What is a driver qualification file?

A DQ file brings together the driver's employment application, the motor vehicle record obtained at hire, the road-test certificate or an accepted equivalent, the motor vehicle record from the annual inquiry, a note of the annual review of the driving record, and the medical examiner's certificate.

The practical difficulty is not creating the file but keeping it current: licences and medical cards expire, and a driver who has left should stop appearing in it.

Drug and alcohol testing records are NOT part of that list, and this is the mix-up worth avoiding: they are kept under their own recordkeeping rules rather than in the qualification file, and so are the replies to the safety-performance-history investigation, which belong in the driver investigation history file.

A DQ file is inspected at the file level rather than the driver level. An auditor asks to see the folder, and a missing medical certificate is a finding whether or not the driver is in fact medically qualified. The exact contents and retention period are quoted, with the regulation linked, on our DOT compliance page — rely on that or on the rule itself rather than on any vendor summary, including this one.

The items with expiry dates — the medical card, the licence, the annual review of driving record — are what turn a compliant file into a non-compliant one without anybody doing anything.