See every ticket, violation and suspension.
Not once a year.
Most fleets check each driver's motor vehicle record (MVR) once a year. Everything in between stays invisible: a speeding ticket, a DUI, a suspension. Monitoring will watch those records year-round and tell you when one changes.
Coming soon. Companies on the waitlist get a launch discount.
Driving records Preview · 5 drivers, watched between reviews
Jan 12
T. Walker · speeding ticket
New entry on his driving record · between annual reviews
Mike Torres · CDL suspended
Class A · Texas · flagged between annual reviews
- Tickets, violations, suspensions, downgrades
- Alongside the annual MVR (49 CFR 391.25)
- Covered by the FCRA consent drivers e-sign
The blind spot
A driving record you checked in January is a January record
The annual review under 49 CFR 391.25 is a snapshot. It is accurate on the day it is pulled and starts going stale the next morning. Everything a driver does for the following 364 days lands on a record nobody is reading. Continuous driver license monitoring exists to close exactly that gap.
364
days between one annual review and the next
1
of them is the day you actually look
0
warning you get when it changes on day 2
Annual review only
11 months unknown
With monitoring
Flagged in February
Same event, same driver. You hear about it while the truck is still in the yard.
What monitoring catches
What driver license monitoring catches
Anything that lands on a driver's motor vehicle record between reviews, and any change to whether that license is still good.
Suspension or revocation
The license stops being valid. The CDL suspension alert that turns a routine week into a scheduling problem instead of a liability one.
A new ticket or violation
Speeding, a moving violation, a conviction. On its own it may change nothing. Three of them change the picture.
A DUI or disqualifying offense
The kind of entry that ends a driving career, and that you should not learn about from a plaintiff's lawyer.
A downgrade or disqualification
The class drops, or an endorsement goes away. The driver is still licensed, just not for the truck you put them in.
The expiration you already knew about
Handled separately, by date: email alerts at 30, 14, 7 and 3 days, with an upload link the driver can use from a phone.
And the drivers with nothing to report
Most of your fleet, most of the time. Silence from a system that is actually looking is worth something.
Once you turn it on
How does continuous MVR monitoring work?
-
Step 1
Your drivers are already in the system
Monitoring reads the driver list you already have. The FCRA disclosure and written authorization that lets you pull an MVR is collected by e-signature during onboarding and kept in the driver's file, which is the same permission ongoing monitoring runs on.
-
Step 2
The record is watched, not re-checked once a year
When something lands on a driver's record, that is the moment it becomes useful to you, not twelve months later. Nothing to run, nothing to remember, no calendar entry.
-
Step 3
You get told. You decide.
The alert names the driver and what changed. Nothing about their status moves on its own, and no message goes to the driver on your behalf. Whether someone keeps driving is a decision with legal weight, and it stays yours.
Mike Torres · license suspended
Texas · flagged on your dashboard and by email
Worth being clear about
Monitoring does not replace the annual MVR
49 CFR 391.25 requires a motor vehicle record from every state where the driver held a license in the past 12 months, plus a documented review of it. Monitoring is not that record and does not satisfy that rule. Anyone selling it as a replacement is selling you a violation.
The two do different jobs. The annual MVR is the document an auditor asks for. Monitoring is what keeps the eleven months between them from being a guess. DOTDriverFiles orders the annual MVR automatically, 30 days before each driver’s hire anniversary, so the filing requirement is handled either way.
Why the delay costs
The problem was never the ticket.
It was the eleven months after it.
A suspension you act on the same week is a scheduling problem. The same suspension found eleven months later, after the driver has been dispatched two hundred times on a file that says "qualified", is a different conversation entirely.
Negligent retention
The question in the deposition is what you knew and when. "Our annual review was in January" is an answer, but not a good one.
Your insurance renewal
Underwriters price what your drivers actually do. Violations you did not know about are priced in whether you knew or not.
An audit with a stale file
FMCSA violations run roughly $1,100 to $16,000 each. A driver qualification file that disagrees with the state record is a finding.
Questions
MVR monitoring questions
It is an ongoing watch on a driver’s motor vehicle record, rather than a single check once a year. Instead of learning about a ticket, a suspension or a revocation at the next annual review, the change is surfaced to you between reviews, while you can still decide whether that driver should be behind the wheel.
No. 49 CFR 391.25 requires a motor vehicle record from every state where the driver held a license in the past 12 months, plus a documented annual review of that record. Monitoring runs alongside that requirement and does not satisfy it. DOTDriverFiles still orders the annual MVR automatically 30 days before each driver’s hire anniversary.
Yes. Under 49 CFR 383.33, a CDL driver has to tell their employer about a suspension, revocation or disqualification by the end of the next business day after receiving the notice, and under 49 CFR 383.31, about any traffic conviction other than parking within 30 days. Monitoring covers the times that call never comes: a notice mailed to an old address, a driver who did not think a ticket mattered, or one who hoped it would not come up.
Up to nearly a year. If the annual review happens in January and a license is suspended in February, the record on file stays clean until the following January. The exposure is not the suspension itself but every mile driven after it, on a file that says the driver is qualified.
New activity on the driving record, such as a ticket, a violation or a conviction, and changes to license status such as a suspension, a revocation, a downgrade or a disqualification. A license approaching its expiration date is handled separately by expiration alerts at 30, 14, 7 and 3 days.
Expiration alerts are driven by a date you already have: the license expires on a known day, so reminders are scheduled backwards from it. Monitoring is for the things no date can predict, such as a speeding ticket on a Saturday. You need both, and they answer different questions.
Because the driver qualification file says the driver was qualified. In a negligent retention claim the question is what the carrier knew and when. A file showing an annual review eleven months old is a weaker answer than a monitoring record showing the change was flagged and acted on the week it happened.
Driving records are consumer reports under the FCRA, so the same disclosure and written authorization that covers pulling an MVR is what permits ongoing monitoring. DOTDriverFiles collects the FCRA disclosure and authorization by e-signature during onboarding and keeps it in the driver’s file.
The change is surfaced to you rather than acted on for you. Nothing about the driver’s status changes by itself: no automatic disqualification, and no message sent to the driver on your behalf. Software should not decide who is fit to drive.
Stop finding out a year late.
Put your drivers in, and let the record tell you when something changes. The annual MVR still gets ordered on schedule, and the eleven months in between stop being a blind spot.
Start Free Trial14-day free trial · See pricing
