In 2019, Watson Enterprises of the Carolinas, LLC, filed a lawsuit challenging the authority of truck driving schools. The order was for DOT pre-employment tests on the students who applied to the schools. With the subsequent ruling, Watson successfully overturned what has been in practice for almost 20 years. It was determined that the driving school “was not an employer on the student drivers,” and that “the school was not a motor carrier.” Hence, driving schools have no authority to authority to order a pre-employment test.

FMCSA has clarified that a driving school can test an employee ONLY if the student is an employee of the school, working for the school, and is involved in commercial transportation (movement of goods or passengers for hire), OR when the school leases a Commercial Motor Vehicle to the student for the purposes of commercial transportation. Neither of these are very likely to happen.

So how will an instructor know that a student has a negative test?

Student drivers will have to register on the Clearinghouse AND enroll in a C/TPA. Once the student purchases a Query Plan, they will have to send it to the C/TPA & can conduct queries. The C/TPA will have to query the student, to be sure they doesn’t already have a violation history. If there are no open violations of the student’s Clearinghouse dashboard, the C/TPA can then order a pre-employment test that will permit him to be in the driving school.