The Costly Toll of Manual Prospective Employer Requests on Trucking Companies and How To Lighten the Load

Every hour you and your staff spend responding to prospective employer requests is an hour not spent driving growth. For trucking companies, these requests weigh heavily on staff workloads, eating into profitability, clogging inboxes, tying up Safety and HR resources, and pulling focus from strategic priorities. It’s time to shift gears and streamline your operations. Here’s a look at the hidden costs associated with manually handling prospective employer requests in-house and how your company can reduce them in the future.

Why are manual prospective employer requests so costly?

At first glance, responding to prospective employer requests may seem like a minor task you and your staff can take on yourselves. But when handled manually, these routine processes create a significant operational drain:

• Time-Consuming: Each request can take 15–30 minutes to complete, especially if handled by phone, fax, or email.

• Resource-Intensive: Administrative staff are pulled away from higher-value tasks to track down records and respond to repetitive inquiries.

• Error-prone: Manual data entry increases the risk of mistakes—leading to violations, potential legal costs or repeated follow-ups.

• Slow Turnaround: Delays in response times can frustrate former employees, partners, and verifiers—impacting your reputation and slowing down their operations.

When is an automated solution not really automated?

Be cautious of services that claim to offer modernized or electronic verifications that still require significant manual management on your part. When looking to effectively and efficiently outsource prospective employer requests, ask yourself:  

• Must I respond to the requests myself?

• What if the driver applies to multiple carriers, do I have to reenter information?

• Do I have to do time-consuming research to get all the data together?

• Am I responsible for specifying costs?

• Do I need to determine who I will and will not charge?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, you’re still bogged down in hidden costs and manual work. 

Now think about your current provider. There may be some key features you’re missing.

• Does your provider offer your drivers and automated request for correction and rebuttal system?

• Do they offer customer service that helps your drivers and assists requestors?

• Is your data still yours and always up to date?

• Do you see all tracking and statistics on the requests of your data?

• Are the requests audit-ready?

  
  

If the answers are no, you’re not getting everything you need to work more efficiently.

How can outsourcing to DriverFacts save time and money? 

At DriverFacts, we believe your team’s time is too valuable to spend chasing down old records or fielding repetitive requests. That’s why our proprietary software is designed to take the heavy lifting out of prospective employer requests for driver work history—efficiently and securely.

Implementing DriverFacts third-party administrative services is a one-time investment that delivers ongoing savings. Not only does it free up internal resources, but it also provides an auditable, compliant, and secure way to manage sensitive driver data.

A closer look at the advantages of DriverFacts membership:

• Administrative Relief: DriverFacts handles calls from drivers and prospective employers to reduce the administrative burden of processing incoming work history requests. Many carriers who use other systems still have to manage the request, respond to emails and enter data. With DriverFacts, it’s seamlessly processed on your behalf.

• Reduce Manual Workload: Automated systems handle the response to the work history requests—so your HR or admin staff does not have to. For example, if your company receives just 50 verification requests a month, automating this process could save 20+ staff hours—freeing your team to focus on hiring, training, and managing your fleet. One company had three full-time employees processing requests before becoming a DriverFacts member. Now, one person handles it all in about 30 minutes a week.

• Faster Turnaround Times: Requests can be fulfilled in seconds, not days. This not only improves satisfaction among requesters but also boosts your company’s professional image.

• Improved Accuracy: Digital records minimize human error. By pulling data directly from your HR or driver management system, you ensure accurate, consistent, and compliant responses every time while also lowering your legal risk.

• 24/7 Availability: Automated systems can handle requests at any time, even after hours or on weekends—keeping your business responsive without requiring staff overtime.

• Lower Operational Costs: Reducing the need for manual handling means fewer labor hours spent per request. Over time, this adds up to thousands of dollars in savings—especially for companies with high driver turnover or frequent requests.

• Boost Driver Retention. With the pioneering DriverFacts Morning Report, members are alerted to drivers who are looking, leaving, or terminated and looking again so they can find those drivers first and act to retain them before someone else recruits them away. This helps keep your operations running smoothly and saves the thousands of dollars it takes to hire a new driver.

  
  

DriverFacts helps cut the costs and hassle of handling manual driver prospective employer requests

With fair pricing, easy set-up, instant ROI and customization at no extra charge – DriverFacts is the first and still the best. For more information on becoming a member, contact Mylene Patterson at 888-844-4730, extension 804.