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How to Ensure FMCSA Compliance as a Trucking Company

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4 Ways to Easily Ensure FMCSA Compliance

The word “audit” usually brings up feelings of panic when you hear it. The thought of a governing board or body coming to grade your business on how well it follows rules and guidelines can make anyone a little anxious. You know the rules and you seek to follow them every day. But there’s always some details that can potentially be missed, or some paperwork that’s inevitably been misplaced. With a few minor changes to your strategy, you can be ready for any audit. Here is how to ensure FMCSA compliance.

What is an FMCSA Audit?

To get ready to pass an audit, you need to know what one is. The Department of Transportation (DOT) governs the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). The mission of the FMCSA is to provide regulations to increase safety and decrease accidents and fatalities involving commercial motor vehicles.

These audits cover everything from the basics of DOT licensing, all the way to tracking each of your drivers’ drug and alcohol testing records to ensure FMCSA compliance.

In order to work to make the roads safer for everyone, those who work in the trucking industry are subject to the rules and regulations that the FMCSA provides. From time to time, they require an audit of your carrier for compliance with these rules and regulations.

Plan for a Remote Audit

The Quick Guide to Remote Onboarding

This year, the COVID-19 pandemic has cancelled countless in-person events, not limited to family parties and business meetings. In May 2020, the FMCSA issued guidance that they would conduct reviews “by leveraging all available technology to access information” and “limit exposure risk for the regulated community and safety investigators”. All the rules to follow were still in place, but the on-site review was no longer a requirement.

Planning for a remote audit is still important, and carriers need to use the prescribed ways of supplying information securely and on-time.

Using email and telephone and video calls instead of in-person interaction might seem unusual for a safety audit. However, these methods are good alternatives to keep everyone safely distanced during these unusual times.

Though remote audits were not new to 2020, they were more important that ever this year.

Use Technology to Stay Organized

Forget about keeping track of everything manually because something will always get lost in the shuffle. Move to a system of electronically tracking your documents, or better yet, use software specifically designed to help teams like yours monitor, track, and prepare for audits. These programs can be setup to give you warnings when you’re coming up against an expiration or getting close to a due date.

Take the time now to move to new automated systems to help ensure FMCSA compliance or at least start planning to phase out paper ledgers and countless pages of checklists.

Once documents have been scanned and electronically filed one time, they are stored in one place forever. No more searching high and low in a storage room full of papers for that one lost document you need for an upcoming audit.

Just like moving to an online applicant tracking system to save time, use online tools to help ensure safety and compliance. You can free-up time and space by using technology to alleviate all that paperwork.

Know the Rules

For FMCSA compliance, there are several categories where non-compliance is an automatic fail on your safety audit. Knowing the rules and having a great safety plan in place are a great place to start to ensure you’re set for FMCSA compliance. Creating a culture of safety is important. You can rally your drivers and the entire organization around it, and celebrate safety throughout the year. Having a great plan for safety and compliance can be something attractive to your future drivers and can help retain drivers at your carrier for a long career.

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Ultimate Guide to Retaining Truck Drivers

You work so hard to recruit the best truck drivers for your fleet. The trick is retaining them. This guide is packed with tips for retaining your fleet.

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Are You Making the Most of the FMCSA Clearinghouse?

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clearinghouse judgement gavel

The FMCSA Clearinghouse went into effect in January of this year. As with many industry-wide changes, there were some technical problems early on, but now, 90 days later, the majority of these have been resolved. 

The intent of the Clearinghouse was to identify drivers with positive DOT drug and alcohol tests. It is doing just that. Nearly 8,000 positive results have been identified. That may seem like a severe reduction in available drivers. However, it does increase the percentage of candidates who are eligible for employment. It also reduces the likelihood that a good carrier loses a driver to a less reputable company. The Clearinghouse ensures that companies are following the same hiring policies. 

Here’s how you can make the most of the FMCSA Clearinghouse.

1. Reduce Processing Delays

As with any new system implementation, it will take some time for the Clearinghouse to become a well oiled machine. In the meantime, one of the best ways to improve your user experience is by reducing the processing delays. In order for your request to be processed, drivers must have already completed their CDL information. To confirm whether a driver has registered, ask them login to their Clearinghouse account. If the driver has not fully registered, there will be a note on the account prompting them to do so. 

If you are confident that the driver has completed their CDL information but your query is still pending, it may be lacking driver consent. To authorize a query, a driver must login and give consent for employers to access their record. If the driver has logged in and cannot see the consent request, you can cancel the original request and resend an identical one to reset the process. 

2. Take Advantage of Bulk Uploads

If you have a large batch of queries to process simultaneously from the Clearinghouse, consider conducting a bulk upload. Use the FMCSA’s bulk upload template.  To do a bulk upload, create a tab-delimited file that can be uploaded to the Clearinghouse. The file should include the following fields:

  • LastName 
  • FirstName
  • Date of Birth. Format is MM/DD/YYYY
  • CDL – Commercial Driver’s License or Commercial Learner’s Permit Number
  • Country Code of CDL issuance. For Canada: CN; Mexico: MX, United States: US
  • State of CDL issuance. For the U.S. and Canada, use two letter State/Province codes. Use MX for Mexico
  • Query Type – Choose one of the following:
    1. Limited Query
    2. Full Query
    3. Pre-employment Query
    4. Limited Query with Automatic Consent Request

3. Be Proactive

Employers are now required to conduct a query on potential employees before they operate a CMV. So, it is in your interest to expedite the process if possible. Many drivers have already registered on the Clearinghouse if they are job searching. Unfortunately, there are also still many who haven’t. As you approach the point of hire with a new driver, be proactive and ask them whether they are registered. Going forward, make this a standard part of your interview or hiring process. You can help drivers register if they haven’t already. 

4. Manage Existing Employees

At the time of the creation of the Clearinghouse, all drivers were added to the system. That does not mean that all drivers are registered.

As an employer, you do not need to register drivers who are existing employees.

For drivers who are already with your company, you can use the Clearinghouse to conduct your annual review. It is only when drivers are at the point of changing jobs or being hired, that they must be registered. 

5. Understand the Nuances

All drivers who are hired for CDL-A positions going forward will need to pass the Clearinghouse query. That said, the query does not need to have been completed by the time of hire.

Drivers can be hired by a new employer, but are prohibited from operating a commercial motorized vehicle (CMV) until they pass the Clearinghouse.

Employers can now decide whether to incorporate the Clearinghouse query prior to the point of employment, or to complete the query following employment but prior to operation of a CMV.

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