Under 49 CFR §391.51, every motor carrier must maintain a driver qualification file for each driver it employs. The rule is specific about what belongs in the file and how long it stays there. None of it is mysterious — but a missing record or an expired certificate is exactly the kind of finding that turns a routine review into a problem.
What §391.51 requires in the file
The DQ file for each driver must contain, among other items:
- The driver's employment application (per §391.21).
- A motor vehicle record (MVR) obtained from each state where the driver held a license, gathered at hiring.
- A road test certificate (or an accepted equivalent, such as a valid CDL in lieu of the road test).
- The annual MVR obtained from the licensing authority, plus a note of the annual review of the driving record.
- The medical examiner's certificate (for CDL holders, FMCSA accepts the CDLIS motor vehicle record carrying the medical certification status), and a note verifying the examiner is listed on the National Registry.
- Any Skill Performance Evaluation certificate or medical exemption documentation that applies to the driver.
How long each record stays
The file is kept for as long as the driver is employed and for three years afterward. Some records — the annual MVR, the annual review note, and the medical certificate — rotate on their own cycle, and older copies may be removed three years after their date. The practical takeaway is that a DQ file is never "done": it has annual moving parts an auditor checks for currency.
Where Accedo fits — and where it does not
Accedo is not a DQ-file system of record. The MVRs, the road-test certificate, and the medical examiner's certificate are specific documents that live in the driver's file exactly as §391.51 describes. Accedo does not store or replace them.
What Accedo adds is the acknowledgment layer that sits alongside the file. Auditors increasingly want to see not just that a policy exists, but that each driver received and acknowledged it — your drug-and-alcohol policy, your hours-of-service and vehicle-inspection procedures, your handbook. Accedo lets you:
- Publish each policy and auto-assign it to every driver, including new hires.
- Collect a dated signature so you can show who acknowledged each policy and when.
- Re-acknowledge annually — a natural companion to the annual MVR and review cadence §391.51 already runs on.
- Export the acknowledgment trail to hand to an auditor next to the DQ files themselves.
§391.51 governs the file; Accedo proves your drivers signed off on the policies that sit beside it.