For new carriers in their first 18 months
Every new carrier is audited in its first months of operating. The audit samples your driver qualification files, your drug & alcohol records, and your maintenance files — and 16 specific failures end it on the spot. New Entrant Audit is one page that lays your files out the way the auditor reads them and rehearses the audit against your real evidence, so the letter is a date on your calendar, not a threat.
Answer the way your files look today, not the way you mean them to look. Not sure counts as not proven, because an auditor cannot credit what is not in the file.
Do you have a written drug & alcohol program policy — and proof that every driver sits in a testing pool?
Has your random testing pool actually drawn names and run tests in the last 12 months?
Is there current medical proof on file for every driver — for CDL drivers, the state record that shows medical status?
In the last 12 months, did you pull every driver's driving record and write down your review of it?
Has your required insurance filing been in force, with no gap, since the day you started operating?
For every driver, do you hold the pre-employment drug test result and the Clearinghouse query you ran before he first drove?
If an auditor sampled a month of duty status records tomorrow, would fewer than half of them be missing?
0 of 7 answered.
The full product
One page that lays every driver's file out in the three compartments the rules require, checks every date on the spot, runs the scored rehearsal over all 16 lines, and prints the audit packet in the auditor's order — with a corrective action plan builder if a line ever fails. No account, nothing stored on our side: you fill it in, run it, and print or save your packet.
$119 one-time. Flat per carrier, up to 10 drivers. Never per-driver, never a subscription.
The auditor pulls a sample of driver qualification files and checks them against §391.51 — application, records at hire, road test, the annual record and your review note, medical proof. Two files live apart from that folder by law: the §391.53 safety history file and the Part 382 drug & alcohol records. A tool that files them together teaches you a violation; this page keeps the three compartments separate, the way the rules do.
Under §385.321(b), a new entrant automatically fails on any one of 16 violations — no drug & alcohol program, a driver used after a positive test, an uninsured truck, half your duty records missing. Read all 16 in plain words, with the evidence each one wants.
A failed audit is not the end — a corrective action plan is, if it is late or thin. You get 60 days (45 for passenger and placarded hazmat), and FMCSA has to review and accept it inside that window, which is why the plan has to be received in about 15 days. The CAP builder walks each failed line through cause, steps taken, prevention, and evidence — in your words, submitted by you. How a CAP works.
A review FMCSA runs on every new carrier in its first months: your safety management systems and a sample of required records — driver qualification, duty status, vehicle maintenance, the accident register, drug & alcohol testing. The whole audit, explained.
18 months of monitoring. For property carriers the audit is performed within the first 12 months; passenger carriers run on a 120-day clock. The clocks, in plain words.
FMCSA sends a written notice — no later than 45 days after the audit — saying your registration will be revoked unless an acceptable corrective action plan arrives in time. What happens, step by step.
No — and be suspicious of anyone who says theirs does. This software rehearses your audit and flags what an auditor would flag. It does not certify compliance, and it is not the audit. FMCSA decides.