What Is the Pre-Employment Screening Program (PSP)?

The Pre-Employment Screening Program, known as PSP, is a voluntary Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration service that lets motor carriers electronically pull a commercial driver’s five-year crash history and three-year roadside inspection history before making a hiring decision. The data comes straight from the Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS), the federal government’s central repository for commercial vehicle safety data.¹ Congress authorized the program through Section 4117 of SAFETEA-LU, directing the Secretary of Transportation to make this safety data available for pre-employment screening in the trucking industry.² Carriers use PSP to see whether a prospective hire’s safety record meets their standards before handing over an 80,000-pound truck.

What Shows Up on a PSP Report

A PSP report covers two things: DOT-recordable crashes from the past five years and roadside inspections from the past three years.³

A crash only qualifies as DOT-recordable if someone was killed, someone was injured seriously enough to require medical transport from the scene, or at least one vehicle had to be towed because of disabling damage.¹ A fender-bender in a truck stop parking lot won’t appear. Each crash entry lists the date, location, and severity.

Inspection entries range from a full Level I North American Standard Inspection, which covers both the driver and the entire vehicle, down to a Level III walk-around focused on the driver alone. Each record lists the specific violations cited, which lets a hiring carrier see patterns. A driver with repeated hours-of-service violations tells a very different story than one with a single equipment issue two years ago.

One detail matters more than any other for drivers: PSP tracks violations exactly as they were originally cited, regardless of what happened in court. A driver who successfully fought a ticket and got it dismissed will still see the original violation on their PSP report. That’s a critical difference from a state motor vehicle record, which only reflects final convictions.

How Carriers Enroll and Pull Reports

A motor carrier needs an active FMCSA Portal account and a valid USDOT number to register. Annual subscription fees depend on fleet size: $100 per year for carriers running 100 or more power units, $25 per year for smaller fleets with 99 or fewer. Each individual report costs $10, whether the search comes back with data or not.⁴

Before any report gets pulled, the carrier must obtain the driver’s written consent. FMCSA provides standardized disclosure and authorization forms designed to satisfy both the FMCSA consent requirement and the parallel Fair Credit Reporting Act disclosure. Without a signed consent form on file, the carrier cannot legally request the report. Once authorization is confirmed, the portal runs the search against MCMIS in real time and delivers the report as a PDF that stays available for download for five days.⁵

Carriers must keep signed authorization forms and all PSP-related employment records on file for three years from the date of the hiring decision.⁶ If FMCSA audits the operation and the consent form can’t be produced, that’s a compliance problem.

How Drivers Access Their Own Report

Drivers can pull their own PSP report through the same portal at psp.fmcsa.dot.gov. You’ll need your CDL number and Social Security number to verify your identity. FMCSA also runs a free monitoring service that emails you any time your PSP record changes.³ Signing up for it is a cheap way to catch errors early, before they show up during a job application.

PSP Report vs. Motor Vehicle Record

PSP and a state Motor Vehicle Record (MVR) are not interchangeable, and many carriers pull both.

A PSP report covers crash and inspection data from every state a driver has held a CDL in over the past five years. An MVR only covers the state that issued it and only shows events that resulted in a conviction.⁷
PSP shows violations as originally cited. An MVR only shows convictions.⁷
FMCSA manages PSP data centrally through MCMIS. Each state manages its own MVR updates, and the speed varies.⁷
A carrier accesses PSP through a single enrollment. Getting an MVR means going through the motor vehicle agency in whatever state issued the license.

The practical point for drivers: a clean MVR does not guarantee a clean PSP report. A violation dismissed in court disappears from the MVR but stays on the PSP report until you correct it through DataQs.

FCRA Obligations Carriers Cannot Skip

A PSP report is a consumer report under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Every carrier that uses one has to follow FCRA procedures in addition to FMCSA rules, and this is where compliance often breaks down.

Before Pulling the Report

The carrier must notify the applicant in writing, in a standalone document separate from the employment application, that a consumer report will be obtained. The carrier must also get the applicant’s written permission first.⁸ FMCSA’s standard PSP authorization form handles both requirements at once, but carriers using their own forms need to make sure both boxes are covered.

