What is the Drug Testing Consortium?
Drug Testing Consortium:
The Department of Transportation (DOT) requires drug and alcohol testing for motor carriers. This is critical to ensuring that drivers can safely operate commercial motor vehicles. Whether a company has thousands of drivers or just one owner-operator, it must have a drug and alcohol testing program in place to stay compliant and avoid hefty fines. The Drug Testing Consortium is an association of different companies that form a larger testing pool. This is required for owner operators or small companies, and even larger vehicle operators can benefit from partnering with third parties to provide DOT compliance services.
Random Drug Testing:
To understand how the drug testing consortium works, it's helpful to understand how randomized testing works in general. DOT requires operators to select a minimum percentage of drivers for drug and alcohol screening each year. This can increase or decrease depending on the number of violations in the industry. Selection must be made using "scientifically valid methods" so that every driver in the pool has an equal chance of being selected.
If a company is part of a consortium, their drivers are included in a larger pool for random selection. Percentage requirements apply to the entire pool, not the individual companies included. This means that as long as the consortium follows all regulations for scientifically valid random selection and minimum percentages, each company complies with the random testing rules.
Benefits of Joining the Drug Testing Consortium
Membership has many benefits, even for companies that don't need to pass the alliance to meet their drug testing requirements.
These include:
Consortium/Third Party Administrators will be aware of DOT compliance and will keep your company up to date with the latest changes.
Your consortium can help you find a test site for selected drivers, no matter where they are in the country when they are selected.
You can reduce the administrative burden on your company while maintaining compliance.