Guide · after a failure
You get a letter, a deadline, and one real chance to fix it. Failing a new entrant safety audit does not shut you down on the spot — it starts a clock, and what you do inside the clock decides whether your registration survives.
Under §385.319(a), FMCSA sends a written notice no later than 45 days after the audit, telling you your operating registration will be revoked unless you do one of two things: submit an acceptable corrective action plan, or request an administrative review of the failure.
Your corrective action plan is due 60 days from the date of the notice — unless you carry passengers or placarded hazmat, in which case it is 45 days (§385.319(b)–(c)). Inside that same window FMCSA must review the plan and tell you whether it is acceptable — which is why a plan that arrives on day 55 can fail for timing even if its contents are fine. The working rule: a CAP has to be received in about 15 days to leave room for review and a second attempt.
An acceptable plan gets you a decision notice and your new entrant period continues under monitoring. If no acceptable plan arrives, §385.325 does what the notice promised: FMCSA revokes the registration and issues an out-of-service order, effective the day after your window closes. You may reapply for registration 30 days after the revocation — with proof the problems are fixed and a $300 application fee.
If the audit was simply wrong — the failure rests on a mistake of fact — §385.319(d) lets you request an administrative review instead, within 15 days of the notice (90 days if the agency's own error misinformed you). Review argues the audit; a CAP fixes the carrier. Most failures need the CAP.
FMCSA's own guidance names the shape: for each violation, how it happened, the action already taken to fix it, the action that prevents it happening again, and the date each corrective action takes effect — under a signed officer statement. The full walkthrough is in what a corrective action plan must contain. A plan that says "we will be more careful" is not a plan; it is a hope, and it reads that way in review.
Yes — the revocation takes effect only when the window closes without an acceptable plan. The clock runs against your authority, not against your trucks, until that date.
Fix it in a day, and say so in the plan with the evidence attached. Some lines (the drug & alcohol program, the random pool) cannot be backdated into existence — the plan's prevention section is where those are won.
The rehearsal exists so this page stays theoretical. The full rehearsal scores the same 16 lines against your files now, while every fix is still cheap.
This guide explains the process in the regulation's own terms; it is not legal advice, and it is not the audit. FMCSA decides.