip version of this answer is the most revealing one available, because a driver who describes finding a bad brake, a cracked wheel, a flat inner dual, or a trailer light out and refusing to roll until it was fixed is telling you they will take the write-up over the risk. That is the safety culture you want and it is hard to fake. Ask what happened next, too, since a driver who logged the defect on the inspection report and followed up to confirm the repair understands why the paperwork exists. Be cautious with a candidate who cannot recall a single incident across years of driving, which usually means they are not reading the question rather than that nothing ever happened. Watch for the driver who describes going quiet and sorting it out alone, since a six-hour silence while you are calling a customer is its own problem. And listen to the tone: a story told as a grievance against a dispatcher, a shipper, or a lumper tends to repeat on your freight, while a driver who says the receiver sat on them for six hours and they used the time for their break and let dispatch reschedule the next pickup is simply someone who has done this job.

What home time do you need, what pay are you targeting and in what form (per mile, hourly, or percentage), and how soon could you start orientation if this is a fit?

What this assesses: These are the three things that actually break driver hires, and asking them last means you already know whether the driver is qualified before you find out whether the deal works. Strong answers give a home-time expectation that matches the route they said they wanted, a pay target inside a normal range for that freight, and a concrete date they could sit in orientation, usually about two weeks out for notice. Pay attention to the form of the pay, not just the number, because a driver coming off hourly local work who is quoted a per-mile rate often has no idea what detention, short loads, and a bad week of weather do to the check, and that gap is a week-six resignation. If your lane pays per mile, say which mileage standard you use and what you pay for stops, layover, and detention. Be cautious with a driver who wants every weekend home on an OTR lane, who quotes a rate well above market for the freight, or who cannot name a start date, since noncommittal here usually means your offer is being run against two others. That is not disqualifying and it is worth knowing, because speed is how you win those. Fast is the whole strategy in this market: a qualified driver with a clean record will accept the first credible offer, so a screen that reaches them at nine at night and a recruiter call the next morning beats a better lane that called four days late. Score every driver against the same [structured interview](/glossary/structured-interview) rubric so credentials and route fit decide the hire rather than who happened to answer the phone, and use [asynchronous screening](/glossary/asynchronous-screening) so a driver can finish the screen from a truck stop at 9 p.m. instead of losing the recruit to a week of phone tag.