Safety Audit... Is It A Thing?

There's new entrant audits (most states hold one in the first 12 months to ensure the carrier is doing things mostly right). I'm old enough that the audit was held "en masse" at a local venue where you walked in with your files, sat down with an DOT officer and went over things for about a half hour. It's where I discovered I needed to check if I had a CDL and run a drug test on myself. Who would have thought, LOL?

Safety audits can be random, or in my case, if you have three OOS in three months (One guy forgot to write down "off duty" for the 7 days before where he was on vacation, one was a cracked rim the day after the local shop did the annual DOT, and one was a flat tire. They come in threes, I'm told). Safety audits are FAR more serious, and take a LOT of time. We were a single truck, two driver at the time, and the audit took three full days. In the end,we got written up for running a trailer passed it's annual DOT inspection date by a week. No fines, no negative consequences, other than an "undetermined" safety status, which is no issue for us. The nice things was that after the audit, we have been very rarely pullled into weigh stations.

 

Yes — it’s absolutely a thing.

DOT doesn’t always call it a “safety audit,” but new entrant audits, compliance reviews, and follow-ups after inspections all happen, especially within the first year or after issues start stacking up.

What usually causes problems isn’t anything dramatic — it’s the routine compliance stuff:

• Driver qualification files that aren’t fully documented
• Drug & alcohol clearinghouse mistakes
• HOS/log inconsistencies
• Maintenance and inspection records that don’t match

A lot of carriers get caught off guard because they don’t realize how much DOT expects to be immediately available.

I put together an interactive DOT/FMCSA audit checklist for my own use that walks through what DOT typically asks for, why it matters, and where to find each item. It’s laid out step-by-step instead of just being a static list, which makes it easier to verify things before there’s a problem.

If it helps anyone, it’s here:

DOT & FMCSA Audit Checklist (Interactive Guide for Carriers)

It’s not about fear — it’s just about being ready before DOT decides to look.