How Long to Keep Driver Qualification Files

United States: 391.51 during and after employment

While the driver is with you, the file has to be complete enough to prove qualification on any day they drove. After they leave, 391.51(d) still expects you to keep the core application, MVRs, road test (or equivalent), medical evidence, annual reviews, and violation lists for three years.

Do not treat “three years” as a single shred date for the whole cabinet. A medical executed last month is not on the same clock as a 2019 application.

Drug and alcohol: a different cabinet and clock

Negative tests and some administration records are often a one-year keep. Positives, refusals, and SAP documentation are typically five years. Clearinghouse evidence follows the employer-record rules in force when you queried. Keep these in the restricted program file so a DQ-file sampler is not reading raw test results.

Canada: provincial clocks, not one national shred date

NSC model standards and each province’s carrier safety guide set how long driver records, abstracts, training, and collision follow-up must be available. Ontario CVOR carriers, Alberta NSC profiles, BC, Quebec, and the Prairies are not interchangeable. If your written program says “keep four years after termination,” your actual folders have to match that sentence.

Hours-of-service supporting documents have their own retention (commonly six months in Canadian HOS rules, verify current). Do not purge HOS on the DQ schedule or DQ on the HOS schedule.

A purge process that will not embarrass you

Inventory by document type, not by driver. Record the legal clock, the company clock if longer, the owner of the cabinet, and the destruction method. When you do destroy, keep a log of what class of record went, not the contents. If you cannot say why a file left the building, keep it.

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