Well-trained supervisors help you achieve your safety objectives while maintaining program integrity and effectiveness.

This article is from the Spring 2017 issue of The Quill. To view the full issue, visit The Quill archive.

Well-trained supervisors help you achieve your safety objectives while maintaining program integrity and effectiveness. This in turn reduces your program costs. During discussions with motor carriers regarding their Alcohol and Substance Abuse program, a frequent oversight realized is that there may not be enough trained driver supervisors for Reasonable Suspicion Identification as required in FMCSR $382.307.

To meet the regulations, only one qualified supervisor is required to witness the conduct of the driver; however, it is a best business practice to have at least two properly trained and qualified supervisors witness the conduct on each shift where drivers are supervised. Having multiple trained supervisors per shift provides several advantages:

• It helps prevent accusations of harassment
• Justification to require the test is more valid when multiple individuals witness and document the suspicion
• If there is trouble, it helps to have someone assist you
• If a supervisor is absent that shift, then there is at least one supervisor present to do the job

The complete Reasonable Suspicion regulations can be found in FMCSR $382.307, as well as official Guidance. The FMCSA website also has a detailed PDF for your reference. Type in Implementation Guidelines for Alcohol and Drug Regulations in the FMCSA website’s search bar and click on the PDF link.

Training for supervisors is covered in FMCSR $382.603. The training enables supervisors to determine whether reasonable suspicion exists to require a driver to undergo testing. It must include at least 60 minutes on alcohol misuse and 60 minutes on controlled substances use. Recurrent training is not required, but it is an industry best practice to refresh their knowledge and documentation
every few years. Motor carriers often also forget to train new supervisors as they are hired. Maintain all
documentation of the training and training materials.