Two questions sit underneath almost every serious truck accident: who did the carrier put behind the wheel, and how long did it keep him there? Federal law answers both with paperwork. Part 391 of the motor carrier safety regulations tells a carrier whom it may hire and what it must check before and after hiring; Part 395 tells it how many hours that driver may work; Part 382 tells it when the driver must be tested for drugs and alcohol. Every one of those rules generates a record the carrier is required to keep, and every record is a place where a carrier that cut a corner wrote the corner down. This page is about turning those files into a case — against the driver for what he did, and against the carrier for the decision to hire him, keep him and dispatch him.
The Driver Qualification File
A motor carrier must maintain a driver qualification file on every driver it uses. The file has to contain the driver’s employment application with a ten-year employment history for commercial driving, the carrier’s inquiries to previous employers about the driver’s safety performance, the motor vehicle record the carrier pulled from every state that licensed the driver in the prior three years, the road test or its equivalent, the medical examiner’s certificate, and the results of the carrier’s annual review of the driver’s driving record. The file is kept for as long as the driver is employed and for three years afterward. When I open a qualification file after a crash, I am looking for what is missing as much as what is there: an application with a gap the carrier never asked about, a previous-employer inquiry that was sent but never answered and never followed up, a motor vehicle record showing a pattern of citations that the annual review noted and the carrier ignored.
One rule changed recently and carriers sometimes cite the old version. For decades, drivers had to hand their carrier an annual list of their own traffic violations; that requirement was rescinded in 2022. What remains — and what carriers are still bound by — is the duty to pull and review each driver’s official motor vehicle record at least once every twelve months and to decide, in writing, whether the driver still meets the minimum standards. A carrier that stopped doing anything when the self-reporting rule went away has been out of compliance ever since.
Medical Certification and the Driver Who Should Not Have Been Driving
Commercial drivers must be examined by a medical examiner listed on the federal registry and certified physically qualified at least every twenty-four months, more often when a condition requires it. The medical standards cover vision, hearing, blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, respiratory conditions, epilepsy and the use of medications that impair driving. In a crash case, the medical certificate is a starting point, not an answer. A driver certified eighteen months ago may have developed sleep apnea, started a sedating medication, or been diagnosed with a condition that required a new examination the carrier never scheduled. The carrier’s duty is continuing, and a driver whose known medical condition contributed to the crash raises a negligent-retention claim against the company that kept dispatching him.
The Clearinghouse and the Test That Was Never Taken
Since 2020, every carrier has been required to query the federal Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse before hiring a driver and at least annually afterward, and to report its own drivers’ violations into it. A driver with an unresolved violation in the Clearinghouse is prohibited from driving until he completes the return-to-duty process. A carrier that hired without querying, or that queried and hired anyway, has a record of its own decision. After a crash, the testing rules are specific and unforgiving: when a commercial driver is involved in a crash that causes a death, or an injury requiring treatment away from the scene together with a citation, or a disabling vehicle together with a citation, the carrier must have the driver tested for alcohol within eight hours and for controlled substances within thirty-two hours. If the test is not done, the carrier must prepare and keep a written record explaining why. A missing post-accident test, or a written excuse that does not hold up, is not proof of impairment — but it is evidence a jury is entitled to weigh, and it shifts the argument onto the carrier.
Hours of Service: The Federal Clock
Federal hours-of-service rules for property carriers set four limits that work together. A driver may drive no more than eleven hours after ten consecutive hours off duty. All of that driving must happen inside a fourteen-hour window that starts when the driver comes on duty and does not pause for breaks, loading or waiting. After eight cumulative hours of driving, the driver must take a thirty-minute break from driving. And the driver may not drive after sixty hours on duty in seven days, or seventy hours in eight days, depending on the carrier’s schedule — a limit that resets only after thirty-four consecutive hours off. Sleeper-berth splits, a two-hour extension for adverse driving conditions, and a short-haul exception for drivers who stay within 150 air miles and return to the terminal all modify those limits, and each modification is a place where a carrier’s reading of the rule can be tested against what the driver actually did.
The electronic logging device is where the clock is kept. It records driving time automatically from the engine, timestamps every duty-status change, and stores the record where the carrier — and, in litigation, I — can read it. A carrier must retain the logs and the supporting documents for six months. What the ELD cannot do is hide an edit: every change to a log is recorded with who made it and when, and an unassigned-driving record, a log edited by a dispatcher after the crash, or a pattern of duty-status changes that put the driver conveniently under the limit are all visible to someone who knows how to read the file. The fatigue post walks through the records that expose a tired driver; this page is about the rule those records are measured against.
Nebraska’s Longer Clock for Intrastate Trucks
Nebraska adopts the federal regulations by statute for most trucking, but it writes its own hours rules for carriers that operate only inside the state. An intrastate Nebraska driver may drive twelve hours, not eleven, after ten consecutive hours off, within a sixteen-hour on-duty window rather than fourteen, and may accumulate seventy hours in seven days or eighty in eight. During planting and harvesting season, drivers hauling agricultural commodities within 150 air miles of the source are exempt from the hours rules altogether. Those differences matter in two directions. A local carrier that assumes the federal eleven-hour limit applies to it is over-restricting itself, and a local carrier that assumes the agricultural exemption covers everything it hauls in September is usually wrong — the exemption is tied to the commodity, the radius and the season, and a driver hauling something else, or hauling farther, is back under the clock. When a Hall County grain truck or a Sarpy County local flatbed is involved in a crash, the first legal question is which clock applied, and the second is whether the driver was inside it.
