This is by far one of the most common ones that we see. When a company invites us to help them with a mock audit we almost always find that there is something missing from their DQ files.
For good reason too. There are something like 52 items that need to be in them. There are soooo many that we wrote a blog entirely about DQ files. For that reason, we are not going to dive into the weeds here.
The big thing to remember on DQ files is that most of the items are minor violations with minimum fines. They start at about $500 a document and go all the way up to $5729 per document missing or incomplete.
What does that mean for you?
In an audit, if the auditor decides to throw the book at you, and you have 20 drivers that are all missing let’s say 5 documents it is going to cost you about $2500 per driver. So a grand total of $50K.
Unless you are missing something that is a high-ticket item that they are really going after. Right now that is the FMCSA Clearinghouse Queries. Those bad boys will cost you over $5K per driver and you should have been pulling them since January of 2020. That means that it could run you upwards 5K per driver per year, for the last 3 years. That’s a total of $15K per driver. so if you haven’t done those yet it could cost you about $300K if you don’t have any of those for your drivers!
That hurts.
If your driver is in an accident and his DQ file is not up to date and good to go. Then I would plan on opening up your checkbook because you just lost the battle in the courtroom. The opposing attorney will not have any issues proving that you willfully put a driver on the road that was not ready. Again
This would be willful negligence.
If there are criminal penalties, vehicle manslaughter, or homicide. Then the company owner or manager could be charged as an accomplice to those charges because you allowed the driver to operate the vehicle when they were not properly qualified to do so.
This is not meant to scare you. All that I want to do is to give you the information that you NEED to make a well-informed decision on what is really important for your company.
Summary:
Financial Risk for an audit: Moderate to High
Financial Risk in litigation: High to Extreme
Personal Risk: High to Extreme
How to Fix Risk 2, Not Having DQ Files Or DQ Files Are Not Up Completed Properly.
The first thing I want to say is that you can do all of this on your own. If you use someone else to help you with DQ files other than Eclipse DOT that’s ok too.
I have to tell you this, make 100% sure that your files are actually 100% in compliance. 99.9% of companies don’t actually do anything to ensure that your files are in compliance. What they do is charge you $1000 a year to store your files.
Here at Eclipse DOT our motto is OVERDELIVER, & DO MORE THAN YOU ARE PAID TO DO!
So when we say that we have you covered it’s the truth. Everyone on our team is here for you.
DOT Docs is a solution that we built from scratch after over a decade in the industry. DOT Docs is an all-in-one platform that is the solution for DOT compliance.
Dan (me), our COO took a job helping a company get into compliance. They were paying over $250K annually to a company that was “managing” their DQ files.
Guess what their compliance percentage was before they hired Eclipse DOT?
Under 9%.
Would you continue to use a company that you paid over $250K annually and were still not even 10% compliant?
HECK NO!!!!!!!!!
I took on the job and brought them from under 10% up to over 98% in less than 35 days. And they had over 400 drivers.
Boy was that a TON of work.
So after that job, I sat down and said, “there has to be a better way.” There is no way that most companies can afford that kind of risk and still pay that much $$$ every year.
That’s when we started building DOT Docs.
Since then it has evolved into an all-in-one platform for DOT.
But I didn’t stop there.
Remember my motto, “DO MORE THAN YOU ARE PAID TO DO”
Most companies couldn’t afford to hire their own DOT Compliance Manager, so we started offering Managed Driver Files with an annual retainer and a DOT Team.
Now it doesn’t matter how big your company is, we can help you 100%.
We created dedicated Customer Care Professionals (CCP) that take the time to learn about your company. You get their personal cell phone so you can simply text them.
Then when you onboard a new driver it’s so simple.
You can either go through the process with them, or you can send your CCP a message with your new employees’ contact info and our team will reach out personally to your new employee and go through the onboarding process with them.
Ensuring that they are 100% compliant from the very beginning.
With this solution, you get everything you need to be 100% in compliance with little or no effort on your end.
If you’d like to get pricing on this option please reach out to us NOW at info@eclipse-dot.com and put I Want DOT Docs in the subject line.
Of course, you can do it yourself, just like I did over a decade ago.
You start by watching a TON of webinars and learning everything you can from everybody. Then you learn where you messed up when you get audited.
Creating all the documents that are required by federal regulation and hoping that you have them right.
Then take more time to perfect them, then take more time to make them better after you think they are perfect. Then you can take even more time when things change and you have to update the forms.
I mean that’s the way I learned. It took me over 10 years to create and perfect a driver application.
You can label the driver files, then re-label them, then re-label them again because you found a better way.
You could go to conference after conference network and try to learn everything. You could talk to experts in the industry that think they know everything and make you feel like a complete idiot like I used to.
You could spend countless hours watching webinars and being pitched on crappy programs that may never actually work for you.
Or you can use this amazing EAZY button we created called DOT Docs.
It’s really your choice.
The only real way to mitigate not having all the documents you need in a DQ file is to learn exactly what needs to be in them and then make sure you aren’t missing any documents.
Then monitor it daily to ensure that you have everything that is required.
If you are interested in our affordable EAZY button called DOT Docs. Reach out today.
Call us at 970-749-9449 or shoot us an email at info@eclipse-dot.com
