This fireside chat recap is from FreightWaves’ Enterprise Fleet Summit on Wednesday.

FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: DOT compliance and safety.

DETAILS:  Transportation attorney Brandon Wiseman, who is the president of Trucksafe Consulting, discusses some of the top challenges for trucking fleets, including hours of service rules, CBD usage among drivers and Department of Transportation compliance issues. 

KEY QUOTES FROM BRANDON WISEMAN: 

“One of the big trends that I’ve seen over the past couple of years, particularly right around when COVID first hit and everything was on lockdown, was a significant uptick in offsite DOT audits.” 

“We’ve seen this play out for drivers who take CBD based on the representations made by the manufacturers [that their products contain little to no THC] and then they go test positive for marijuana on a DOT drug test. And guess what? DOT doesn’t care what the rationale was for that positive test. If you test positive on that test, you are out of a driving job for the time being.” 

“The thing I say to all the fleets we work with is for right now until we get a handle on this from a regulatory standpoint … I think CBD use among commercial drivers is just too risky of a prospect.” 

“I think the biggest thing for enterprise fleets is just making sure you’ve got the systems and the processes in place to manage all of this DOT regulatory compliance. If you don’t have those processes in place, it’s very quickly going to manifest in violations and roadside inspections, and then the more violations you get during roadside inspections, the higher you are on the prioritization list for a DOT audit.”