By Mike Reeves | ComplianceJournal.news
FMCSA enforcement data from 2025 showed more than 7,000 Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse violations reported — with failures to run pre-employment or annual limited queries accounting for the overwhelming majority. The Clearinghouse has been mandatory since January 2020. Five years into the mandate, carriers are still generating violations for the most basic requirement the program imposes: checking whether a driver has an unresolved drug or alcohol violation before putting them behind the wheel.
The volume of violations is significant in part because the consequences of a missed pre-employment Clearinghouse query extend well beyond a regulatory fine. A carrier that hired a driver without querying the Clearinghouse, whose driver subsequently was involved in an accident, faces a negligent hiring exposure that the Clearinghouse query was specifically designed to address. The regulatory violation and the civil liability risk are two separate problems, and the regulatory fine is often the smaller of them.
State licensing agencies also began using Clearinghouse data in 2025 to enforce CDL downgrades based on unresolved drug or alcohol violations — a new enforcement mechanism that adds state-level consequences to what had previously been a federally administered compliance program. Carriers operating drivers with unresolved Clearinghouse violations now face the possibility of CDL revocation by state licensing authorities in addition to FMCSA enforcement. For fleet safety managers, the 2025 data is a reminder that Clearinghouse compliance is not a one-time hiring step — it requires a functioning annual query program for every CDL driver currently on the roster.
Source: Embark Safety — Read the full analysis →