Before Denying Employment Based on the Report

If the report reveals something that leads the carrier to reject the applicant, the carrier cannot simply move on. For applicants who applied in person, the carrier must first send a pre-adverse action notice that includes a copy of the PSP report and a written summary of the driver’s FCRA rights.⁶ That gives the driver a chance to review the record and dispute errors before the decision is finalized.

For applicants who applied by mail, phone, or online, the carrier can take adverse action without a pre-action notice but must notify the driver within three business days. The notice has to include FMCSA’s contact information (not the carrier’s), a statement that FMCSA did not make the hiring decision, and information about the driver’s right to a free copy of the record and to dispute inaccuracies through DataQs.⁶

If a Driver Refuses Consent

A driver has every right to decline PSP screening. But under federal regulation, a carrier cannot let a driver operate a commercial motor vehicle for them if that driver refuses to consent to an investigation of their safety performance history.⁹ In practice, refusing consent ends the hiring process.

What FCRA Violations Cost

Willful FCRA violations expose carriers to statutory damages between $100 and $1,000 per affected driver, plus punitive damages and attorney’s fees. Even negligent noncompliance leaves the carrier liable for the driver’s actual damages and legal costs, and the FTC can pursue additional civil penalties for patterns of knowing violations.¹⁰ A carrier that runs hundreds of PSP reports a year without proper FCRA procedures can accumulate serious liability quickly.

Fixing Errors Through DataQs

Records get entered wrong. An officer types the wrong CDL number during an inspection. A crash gets coded with the wrong severity. When you find an error on your PSP report, FMCSA’s DataQs system is the only route to a correction.¹¹

You file a Request for Data Review through the DataQs portal at dataqs.fmcsa.dot.gov. The request has to include supporting evidence: a police accident report showing you weren’t involved, court records proving a citation was dismissed, an inspection document filed under the wrong CDL. Vague claims without documentation don’t get anywhere.¹²

The request gets routed to the state agency that originally entered the record. That agency reviews the evidence and decides whether to modify, remove, or keep the record. Under current FMCSA requirements, the state must open the request within seven days and issue a decision within 21 days.¹³ If the initial decision goes against you, further stages of review are available. When a correction is approved, MCMIS is updated and future PSP reports reflect the change.

The Crash Preventability Determination Program

Even accurate crash data can be misleading. A driver rear-ended at a red light by a distracted motorist ends up with a DOT-recordable crash on their record that had nothing to do with their driving. The Crash Preventability Determination Program (CPDP) exists for exactly this situation.

FMCSA reviews 21 specific crash types under the program. If the agency determines a crash was not preventable, the crash stays on the PSP report but carries a “Reviewed — Not Preventable” label that tells any hiring carrier the driver wasn’t at fault.¹⁴ Crashes with that designation are also removed from the carrier’s Crash Indicator BASIC score in FMCSA’s Safety Measurement System.¹⁵

Requests go through the same DataQs system used for data corrections, along with the police accident report and any supporting evidence such as photos or video. Expect a wait. FMCSA reports that high submission volume has pushed average processing times to around 90 days.¹⁵ For a driver actively job-hunting that delay hurts, but getting a “Not Preventable” label on an otherwise damaging crash is worth the wait.

1
Federal Highway Administration. Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS)
2
Congress.gov. H.R.3 – 109th Congress (2005-2006): SAFETEA-LU
3
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Pre-Employment Screening Program
4
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Pre-Employment Screening Program Monthly Account Holder Agreement
5
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. PSP Account Holder User Manual
6
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Industry Service Provider Agreement – Pre-Employment Screening Program (PSP)
7
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. PSP and MVR: What’s the Difference?
8
Federal Trade Commission. Using Consumer Reports: What Employers Need to Know
9
eCFR. 49 CFR 391.23 – Investigation and Inquiries
10
Federal Trade Commission. Fair Credit Reporting Act
11
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. DataQs
12
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Correcting a Motor Carrier’s Safety Data (DataQs)
13
Federal Register. Revisions to DataQs Requirements for MCSAP Grant Funding
14
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. PSP Detailed Report Sample Report
15
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Crash Preventability Determination Program (CPDP)