Score your new entrant audit readiness

FMCSA's new entrant program runs 18 months from registration (49 CFR 385.307), and the agency's guidance is to expect the safety audit within your first 12 months of operating. Those two figures get conflated constantly, the 18 months is the regulation's monitoring period; the 12 months is FMCSA's guidance on when to expect the audit, which the rule says comes once you have been operating long enough to have records to examine.

49 CFR 385.321(b) lists 16 violations that fail the audit outright, across drug and alcohol testing, CDL requirements, insurance, driver qualification, hours of service and vehicle records, and operating out-of-service vehicles. Most fail on a single occurrence, one is enough. A few work differently: failing to maintain driver duty records under 395.8(a) requires violations in 51% or more of the records examined.

FMCSA notifies you in writing no later than 45 days after the audit that your registration will be revoked unless you take corrective action. Most carriers then have 60 days from that notice under 385.319(c)(1); passenger carriers for direct compensation and hazmat carriers get 45 days. Correct it inside the window and you continue operating.

No. TenFour is a private compliance service, not affiliated with FMCSA or any government agency. This is a self-assessment built from the published regulations, and it is not an audit, a prediction, or legal advice. An investigator reads your actual records: this only asks whether they exist.

No, and we would rather say so. This checks whether the required programs and records exist. An auditor examines whether they are accurate and complete, which is a different and harder test. A clean result here means you have cleared the most common ways carriers fail, not that you will pass.

Because it behaves like one. If you cannot say with confidence that a record exists, you will not be able to produce it on request, and an investigator does not grade on intent. Treating uncertainty as a gap is the honest way to score this.

Most are fixable inside the correction window, which is exactly why FMCSA provides one. Enrolling in a consortium, obtaining a medical certificate, correcting an insurance filing, rebuilding a driver file. These are days of work, not months. Start with anything flagged red, because those fail on their own.

For members, nothing extra: New Entrant Audit prep is part of onboarding. On its own it is $549: the four files an auditor asks for built and checked, the sixteen automatic-fail items in 49 CFR 385.321(b) worked through, the gaps closed, the binder handed over. That $549 is credited in full to any membership you start within 60 days. The membership itself is $99/month for the first truck on the annual plan ($119 month to month), $59/month for each additional truck, every driver included, and it keeps the same files current after the audit is behind you. Both prices are published; neither needs a quote. Preparation is administrative compliance support; no one can promise you an audit result.