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The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) recently released updated reports from its drug & alcohol clearinghouse activity for May and June 2025, offering a closer look at driver compliance trends and hiring activity.
Motor carriers must query the clearinghouse before hiring a driver required to hold a commercial driver's license (CDL) to ensure that the driver is not in prohibited status. Drivers who end up in prohibited status can free themselves of that designation by completing a return-to-duty protocol, but most don’t. In fact, nearly half of the drivers who have been flagged with a violation since the beginning of the clearinghouse in January 2020 have not even attempted to exit prohibited status.
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Pre-Employment Queries: Holding Steady at High End of Range
One indicator FTR regularly watches is the number of pre-employment queries – a sign of hiring activity in trucking.
- Dip from April’s level: April saw the highest query volume since August 2023, but May’s figure pulled back modestly followed by a minor uptick in June.
- Still within a healthy range: Even with the decline, queries remain at the upper end of typical seasonal levels, signaling neither a hiring surge nor collapse. Indeed, queries in June were up 9.3% y/y, which is the strongest comparison since July 2024.
Return-to-Duty Completions: Regulatory Impact Fading?
A regulation that took effect in November 2024 required states to downgrade CDLs for drivers barred from operating under the Clearinghouse. This spurred a sharp uptick in drivers completing the return-to-duty process starting mid-2024 as drivers began to get legal ahead of the deadline.
- Since July 2024: The number of drivers exiting prohibited status has exceeded the 2022-2024 average by 11,700.
- Peak in November: The largest wave of drivers clearing prohibitions occurred in the month the rule took effect.
- Stabilization in early 2025: Rates settled by February, remaining higher than pre-regulation norms.
- June pullback: The latest month saw a sharp decline in completions, returning to pre-regulation levels – possibly signaling that the supply of active but noncompliant drivers has been exhausted.
Prohibited Drivers: A Growing Number Out of the Industry
The Clearinghouse continues to show a net increase in prohibited drivers:
- Since its launch in January 2020, 304,000 drivers have had at least one violation.
- Over 190,000 drivers were still barred as of June.
- 148,000 drivers have never started the return-to-duty process.
- More barred than freed up: Since the beginning, only in one month – November 2024 – has the number of drivers exiting prohibited status exceeded the number of drivers added to the barred list. In that month, the net change was a reduction of just 62 drivers.
Why It Matters
The data suggests that before the November 2024 regulatory change, the trucking industry still had active drivers who were not compliant with the clearinghouse rules. With the number of drivers completing return-to-duty protocols returning to pre-July 2024 levels, it is likely that the 190,000 drivers – and growing – figure is reasonably close to the number of drivers who have left or been forced out of driving since the clearinghouse launched.
For more insights like these, be sure to catch the FTR Trucking Market Update podcast each week, where we break down the latest trends shaping freight and driver capacity. 📊 Download the full podcast deck and listen to Episode 325 at ftrintel.com/trucking-podcast.
