The Annual Review of Driving Record Is Two Documents, Not One

49 CFR 391.25 puts two documents in the driver qualification file for every driver, every year: the motor vehicle record itself, and a note naming the person who reviewed it. They are separate paragraphs of the rule, and separate items in the file — 391.51(b)(4) and 391.51(b)(5).

Most carriers produce the first. The MVR is a purchase; somebody orders it, it arrives, it gets filed. The second is a judgment somebody has to make and sign, and it is the one missing when an investigator opens the folder.

This is also the requirement that absorbed the one FMCSA deleted. The annual “record of violations” at 49 CFR 391.27 — the list of traffic convictions drivers signed each year — was removed in a final rule published March 9, 2022 and effective May 9, 2022, docket FMCSA-2018-0224, on the reasoning that the driver’s own list was “largely duplicative” of the MVR the carrier already had to pull. The section now reads [Reserved]. The rule was explicit about what survived: “the final rule does not remove the annual requirement for a motor carrier to obtain and review an MVR as required by Sec. 391.25” (87 FR 13192).

So the annual review did not get easier in 2022. It got lonelier — and the same rule widened the list of places you have to look.

What does 49 CFR 391.25 actually require?

Three things, in three paragraphs, and carriers routinely do the first and skip the third. The section is short enough to hold in your head (49 CFR 391.25).

Paragraph (b) is the one with no document of its own, which is exactly why (c)(2) exists: the note is the only evidence that a review happened. Remove it and the file shows a record you bought, not a decision you made. Both (a) and (b) open with the same qualifier — “Except as provided in subpart G of this part” — which is where the narrow exemptions live, further down.

When is the annual review due?

At least once every 12 months, measured from the last one, not from the hire date or the calendar year. The text is “at least once every 12 months,” and that phrasing sets a ceiling on the gap between reviews. A driver reviewed on 3 February 2026 is overdue on 4 February 2027, regardless of what the compliance spreadsheet says about “2027 reviews.”

Two 12-month windows appear in paragraph (a) and they are not the same window:

• The interval: how often you must inquire — at least once every 12 months.
• The lookback: what the record must cover — “at least the preceding 12 months.”

The second is a floor, not a cap: a three-year MVR satisfies it, a six-month record does not. And the clock belongs to the driver, not the fleet — carriers who batch every review into one January push are usually late on everyone hired in the spring, and the dated note required by 391.25(c)(2) is what makes that visible.

Which licensing authorities do you have to query?

Each one that issued the driver a CMV operator’s license or permit during the period — and since May 9, 2022 that includes authorities outside the United States. Paragraph (a) requires the inquiry go “to each driver’s licensing authority where the driver held a commercial motor vehicle operator’s license or permit during the time period.”

That wording is new. The 2022 rule “replaces the words ‘the appropriate agency of every State in which’ with the words ‘each driver’s licensing authority where’” in 391.25(a), with matching changes in 391.21 and 391.23, and FMCSA’s stated purpose was blunt: “These changes require motor carriers to request MVRs from Canadian and Mexican driver’s licensing authorities” (87 FR 13192).

Two textual details separate the annual inquiry from the pre-employment one, and mixing them up produces the wrong query list.

Read that last row twice. In the preamble to the 2022 rule, responding to comments about foreign MVRs, FMCSA wrote: “The Agency clarifies that the requirement to make a ‘good faith effort’ to obtain an MVR applies to investigations made when hiring a driver under Sec. 391.23(b), not to the annual MVR review.” Whatever cover a documented attempt gives you at hire, do not assume it carries to the annual cycle.

The list of authorities you owe comes off the application: 391.21(b)(5) requires the applicant to state “the issuing driver’s licensing authority, number, and expiration date of each unexpired commercial motor vehicle operator’s license or permit that has been issued to the applicant.” If that field was collected loosely — one line, one state, no permits — your annual query list has been wrong since the hire. The application walkthrough goes field by field, and the MVR check guide covers rebuilding a license timeline.

What does the review have to weigh?

Two categories named in the rule, plus a standard of care from FMCSA guidance that reaches past the MVR itself. Paragraph (b)(1) covers “any evidence that the driver has violated any applicable Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations in this subchapter or Hazardous Materials Regulations.” Paragraph (b)(2) covers “the driver’s accident record and any evidence that the driver has violated laws governing the operation of motor vehicles,” and adds that the carrier “must give great weight to violations, such as speeding, reckless driving, and operating while under the influence of alcohol or drugs, that indicate that the driver has exhibited a disregard for the safety of the public.”

