Overview
Transportation is the only industry where the federal government writes the screening program for you. For commercial drivers, what gets checked, when, and how often is set by regulation rather than by policy, and an auditor will ask to see the file.
That makes transportation screening less a hiring decision than a compliance schedule. The judgment calls that dominate other industries mostly disappear, replaced by deadlines.
Throughout this page, “carrier” means a motor carrier subject to federal safety regulation, and “screening company” refers to the outside firm an employer hires to run the check.
Which Checks Are Commonly Run
| Driving Records | Motor vehicle records from every state where the driver held a license, at hire and annually thereafter. |
| Drug Testing | Federally prescribed panel, plus the mandatory query of the federal violation clearinghouse. |
| Employment History | 3 years of safety performance history from federally regulated employers, which is a different and broader request than an ordinary verification. |
| Criminal Records | Not federally mandated for most driving roles, but standard practice and frequently required by customers and insurers. |
| Identity Verification | Establishes prior addresses, which determines which state licensing authorities have to be queried. |
Two federal systems have no equivalent in other industries and are covered below: the commercial license index, and the pre-employment safety history report.
What the Regulations Require
At Hire
- Within 30 days of employment starting, obtain the driver’s motor vehicle record covering the prior 3 years, from every licensing authority where they held a license during that period.
- Investigate safety performance history with federally regulated employers over the preceding 3 years.
- Query the drug and alcohol clearinghouse before the driver performs safety sensitive functions.
- Obtain a verified negative pre-employment drug test before safety sensitive duty begins.
- Confirm the medical examiner’s certificate is current.
Every Year After
- Obtain a fresh motor vehicle record and review it, which is a separate obligation from obtaining it.
- Collect the driver’s annual list of traffic convictions.
- Run the annual clearinghouse query.
The regulation instructs carriers to give great weight to speeding, reckless driving, and operating under the influence, on the reasoning that those specifically indicate disregard for public safety.
The Driver Qualification File
All of it lives in a file kept for each driver, alongside the employment application, the road test certificate, and the medical certificate. It is the first thing an auditor asks for, and an incomplete file is a finding regardless of whether the driver was any good.
CDLIS, PSP, and the Clearinghouse
Three federal systems do work no state record can.
CDLIS
The commercial license index enforces one driver, one license, one record. It does not hold driving history. It identifies which states hold a commercial record for that driver, which is what tells a carrier where to send its record requests. Without it, the carrier is relying on the driver to list every state accurately.
The PSP Report
The pre-employment safety history report holds 5 years of federally reportable crashes and 3 years of roadside inspections, drawn from the federal motor carrier system.
A roadside violation is not a conviction, which is exactly why this report shows things a driving record does not. An inspector can record an hours of service violation, a logbook problem, or an equipment defect without any citation reaching a court. None of it appears on a state driving record. It sits in the federal inspection data instead.
It requires the driver’s written consent, it is limited to pre-employment screening rather than monitoring current drivers, and it is not mandatory. An empty report is common and means nothing bad, since only drivers with a crash or inspection appear at all.
The Clearinghouse
The federal drug and alcohol clearinghouse holds violations, refusals, and return to duty status. A full query is required before a driver performs safety sensitive functions, and a limited query annually thereafter. A driver in prohibited status may not drive until the return to duty process is complete.
Marijuana and Federally Regulated Drivers
A state medical marijuana card carries no weight for a federally regulated driver. The federal standard requires a legitimate medical explanation, and that means a federally legal prescription. Marijuana does not qualify no matter what the state permits, and the reviewing physician will not accept a card, a dispensary receipt, or a doctor’s recommendation.
This surprises drivers in states with strong off duty protections, because those protections almost universally carve out safety sensitive and federally regulated positions. A driver protected in their state as an employee is not protected as a commercial driver. Our drug testing page covers the state by state position.
Drivers Outside the Federal Rules
Most people who drive for work are not commercial drivers, and the picture changes completely.
For employees driving a personal or light vehicle on company business, no federal schedule applies. The employer sets the standard, and it is usually the commercial auto insurer that dictates what the standard has to be. Because the federal privacy law’s employment permission for driving records is written for commercial license holders, these checks generally rest on the applicant’s written consent rather than on a statutory permission the employer already had.
Delivery and gig platforms add a further wrinkle. Many run continuous monitoring rather than a single check, which is lawful but requires its own disclosure and authorization rather than riding on the original hiring form.
Common Mistakes
- Obtaining the annual record without reviewing it. The regulation requires both, and the review is what the audit looks for.
- Querying only the current state when the driver held licenses elsewhere in the past 3 years.
- Treating a clean driving record as a clean safety history. Roadside violations never reach the state record.
- Running a PSP report on a current employee, which is outside what the program permits.
- Missing the annual clearinghouse query, which is easy to overlook because nothing prompts it.
- Applying a point threshold across states, when the same violation carries different point values in different states.
- Letting the medical certificate lapse, which disqualifies a driver as surely as a suspension.
For Drivers
- Pull your own PSP report. You can request it at any time and subscribe to notifications when it changes. It is the only way to see what carriers see about your crashes and inspections.
- Pull your own driving record too, from every state you have been licensed in. Both are cheap and both prevent surprises.
- Check your clearinghouse status if you have ever had a violation, since prohibited status blocks driving until return to duty is complete.
- A dismissed charge should not appear as a conviction. Court outcomes are not always transmitted back to the licensing agency, and that is a correctable error.
- An empty PSP report is normal. Only drivers with a reportable crash or a roadside inspection appear in the system.
- Do not rely on a state medical card. For federally regulated driving it provides no protection at all.
Best Practices
- Run the license index search first, so the record requests go to every correct state
- Diary the annual obligations, since nothing external prompts them
- Document the review of each annual record, not just its retrieval
- Run the safety history report alongside the driving record, because they cover different ground
- Write hiring standards around conduct rather than point totals, which are not comparable across states
- Ask your insurer what its standard is, since it is frequently the real constraint
- Keep the qualification file complete and current, because it is the first thing an audit examines
- Treat non-commercial drivers as a separate program with its own written policy