Semi truck drivers who drive interstate routes are required to take a drug test before they are permitted to drive commercial motor vehicles on the roads, according to federal regulations governing truck drivers and the trucking industry. Semi truck drivers are also required to take drug and alcohol tests after causing or contributing to an accident that causes injury or death to another person and/or significant property damage. The reason for this rule is obvious- because semi trucks and their drivers have the potential to cause such serious damage to people and property by causing an accident with tractor trailers that often weight in excess of 80,000 pounds, it is imperative that semi truck drivers are not driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
However, those same federal regulations that require drug tests after an injury accident or before a driver is hired to drive a truck do not establish a system so that positive drug tests can be recorded for other employers or the licensing agencies to see. As a result, a truck driver can apply for a job at one trucking company, take a pre-employment drug test and fail it and then apply for the same job at another trucking company without that second trucking company necessarily knowing that the applicant recently failed a drug test. Similarly, a semi truck driver can drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs, cause a serious accident that results in injuries or death and then fail a post-accident drug test and lose his job with his trucking company employer. He can then apply for the same truck driving job with another employer without that second employer necessarily knowing about the injury accident and positive drug test.
A new interim federal rule proposes to address this problem by allowing employers and drug testing sites to report positive drug tests of commercial truck drivers and refusals to submit to a drug or alcohol test to state licensing agencies without requiring the consent of the truck driver who failed or refused the test. This would likely make it easier for trucking companies to check to see if applicants have failed drug or alcohol tests in the past. It will also make it easier for state licensing agencies that issue commercial driver's licenses (CDL's) to truck drivers to suspend or revoke the CDL's of drivers who test positive for alcohol or drugs. As it stands now, when a semi truck driver applies for a job with a trucking company, the trucking company will only find out about a prior failed drug or alcohol test if the driver discloses that information or the company performs a thorough background check by contacting the applicant's prior employers. Neither scenario is very common.