Training, Age and the Driver Who Was Never Ready
Since early 2022, a driver obtaining a commercial license for the first time must complete entry-level driver training from a provider on the federal registry before taking the skills test, and the training record is kept in the registry. A driver must be at least twenty-one to operate in interstate commerce, and must be able to read and speak English well enough to converse with the public and understand highway signs. Carriers under pressure to fill seats hire drivers who barely satisfy those requirements, put them in the most difficult equipment and on the hardest routes, and provide no training beyond the minimum. When a driver two months out of school jackknifes on I-80 in his first winter, the carrier’s choice to put a new driver on that route in that season, without a mentor or a graduated schedule, is a case theory of its own.
The Dispatcher, the Delivery Window and the Schedule That Could Not Be Kept
Hours violations rarely originate with the driver. They originate with a load that was tendered with a pickup time and a delivery appointment that cannot both be met inside a legal clock, and a dispatcher who tendered it anyway. Federal rules prohibit a carrier from scheduling a run that would require a driver to exceed the hours limits or to drive at speeds above the posted limits to make the schedule, and they prohibit coercing a driver to violate the rules. The evidence of that coercion is not in the log; it is in the dispatch system, the load confirmation, the messages between dispatch and the cab, and the carrier’s on-time performance metrics. When a driver was 700 miles from a delivery appointment with nine hours of clock left, the run was illegal when it was dispatched, and the question for the jury is why the carrier dispatched it. That is a corporate decision, not a driver error, and it is the kind of evidence that changes how a case is valued.
Negligent Hiring, Retention and Supervision
Every rule on this page supports two kinds of claim. The first is against the driver and, through him, the carrier — the carrier is legally responsible for its driver’s negligence when he is working. The second is against the carrier directly for its own negligence in hiring a driver it should not have hired, keeping one it should have removed, or dispatching one past the limits it was required to enforce. The direct claim matters because it opens the carrier’s own conduct to a jury: the safety director who signed off on a disqualifying record, the dispatcher who scheduled a run that could not legally be completed on time, the pattern of hours violations across the fleet that the carrier’s compliance software had flagged for months. Carriers fight hard to keep that evidence out by stipulating that the driver was their employee and arguing the direct claim is redundant. In a case with punitive-level conduct, or where the carrier’s systems failed the way they failed here, it is not redundant at all.
What the Records Look Like When the Carrier Is Hiding Something
I have read enough of these files to recognize the patterns. A qualification file assembled after the crash, with documents dated months earlier that were never in the carrier’s system. An annual review form with the same date every year and no notes. Previous-employer inquiries addressed to companies that had gone out of business. A log with a thirty-minute break that falls, every day, at exactly the same minute. A post-accident drug test that was ordered and then cancelled because the driver “was not cited.” None of those is proof by itself. Together they are a picture of a carrier that treated the safety rules as paperwork, and a jury asked how this crash was allowed to happen tends to find that picture persuasive.
Getting the Files Before They Change
The qualification file, the logs, the Clearinghouse queries, the test results and the training records all belong to the carrier, and the carrier controls what happens to them. Some are required to be kept for defined periods — six months for logs, three years past employment for the qualification file, three years for the accident register — and some are not required to be kept at all. A preservation letter the week of the crash names each category, and a lawsuit filed early makes the duty to preserve enforceable by the court. The evidence preservation page covers what happens when a carrier lets that evidence disappear anyway. If a truck driver hurt you or someone in your family, call (402) 378-9208 the week it happens. The consultation is free and there is no fee unless I recover for you — and the answers to who was driving, and how long, are sitting in a file the carrier would prefer you never read.
Your Attorney
Frank Younes
Every page on this site is written by Frank Younes, a Nebraska trial attorney with a published record of verdicts and settlements, selection to the National Trial Lawyers Top 100, and a practice that covers every county in Nebraska and Iowa. No case is handed to an associate — the lawyer you read here is the lawyer who works your case.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What has to be in a truck driver’s qualification file?
The application with ten years of commercial driving history, the carrier’s previous-employer inquiries, motor vehicle records from every licensing state for the prior three years, a road test, the medical examiner’s certificate, and the carrier’s annual review of the driving record. It is kept for the employment and three years after.
How many hours can a truck driver legally drive?
Under federal rules, eleven hours within a fourteen-hour window after ten consecutive hours off, with a thirty-minute break after eight hours of driving, and no driving past sixty hours in seven days or seventy in eight. Nebraska allows twelve hours and a sixteen-hour window for trucks that never leave the state.
The driver was not drug tested after the crash. Does that matter?
Often. When a crash involves a death, or an injury treated away from the scene or a disabled vehicle together with a citation, the carrier must test for alcohol within eight hours and drugs within thirty-two, or keep a written record of why it did not. A missing test is evidence the jury can weigh.
Can I sue the trucking company for hiring a bad driver?
Yes. Negligent hiring, retention and supervision are claims against the carrier for its own decisions, separate from its responsibility for the driver’s negligence. They open the carrier’s files and its safety culture to the jury.
Does the harvest exemption mean a grain truck driver has no hours limit?
Only for agricultural commodities hauled within 150 air miles of the source during planting and harvesting season. Outside the commodity, the radius or the season, the driver is back under the hours rules.
How long does the carrier keep the driver’s logs?
Six months for the logs and supporting documents, which is why a preservation letter the week of the crash matters — a family that waits a year is asking for records the carrier was allowed to discard.
More on Truck Cases
The rest of the truck series, and the statewide practice page behind it.
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