Note what neither paragraph does: neither sets a threshold. No number of speeding convictions disqualifies a driver under 391.25. The rule tells you to weigh; 391.15 tells you what actually disqualifies. Everything between the two is your written policy — which means you should have one, applied the same way to every driver, before the review that makes you want to invent one.

FMCSA has answered how far “consider” reaches. Question 1 to 391.25, as revised in the 2022 rule, reads:

The motor carrier must consider as much information about the driver’s experience as is reasonably available. This would include all known violations, whether they are part of an official record maintained by a driver’s licensing authority, as well as any other information that would indicate the driver has shown a lack of due regard for the safety of the public. Violations of traffic and criminal laws, as well as the driver’s involvement in motor vehicle accidents, are indications of disregard for public safety and must be considered.

“All known violations, whether they are part of an official record” is a wider instruction than the MVR alone supports. A roadside violation that never became a conviction sits in your own inspection data, not on the state record — the PSP report and your CSA data are where that lives.

Who performs the review, and what has to be in the note?

Anyone the carrier designates, including a third party — but the note must carry a person’s name. 391.25(c)(2) requires “a note, including the name of the person who performed the review of the driving record required by paragraph (b) of this section and the date of such review.”

Two mandatory elements. Not a signature block, not a form number, not a policy citation. A name and a date. And the reviewer does not have to be your employee: regulatory guidance published April 4, 1997 by FHWA, FMCSA’s predecessor agency, at 62 FR 16370 says a driver service or leasing company that is not itself a motor carrier “may perform annual reviews if designated by a motor carrier to do so.” Designation is the operative word — nothing happens because a staffing company says it handles compliance, and the note still has to name an individual.

How do the two documents sit in the DQ file, and how long do they stay?

They are items (b)(4) and (b)(5), and they are two of the five records you are allowed to purge on a three-year clock. (b)(4) is “the motor vehicle record received from each driver’s licensing authority to the annual driver record inquiry required by § 391.25(a)”; (b)(5) is “a note relating to the annual review of the driver’s driving record as required by § 391.25(c)(2)” (49 CFR 391.51).

Electronic is explicitly fine: 390.32(b) allows electronic methods for documents required under chapter III, and FMCSA’s 2015 guidance says a carrier using an automated employer notification system “would not be required to maintain paper copies of the driving records, or a note identifying the person who performed the review, in each individual driver qualification file” provided documentation can be produced on demand. Production speed is the real constraint — if the notes sit in a vendor portal nobody at the terminal can export from, 390.29(b)‘s 48 hours becomes a problem you discover on the wrong day.

Why is this one of the most common audit findings?

Because the failure is structural, and because it is cited as a pattern rather than a single slip. The relevant entries in the List of Acute and Critical Regulations are not 391.25 at all — they are the filing failures. Appendix B to part 385 lists:

§ 391.51(a) Failing to maintain driver qualification file on each driver employed (critical).

§ 391.51(b)(2) Failing to maintain inquiries into driver’s driving record in driver’s qualification file (critical).

Read those numbers against the current rule text before you rely on them. In 391.51 as it stands today, (b)(2) is the pre-employment MVR obtained under 391.23(a)(1); the two annual items are (b)(4) and (b)(5), and the appendix names neither of them separately. So the description, not the paragraph number, is what to match against a finding.

Critical regulations are ones “where noncompliance relates to management and/or operational controls.” The arithmetic is short. “For each instance of noncompliance with an acute regulation or each pattern of noncompliance with a critical regulation during the CR, one point will be assessed. A pattern is more than one violation. When a number of documents are reviewed, the number of violations required to meet a pattern is equal to at least 10 percent of those examined.” Driver qualification violations land in Factor 2, the Driver factor, covering parts 382, 383 and 391, and the factor is rated “Satisfactory” at 0 points, “Conditional” at 1 point, “Unsatisfactory” at 2 or more (appendix B to part 385).

Four structural features make this the requirement most likely to produce that pattern:

• It regenerates. Unlike the application or the road test, every driver produces two more documents every year. Forty drivers is eighty items annually, so a sample of ten files finds a gap quickly.
• The note is a second, separate item. Ordering an MVR is a transaction with a vendor; writing a note has no invoice, no trigger and no reminder from outside the company. It is the half that decays first.
• The clock is rolling. A carrier that reviews everyone each January drifts later every year and eventually crosses 12 months, because the calendar year still looks correct on the spreadsheet.
• The query list is per authority. A driver licensed in two places needs two inquiries, and the single MVR in the file looks complete until the investigator reads the application.

