Independent owner-operator Dan Cohen missed a call on one of a few phones he carries on his runs out of a home base in Burlington, Vermont, all around the nation mostly for Bellavance Trucking's brokerage. The call he finally recognized days later, via a message that was left. It was from CMCI, the owner-operator drug testing consortium affiliated with the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, and Cohen had been selected for a random drug test.
By then, the 70-year-old, who's been trucking for most of the last decade, had returned home from a run and also found in his mailbox a letter from CMCI dated April 13, he said, that told him he had 15 days to be in touch with them or risk being considered in noncompliance with the drug and alcohol regulations.
Much in the drug-testing regulations is directed at the responsibilities of an employer when it comes to notification of drivers that a random is in order -- in the case of self-employed owner-ops like Cohen, as many of you are well aware, such responsibilities fall to you as an employer of yourself. The consortium is considered your agent, generally speaking, but given the dual employer/driver role of owner-operators, the specifics of who does what, and how, can get a little murky. So variability in practice is a key consideration when evaluating any drug testing consortium.
Cohen bought this 2000 Freightliner FLD120 in March of 2011 after it had been used in Celadon’s fleet since it was new. The rig features a 1996-model 410-hp Caterpillar C12, which he bought in 2012 after the original C12 blew less than a year after he purchased the truck.
At CMCI, said OOIDA's Norita Taylor, the policy for notifications of randoms is for direct phone contact -- generally, those notified of randoms are required by regulation to proceed "to the test site immediately" and those random tests are required to be "unannounced." Find pertinent regs in 49 CFR 382.305, subparts (k)(1) and (l). (The latter is "l" as in "leak.")
"Members in the OOIDA consortium," Taylor said, "sign a contract with us stating that telephone will be the mode of contact for random tests. Emails or letters to owner-operators without a DER" (designated employee representative) "are considered by FMCSA to be pre-notification, which is prohibited by 40.355," part of the rules governing the activities of service agents. A DER is often the person responsible for random-test notifications at a fleet an owner might be leased to.
As noted, randoms are required to be "unannounced" for employers, but you will find no mention of method of communication for notification of random testing in regulations pertaining to service agents. "When CMCI reaches out by phone, if no one answers, the practice is to leave a message stating who is calling and how to call back immediately," Taylor said.
