How Fleets Should Respond to the Non-Domiciled CDL Legal Battle
A federal appeals court delivered significant news for the trucking industry this week, temporarily halting the Department of Transportation’s controversial emergency restrictions on non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses. The administrative stay, issued Monday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, puts the September 29, 2025, emergency order on hold while legal […]
How to Prepare for Your New Entrant Safety Audit
Getting your DOT number feels like the start of something big. You’ve finally got the green light to run your own operation, and the excitement is real. But once that first wave settles, another feeling usually kicks in—everything tied to safety and compliance now rests on your shoulders. It’s a jarring shift for a lot […]
How to Create a Compliant DOT Driver Qualification File: A Step-by-Step Checklist
If you’ve ever scrambled to pull together driver files right before an audit, you know the stress. Missing documents, expired certificates, and incomplete applications may seem like small gaps, but they can cost thousands in fines and put your authority at risk. And while there are a number of documents to create and collect, building a compliant driver qualification […]
What Carriers Need to Know About FMCSA Clearinghouse Violations in 2025
The FMCSA Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse will mark its sixth anniversary this January, yet compliance problems remain as widespread as ever. Despite years of warnings and training, Clearinghouse violations have ranked among the most common FMCSA audit findings for the past five years. In a September webinar hosted by U.S. Compliance Services, compliance experts Alex Elias and Steve Harz broke […]
19% of FMCSA Audit Violations Are Preventable with MVR Monitoring
How closely are you paying attention to driver safety? The FMCSA has strict compliance requirements designed to protect the nation’s roadways, but those rules alone don’t guarantee that your drivers are always operating safely and compliantly. Case in point: nearly one in five audit violations is entirely preventable with an MVR Monitoring program. While these […]
1 in 5 Roadside Inspections Put Motor Carriers Out of Service in 2025
What’s the biggest compliance challenge facing carriers in 2026? If fiscal year 2025 data is any indication, it’s avoiding the roadside inspection that puts your driver out of service. Almost 1 in 5 inspections (19.98%) ended with an OOS order this past year—and the problem is getting worse. With fiscal year data through September 26, […]
Understanding Your DOT Recordkeeping Requirements
Missing paperwork has become one of the most expensive problems in trucking. While carriers focus on driver safety and vehicle maintenance, documentation violations quietly pile up during DOT audits — often catching even well-run operations off guard. So far this year, paperwork-related violations have made up about 22% of all audit violations. Knowing exactly what […]
DOT Proposes Fentanyl Testing for CDL Drivers
On September 2, 2025, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that would add fentanyl and its metabolite norfentanyl to the mandatory drug testing panel for commercial truck drivers. If finalized, this would mark the first major expansion of DOT’s testing program since 2017, reflecting the growing threat of […]
Is Your UCR Renewal Due for 2026?
It’s that time of year again. Annual Unified Carrier Registration (UCR) opens on October 1, 2025, and carriers have until December 31, 2025, to renew for the 2026 registration year. Miss the deadline, and you won’t be operating legally in interstate commerce come January 1. For many fleets, the last quarter of the year is […]
What Is FMCSA 392.2 and Why Is It the Top Audit Violation?
What’s the most common FMCSA audit violation? If you guessed hours of service, drug and alcohol testing, or vehicle maintenance, you’d be wrong. The answer has held steady for every year on record: 49 CFR §392.2, Violation of Local Laws. This single regulation has generated 34,278 violations across 22,485 investigations from 2021 to 2025. That’s […]