One footnote on the numbering, and one on new entrants. Appendix B was kept in step with the 2022 rescission: the same final rule amended section VII of the appendix to remove the entry for ”§ 391.51(b)(7)” and put ”§ 391.51(b)(6)” — the medical examiner’s certificate — in its place, so the appendix reflects the post-rescission paragraph order. And new entrants run on a separate grid: the safety audit under 385.311 lists driver qualification first among the areas reviewed and covers “a sample of required records,” though the annual review is not among the 16 automatic-failure violations in 385.321(b).

Do not reconstruct anything mid-audit. 390.35 makes a fraudulent or intentionally false record a violation in its own right, classified acute in the same appendix — a backdated review note is a worse outcome than a missing one.

Who is exempt from the annual inquiry and review?

A short list, and each entry substitutes a different record rather than removing the obligation. Both paragraphs of 391.25 begin “Except as provided in subpart G of this part.”

Read the third row twice: the pre-1971 exemption covers the application, the investigations and the road test, not the annual inquiry and review. And a “multiple-employer driver” is defined at 390.5 as one who, in any period of 7 consecutive days, is employed or used as a driver by more than one motor carrier — a narrow category granting narrow relief, since 391.63 lists four things you need not do and everything else in part 391 still applies.

Is the certificate of violations still required?

No. 391.27 is [Reserved], and nothing replaced it inside the qualification file. FMCSA’s own description: “Because this rule eliminates the requirements in Sec. 391.27 for drivers to provide either a list of their traffic convictions or a certificate that they do not have any traffic convictions to report to their employers, there no longer is any document for an employer to place in the driver qualification file.” The same rule deleted the paragraph that had required it — old 391.51(b)(6) — and shifted every paragraph after it up by one.

Three things survived the rescission and get confused with the deleted requirement constantly:

• The annual MVR and review under 391.25. Retained in full, and widened to foreign licensing authorities.
• The driver’s own duty to report convictions under 383.31. The 2022 rule “does not change the requirement in Sec. 383.31 for CDL drivers to inform their employers of all traffic convictions in any type of vehicle within 30 days.”
• Your right to ask anyway. The rule “does not preclude employers from requiring their drivers to provide a list of their traffic convictions as a condition of employment.” It carries no regulatory weight and does not belong in the DQ file, but as an internal control feeding a real MVR review it costs nothing.

So if your annual packet is still a signed conviction list with the MVR stapled behind it, the packet survives; the legal weight moved entirely to the MVR and the note.

What the annual review cannot tell you

It tells you what a court entered, on a record a licensing authority chose to keep. A conviction exists only because a citation was written, adjudicated and transmitted. Commenters on the 2022 rule raised exactly that — “it can take months for a citation to be fully adjudicated and become a conviction listed on the driver’s MVR,” and states vary in how quickly and completely they report.

Below that line sits most of what makes a driver expensive. Whether he answers dispatch. How the trailer came back. Whether he finished the contract, or left the truck at a truck stop in week three. None of it produces an MVR entry, so a driver can leave four carriers badly and pass a clean annual review at the fifth — the same blindness behind the real cost of a bad driver hire and the reason the first 24 hours of an abandonment feel like they came out of nowhere. The mandated hiring investigation does not close it either: 391.23 asks previous employers about identification, employment dates, accidents and drug and alcohol history, and nothing on that list asks whether the driver was reliable.

Which is the odd thing about FMCSA’s own instruction for this review: consider all known violations “whether they are part of an official record,” and any other information showing a lack of due regard for public safety. The guidance contemplates that you know things the record does not contain. It does not tell you where to get them.

That is the layer cdlscan is built for: reviews written by carriers who actually employed the driver, tied to the period they employed him, covering conduct the federal record has no field for. A name search takes seconds, so a check at review time fits in the same sitting as reading the MVR, and any carrier can contribute one. Our overview of how carrier-written driver reviews work covers the format, and what carriers see in a DAC report covers the employment-side record.

Say the boundary plainly, because it is what matters in an audit: this sits on top of the required inquiry and review, never in place of any part of them. The annual inquiry and review under 391.25, the filing under 391.51(b)(4) and (b)(5), the hiring investigations under 391.23 and the Clearinghouse queries under 382.701 are legally required, and nothing here discharges any of them. Nothing in part 391 permits peer-sourced review data to stand in for the MVR or the note. If you intend to rely on third-party information about a driver as a factor in an employment decision, ask the provider which category of information they consider it under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and confirm which obligations attach with your own counsel first — the FTC’s guidance on using consumer reports is where to start that conversation, not where to end it.

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