Fleet Safety Coordinator Job Description

A Fleet Safety Coordinator is the person in a carrier's safety office who makes sure the paper trail exists before anyone asks for it. A safety manager decides policy and answers for results; the coordinator keeps the files, schedules and logs that prove the policy was followed. The work sits at trucking companies, private fleets run by distributors and manufacturers, bus and transit operators, and any business that puts commercial motor vehicles on public roads.

Driver qualification files. The core of the job is the driver qualification file required by 49 CFR 391.51. Each file has to hold the employment application, the motor vehicle record from each licensing state, the road test certificate or its equivalent, medical certification and the note documenting the annual record review. The regulation says the file must be kept for as long as the driver works for the carrier and for three years after. A coordinator audits files on a cycle rather than waiting for a compliance investigation to find a hole.

Annual record reviews and Clearinghouse queries. Under 49 CFR 391.25, each motor carrier must, at least once every 12 months, obtain the motor vehicle record of every driver it employs and review it. Under 49 CFR 382.701, employers must query the FMCSA Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse at least once per year for every employee subject to testing. Both deadlines land on the coordinator's calendar, along with the pre-employment queries that come before a new hire's first dispatch.

Drug and alcohol testing logistics. The coordinator works with the consortium or third-party administrator that runs the random pool, sends drivers to collection sites, chases post-accident tests against the clock, and keeps return-to-duty and follow-up schedules on track. The designated employer representative, who may be the safety manager, receives results and makes the removal decision; the coordinator makes sure the process ran correctly.

Crashes, injuries and hours of service. After a crash, the coordinator collects the police report, driver statement, photos, camera footage and repair records, and builds the file the safety manager and insurer will use. The coordinator may also keep the OSHA 300 injury and illness log, recorded under 29 CFR Part 1904, and pulls electronic logging device reports so hours-of-service problems surface before a roadside inspection does.

Where the job differs by setting. At a trucking company, the work tracks the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. At a public transit agency, the coordinator may also support the agency safety plan that the Federal Transit Administration requires, including the records of a joint labor and management safety committee. In a private fleet, the coordinator may report through risk management or human resources rather than operations, but the federal file and testing duties are the same.

The skill that matters is completeness. A qualification file that lacks a required record does not meet the rule, however good the driver is, and the coordinator is the one placed to catch it first.

Education. As a rough guide, coordinators come in with a high school diploma plus fleet or office experience, an associate degree, or a bachelor's degree in occupational safety, logistics, transportation management or business. A degree helps a coordinator move into a safety specialist or manager role later; it is not the only route in.

Experience. Typical backgrounds include dispatch, driver recruiting, fleet administration, human resources at a carrier, insurance claims, and driving itself. As a rough guide, one to three years in one of those roles gives a new coordinator enough working knowledge of how drivers are hired, dispatched and paid to keep files and schedules accurate. Former drivers can speak from experience when a conversation turns to logs, inspections or testing.

Regulatory knowledge. A coordinator works daily in a few parts of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations in Title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations: Part 382 for drug and alcohol testing and the Clearinghouse, Part 391 for driver qualification, and Part 395 for hours of service of drivers. Part 40 sets the procedures for transportation workplace drug and alcohol testing programs that collection sites, laboratories and medical review officers follow. At a transit agency, the FTA's rule on prevention of alcohol misuse and prohibited drug use in transit operations, Part 655, and its safety plan rule in Part 673 come into play.

Tools. Expect a driver qualification file platform or a module inside the carrier's transportation management system, an electronic logging device portal, the FMCSA Portal and Clearinghouse accounts, DataQs, and a learning management system for training records. Spreadsheet skill still matters for building audit lists and expiration trackers.

Certifications worth pursuing.

• Certified Safety Supervisor (CSS), from the North American Transportation Management Institute (NATMI), which lists two years in the fleet safety field among its requirements.
• Certified Director of Safety (CDS), also from NATMI, a later step for those headed toward running a safety department.
• Associate Safety Professional (ASP), from the Board of Certified Safety Professionals (BCSP), for coordinators who want a general safety credential.
• OSHA Outreach Training Program 10-hour or 30-hour course completion cards, issued through OSHA-authorized trainers.

Working traits. The job rewards people who follow up without being asked, keep calm when a crash call comes in at night, and can tell a driver no on a missing medical card without starting a fight. Clear writing matters too: a crash file or a DataQs request is read by people who were not there.

