Fleets Must Keep Drug Testing 50% of Drivers, DOT Orders

This story appears in the Dec. 16 print edition of Transport Topics.

The U.S. Department of Transportation announced that fleets must again randomly drug test the urine of at least half their drivers during 2014.

DOT, which issued the mandate Dec. 5, is still compiling drug-test results for 2012. Trucking’s positive test rate in 2011 was 0.9%, the lowest since drug testing began in 1996. If the 2012 rate turns out to be lower than 1%, the industry could become eligible to halve the testing, to 25% of its drivers.

It would “definitely be a disappointment” if the latest results do not show the positive rate moving downward, said Abigail Potter, American Trucking Associations’ research analyst on drug issues. “We expect that the trend will continue going under 1% from now on,” she said.

Trucking’s 2012 results are still being analyzed by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, said Bill Adams, DOT’s associate director of public affairs.

“In the event of a change, FMCSA will publish . . . the new minimum annual percentage rate,” Adams said.

FMCSA did not specify a date when the 2012 results would be released, but the agency usually publishes them in January.

Airlines, railroads, public transit companies, the U.S. Coast Guard and others are required to test at the lower level because those sectors reduced their random drug-positive rates below 1% in successive years.

Trucking companies and ATA have been pushing the federal government to allow it to use hair testing instead of urine testing, in the belief it would further reduce positive tests, said Potter.

“We’ve shown that companies that have instituted a hair-testing program for pre-employment have seen significant drops in their random rates and have seen their post-accident rates go to pretty much zero,” she said.

Hair testing is seen as more accurate than urine testing and reveals drug use over a greater period of time.

Schneider National Inc., a Green Bay, Wis.-based truckload carrier, has reduced its random positive rate to less than 0.25% because it does hair testing at the pre-employment level, said Don Osterberg, who oversees safety, security and driver training for the carrier.

He suggested that the government’s one-size-fits-all approach should be changed.

“An industry requirement for 50% seems to me inappropriate for carriers who proactively invest in order to ensure that they’re not hiring habitual drug users,” said Osterberg.

“For a long time, ATA has advocated that the random drug-testing rate should be tied to company performance and not industry standards,” Potter said. “Companies that are under the 1% cutoff should be allowed to have their random drug testing rate set at 25%.”

Federal law requires only urine testing for transportation workers, but a growing number of carriers are doing hair testing to improve safety and decrease their insurance costs.

“The data that we’re seeing from our motor-carrier clients is that, after they’ve implemented a corporatewide hair-testing program, their random rate drops dramatically over time, along with their post-accident rate,” said Bill Corl, CEO of Omega Laboratories Inc., headquartered in Mogadore, Ohio.

Osterberg and representatives of ATA and J.B. Hunt Transport Services submitted testimony to that effect in July at a meeting of the drug-testing advisory board of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

DOT enforces the drug-testing rules, but Health and Human Services certifies which testing methods are acceptable.

Supporters of hair tests said they are more difficult to undermine than urine tests, and that urine tests detect the use of hard drugs going back only three to four days and marijuana usage back, perhaps, 30 days.

“Whereas with hair testing, it’s across the board, all those drugs you can see an average of 90 days,” Corl said.

A bill introduced in October in the House and Senate by the Arkansas congressional delegation would allow carriers to replace urine tests with hair tests for pre-employment screening and for random testing on drivers who were hair tested in pre-employment screening.

Bill sponsors said it is costly duplication to require trucking to test urine and hair when hair testing is superior.

Henry Jasney, general counsel of the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, said the group is starting to look at hair testing.

“We do think that there probably has to be a comprehensive look at the drug-testing regime,” he said.

Jasney said Advocates supports drug testing but has no position on what percentage is appropriate.