The new Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) Commercial Driver’s License Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse will be operational as of January 6, 2020. The Clearinghouse is a secure online database that will give employers, the FMCSA, State Driver Licensing Agencies, and State law enforcement personnel real-time information about commercial driver’s license (CDL) holders’ drug and alcohol program violations.
Beginning January 6, 2020, employers, or their designated consortium/third party administrators (C/TPAs), will be required to conduct queries to determine whether their current and prospective employees are prohibited from performing in safety-sensitive job positions, such as operating commercial motor vehicles, due to unresolved drug and alcohol program violations.
Employers are responsible for reporting their employee DOT drug testing results to the Clearinghouse, either directly or through a C/TPA.
Nova Medical Centers is not a C/TPA and does not report testing results to the Clearinghouse.
General DOT Query FAQs
When are employers required to query the DOT Clearinghouse?
Employers are required to make a pre-employment query for each driver in the Clearinghouse and at least one query each year for each driver during employment. The type of query required is further described in the table below.
Is there a reason to query the Clearinghouse more than as required?
Some drivers are employed by more than one carrier. If another employer your driver works for reports a violation to the Clearinghouse, you will not want to wait until their annual query to obtain this information, or you may be liable for allowing a driver to operate in a safety-sensitive position despite his/her ineligibility to do so.
What information will employers need to query specific drivers in the Clearinghouse?
Employers will need to have the driver’s CDL number and state proof of issuance to query the driver’s Clearinghouse record.
Can the employer query multiple drivers at once with batch uploads?
Yes. The employer or the C/TPA will upload a tab-delimited file containing the following information for each driver that will be queried:
- Last Name
- First Name
- Date of Birth
- CDL
- Country
- State
- A Number 1-4 Representing Query Type: 1) Limited; 2) Full; 3) Pre-employment; 4) Limited with Automatic Consent Request.
Automatic Consent Request means that, if a limited query returns that the driver has violation information in his/her Clearinghouse record, the Clearinghouse will automatically submit a request from your employer to that driver for his/her consent to a full query.
Do employers still need to query past employers for drug and alcohol violations occurring in the three years before January 6, 2020?
Yes. Only violations occurring after January 6, 2020, will be available in the Clearinghouse, so employers will need to conduct traditional verifications with their drivers’ past DOT-regulated employers in addition to querying the Clearinghouse until January 2023.
What is the cost charged by the FMCSA for queries?
Employers will be charged a fee by the FMCSA for full and limited queries of $1.25 per query (plus any services costs incurred by using a C/TPA). Queries must be purchased in batches, and these will never expire.
Unlimited packages are also available for high-volume employers. Unlimited packages cost $24,000 and must be renewed annually.
Employers must purchase queries directly from the Clearinghouse, as C/TPAs are unable to purchase queries for their customers.
Can drivers dispute information on their Clearinghouse records?
Disputes will be handled by the FMCSA, which will notify drivers of its decision within 14 days if the record in question is prohibiting the driver from performing safety-sensitive job functions or within 45 days if it is not.
FMCSA will notify any employers that have viewed a record that has been changed after the outcome of their review.
When must employers make limited vs. full queries?
Limited Queries
Must conduct a limited or full query at least once every year for all drivers.
Full Queries
An employer must conduct a pre-employment query for a prospective driver in the Clearinghouse prior to hiring the driver for a position requiring him or her to perform safety-sensitive functions, such as operating a commercial motor vehicle (CMV).
Must conduct a full query if a limited query returns any results.
What information will employers receive?
Limited Queries
Notification about whether the driver’s Clearinghouse record has any information about resolved or unresolved drug and alcohol program violations
It does not provide specific information about violations.
Full Queries
Detailed information about any drug and alcohol program violations in a driver’s Clearinghouse record.
Next Steps
To find out more information about the Clearinghouse or to register, please visit https://clearinghouse.fmcsa.dot.gov/
If you have any questions, please fill out a contact form with the subject “Questions about the new Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse” or call us toll-free at 1-866-480-1310.