BLS does not publish projections for fleet safety coordinators as a title. O*NET files the closest work under occupational health and safety technicians, an occupation it reports at 31,200 employees in 2025, with projected growth for 2025 to 2035 rated Much faster than average (7% or higher) and about 3,800 openings a year on average. Those figures cover technicians in every industry, from warehouses to hospitals, not only fleets.

The broader family looks similar. In the Occupational Outlook Handbook, BLS projects employment of occupational health and safety specialists and technicians combined to grow 19 percent from 2025 to 2035, and it lists transportation and warehousing as the employer of 28 percent of technician jobs in 2025. Neither source breaks out DOT compliance work.

Medical certification went electronic. One day-to-day change for coordinators is FMCSA's National Registry II rule. Since June 23, 2025, medical examiners have no longer been required to issue the paper Medical Examiner's Certificate, Form MCSA-5876, to CDL holders, and FMCSA's guidance says motor carriers may no longer use that paper certificate as proof of medical certification; instead they must use the driver record from the current licensing state and document the check in the qualification file. States joined at different times. In a December 30, 2025 waiver, FMCSA reported that 42 states and the District of Columbia had implemented the system, and it let drivers and carriers rely on a paper copy for up to 60 days after issue. That waiver ran from January 11, 2026 to April 10, 2026, and a six-month exemption kept the same 60-day paper option in place nationwide from April 11 to October 11, 2026. Since October 12, 2026, a renewed exemption covers only drivers licensed in Alaska, which FMCSA says is the only state that has not implemented the rule; drivers licensed in all other states and the District of Columbia, and their employers, may no longer rely on the paper certificate. Coordinators who once filed a card now check a state record.

Who can hold a CDL. FMCSA's final rule on non-domiciled commercial licenses, published February 13, 2026 and effective March 16, 2026, reaffirmed with minor changes an interim final rule from September 29, 2025 and limited which foreign drivers can obtain a non-domiciled CLP or CDL. The D.C. Circuit stayed the interim rule on November 13, 2025, and challenges to the final rule (Lujan v. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Nos. 26-1032 and 26-1046) were scheduled for oral argument in that court on September 15, 2026. The rule is aimed at state licensing agencies, but it changes what a coordinator sees when verifying a new hire's license.

English proficiency enforcement is still a proposal. FMCSA has proposed, in docket FMCSA-2026-0826, to treat a violation of the English language proficiency requirement in 49 CFR 391.11(b)(2) as an out-of-service violation. The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance filed comments on that proposed rule on October 7, 2026. FMCSA published the proposal on August 10, 2026, and as of November 2026 no final rule had been published, so carriers should watch for the outcome.

Transit safety committees. On the transit side, FTA's Public Transportation Agency Safety Plans final rule took effect May 13, 2024. It requires each large urbanized area provider to run a Safety Committee with an equal number of frontline transit worker representatives and management representatives, which adds meeting records and safety plan documentation to the support work a coordinator may handle at a transit agency.

Where the job leads. The path up runs to safety manager, director of safety, risk management, or loss control work for a trucking insurer. Those roles draw on depth in the regulations, not just familiarity with the checklists.

Dear Hiring Manager,

I am applying for the Fleet Safety Coordinator position with your regional less-than-truckload operation. For the past three years I have worked as a safety and recruiting assistant at a 140-tractor flatbed carrier, where I took over the driver qualification files after our last safety coordinator left and have kept them since.

When I inherited the files, nobody had a single list of when medical certifications, annual record reviews and Clearinghouse queries were due. I built one, tied it to our payroll roster so terminated drivers dropped off and new hires appeared on day one, and set a monthly audit of ten randomly chosen files. Our most recent compliance review closed without a single qualification file finding, which our safety director credited to that audit routine.

I also handle the scheduling side of our drug and alcohol program. I coordinate with our consortium on random selections, send drivers to collection sites, and track follow-up testing for the two drivers we brought back through the return-to-duty process last year. After crashes, I collect the police report, the driver's statement and the camera footage, and I draft the DataQs requests our director reviews before submission.

Before moving into safety I spent two years dispatching, so I know what it means to tell a dispatcher a driver cannot go out today, and how to say it so the load still moves.

I completed my OSHA 30-hour course this spring and plan to sit for NATMI's Certified Safety Supervisor credential next year. I would welcome the chance to bring the same habits to your terminals.

Sincerely, Jordan Alvarez