Every new interstate carrier gets one. FMCSA must run the audit within 12 months of your USDOT number being issued, or within 120 days if you carry passengers (49 CFR §385.3), and you are monitored for your first 18 months (§385.307). An auditor reviews your safety management and your records: driver files, drug and alcohol program records, hours-of-service records, vehicle inspection and maintenance records, insurance proof, and your accident register (§385.311).

Sixteen violations fail it automatically; fourteen of them on a single occurrence (§385.321(b)). The other two, missing duty records (§395.8(a)) and missing periodic inspections (§396.17(a)), fail it when they are wrong in 51% or more of the records examined. You can also fail on points: violations score against the safety factors, and inadequate controls in a factor add up to a fail (§385.321(a)). FMCSA sends the written result within 45 days of the audit (§385.319). Fail, and you have 60 days to send proof of the fix, 45 if you carry passengers or placarded hazmat, or your registration is revoked and you are placed out of service on day 61 (§385.325).

No. FMCSA does not certify, approve, or endorse recordkeeping vendors, and there is no such program for any vendor to belong to. We are a private document review service. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the U.S. Department of Transportation or FMCSA.

No. It is a document review: we report what your documents show, document by document, against the audit list. What you do with the findings, and anything beyond the paperwork, is a question for your own advisors.

No. We prepare and check; you submit and sign. We never upload to FMCSA’s New Entrant Web System (NEWS), never file anything, and never speak to FMCSA on your behalf.

With Login.gov. FMCSA’s NEWS login page states that motor carriers must now use Login.gov to sign in to the New Entrant Web System, the same Login.gov account used for the FMCSA Portal. The old USDOT-number PIN no longer signs you in there. (Checked on FMCSA’s NEWS login page, November 2026.)

It has been proposed, and that is all. Under rulemaking RIN 2126-AB17, FMCSA is considering ways to make sure a new carrier knows the safety requirements before authority is granted, and a proficiency examination is one of the options named, alongside other alternatives. As of this check, the rulemaking sits at the proposed rule stage in the federal Unified Agenda: nothing has been published as a rule, nothing is in force, and no carrier is required to take any test. It also concerns getting authority in the first place; it would not change the documents the audit asks carriers already operating to produce. Checked November 2026; we refresh this answer before relying on it.

The documents you already have: driver applications, licenses, MVRs and review notes, medical certificates, your drug and alcohol policy, consortium and pool records, Clearinghouse queries, inspection and maintenance records, duty records, insurance documents, and the accident register. The full gathering list is on How it works. For each one we check presence, signatures, dates, and whether the names match across the file.

No. We do not create history, and we do not backdate. The report will show the document as missing, and where a record can honestly start today, an accident register opened now, for example, we will say so, and it will carry today’s date. Some gaps can be fixed going forward; some cannot be undone. The report tells you which is which, in plain words.

Then the report says what your file shows, and nothing more. Several automatic-failure items turn on what somebody knowingly did, and paper cannot prove or cure that. We never dress a conduct question up as a paperwork verdict.

Tell us the date on the letter in the intake form. Your letter sets your deadline; no website can give you a number for it. If there is time to do the read properly, we will confirm a delivery date in writing before you pay. If there is not, we will say that instead, and we will not take the fee.

Your uploaded source documents are purged 30 days after your report is delivered. You keep the report and the assembled packet; we keep the report and the verdict log. We do not collect Social Security numbers; no audit document requires one, and if one turns up in an upload it is redacted and not retained. The full statement, as a mechanism rather than a promise in the abstract, is on the privacy page.

Software helps organize the read, and every verdict tied to one of the sixteen automatic-failure items is reviewed by a person before your report is delivered. The service is run by Jhase Campbell.

$199 one time for one carrier’s complete read, paid before the read begins. Consortium fees, Clearinghouse queries ($1.25 each, FMCSA’s rate), and any government fees are paid by you to whoever charges them and never appear on our invoice. The pricing page lays the whole thing out.