On this week’s episode of Taking the Hire Road, Brandon Wiseman, owner and president of Trucksafe Consulting, sat down with host Jeremy Reymer, founder of DriverReach and Project 61, to review important compliance-related changes to trucking’s landscape that come with Phase II of the Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse program.
Trucksafe is a DOT consulting company that helps transportation companies stay in compliance with DOT regulations.
“Our goal is to help trucking and bus companies of all sizes stay in compliance with the multitude of regulations that apply to their business,” said Wiseman. “We want to help keep their drivers safe and compliant and out of the crosshairs of regulators.”
Trucksafe regularly publishes informative content through podcasts, social media, online resources and the Trucksafe Compliance Network, a forum that helps safety professionals learn from one another.
Recently, Trucksafe launched eRegs, a software company that provides digital versions of the federal safety regulations. “Now fleets and their drivers can access an up-to-date version of the regulations more easily than ever,” said Wiseman. “The eRegs app includes access to all of the content we’ve developed to help break down practical steps for following those regulations.”
Since 2020, Trucksafe consulting has been primarily focused on helping the industry comply with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Commercial Driver’s License Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse program.
The Clearinghouse is a secure online database that gives employers, FMCSA, state driver licensing agencies (SDLAs) and state law enforcement personnel real-time information about commercial driver’s license (CDL) and commercial learner’s permit (CLP) holders’ drug and alcohol program violations.
The Clearinghouse enables employers to identify drivers who commit a drug and alcohol program violation while working for one employer but who subsequently fail to inform another employer, as required.
Employers are required to annually query the Clearinghouse for current and prospective employees’ drug and alcohol violations before permitting those employees to operate a commercial motor vehicle on public roads.
Thankfully, the Clearinghouse closed a significant compliance loophole with drug and alcohol compliance in 2020, according to Wiseman.
“For the many drivers and carriers who are using the Clearinghouse correctly with registered accounts, it’s definitely accomplishing its purpose,” Wiseman said.
“The FMCSA publishes its reports every month, and in the most recent numbers, there are roughly 180,000 CDL drivers currently in prohibited status, meaning they’re legally prohibited from operating a commercial motor vehicle. We’ve seen that number rise substantially in the past few years. It’s catching folks who have had drug or alcohol problems.”
There are currently only a few methods for enforcing the Clearinghouse requirements, including FMCSA compliance audits. “If a carrier isn’t registered or hasn’t completed any queries for CDL drivers, they will be written up for violations and fined heavily for not complying with Clearinghouse,” said Wiseman. “But as we all know, the FMCSA is a small agency relative to the industry, and so it only audits a certain number of carriers in a given year. As a result, there have been a number of companies that still have not gotten into compliance.”
Roadside inspections in most states have also begun to check drivers for Clearinghouse compliance. Drivers are checked through the database to see if queries have been properly run. “Hopefully, roadside inspections will close the enforcement gap and also bring more awareness to the requirements,” said Wiseman.
As of Monday, Clearinghouse’s Phase II took effect. “Up until now, state driver licensing agencies weren’t required to check a driver’s clearinghouse status when issuing or renewing a CDL, but that has now changed,” said Wiseman.
Previously, he says, drivers were violating the testing rules and placed in prohibited status but were not caught by their states’ licensing offices.
“Many of the 180,000 prohibited drivers were maintaining their CDLs illegally,” Wiseman said. “If those prohibited drivers go to work for a carrier that isn’t properly following Clearinghouse protocol and checking status, the carrier might just see a valid state-issued CDL and not check any further.”
States are now mandated to check the Clearinghouse status of any driver before issuing, renewing or upgrading a CDL. “This won’t catch everyone right away, but over the course of the next year, it will stop most prohibited drivers from falling through the cracks as they complete CDL transactions within their state,” Wiseman said.
Any safety professional who uses the Clearinghouse system and runs at least one query on all drivers will be notified automatically if a driver is placed into prohibited status, and Wiseman hopes that monitoring will continue to grow in frequency.
“Ultimately, I’d like to see us get to a point where continuous monitoring is required for motor carriers,” Wiseman said. “Right now, the only requirement is to run a check once per year, but that’s a massive gap if a driver is in any kind of violation and doesn’t volunteer that information over the course of a year.
“Continuous monitoring would prevent a lot of loopholes and keep unsafe and unqualified drivers off the roads.”
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Sponsors: DriverReach, Lanefinder, The National Transportation Institute, Career Now Brands, Carrier Intelligence, Infinit-I Workforce Solutions, WorkHound, Asurint, Arya By Leoforce, Seiza, Drive My Way, F|Staff, Trucksafe Consulting, Seated Social, Repowr