On a commercial auto policy, one driver's record can decide whether the whole business gets a quote.

1 year. A CDL holder convicted of driving under the influence on a first offense is disqualified from driving a commercial motor vehicle for one year, and the federal table applies that sanction whether the conviction came in a commercial vehicle or a personal one (49 CFR 383.51(a)(3) and Table 1, eCFR, up to date as of September 18, 2026).

How commercial underwriters read a driving record

On a personal auto policy, the drivers are one piece of the rate. On a small commercial policy, they're most of it. The company pulls a motor vehicle record on every driver you list when you first buy, and usually again at renewal. Plenty of them pull one any time you add a driver mid-term.

The underwriter reads each record against that company's own driver guidelines, and no two companies write those the same. What jumps out is the serious stuff: driving under the influence, reckless driving, a suspended or revoked license, leaving the scene. Then at-fault accidents, and how many minor moving violations fall inside the period the company looks back over. Years behind the wheel and the driver's age count too. Most companies set a minimum for both.

Those records then set the price on everything. If you're a one-truck business and you're the only driver, your record is the whole policy. On a small fleet, one driver with a DUI can raise the premium on every vehicle, or take the company out of the running entirely. So the driver list is worth as much of your attention as the vehicle list. Our article on the commercial auto driver list at renewal goes into it.

What an unacceptable driver usually means

When a record falls outside a company's guidelines, you'll usually get one of two answers. It may offer to write the policy with that driver excluded by name. Or it may decline the whole thing, which is what tends to happen when there's no realistic way to keep that person out of the trucks.

Which one you get depends a lot on who the driver is. An employee can often be excluded, or moved to work that doesn't involve driving. If it's you, and you're in the truck every day, excluding you from your own truck accomplishes nothing. Then the question is whose guidelines will take the record, and finding out means going to more companies than a clean record would.

There's a third case, where the record is rough but still inside the guidelines. The company takes the driver and charges for the record. Violations drop out of the lookback period as they age, so a policy nobody wants this year can look different two renewals from now. What drives an auto insurance rate change covers how those factors move a premium from one term to the next.

Excluding a driver, and what happens if they drive anyway

An exclusion is usually a signed endorsement that names the person and takes away their coverage when they drive. Most companies want it signed by the named insured before they'll bind or renew. Then it goes in a drawer and everybody forgets about it.

If an excluded driver takes a truck out and causes a crash, the company may deny the claim, depending on the policy wording and state law. Then it's your business facing the injured party with nobody behind you. The same risk applies in a different form to a driver who was simply never listed, and how an unlisted driver can void truck coverage walks through that version.

So treat an exclusion as a rule your crew has to follow. Tell the supervisors and tell the excluded person, in writing, and don't let him move a truck across the lot. If his record improves, ask whether the company will look at it again at renewal. Don't assume it will.

When the owner needs an SR-22

An SR-22 is a certificate an insurer files with a state to show that a particular person carries liability insurance. States require one after serious events on a driving record, and each state sets both the triggers and how long the filing must stay in place. Our SR-22 insurance page covers how the filing works and links to the state pages.

If you're the owner and you need an SR-22, you've got a question the personal pages don't answer. Can the filing go on the business policy? Some commercial companies will file an SR-22 for a driver listed on the commercial policy. Others won't file on a commercial policy at all, which leaves you needing a separate personal auto policy or a non-owner policy to carry it. It depends on the company and the state. Ask before you bind, not after the state mails you a notice.

How the truck is titled makes this harder. If the business owns the only vehicle you drive, a personal owner's policy may not fit you, and a non-owner policy may be what ends up carrying the filing. And if your license is suspended right now, you shouldn't be driving a company vehicle until it's back. Most companies will want the driver list to say so. Insurance with a suspended license explains how that side usually works.

Hiring practices that keep the policy writable

If you have employees, the driver list gets decided at hiring more than anywhere else. Pull a motor vehicle record before a new hire drives anything, with his written authorization, and hold it up against written criteria of your own. Ask your insurance company for its driver guidelines and write your criteria to sit inside them. That way you don't hire somebody the policy won't take.

Put the criteria in writing and apply them the same way to everybody who drives. Add new drivers to the policy and get the company's acceptance before they take a truck out. Re-pull the records at least once a year. Tell your drivers to report a new violation or a license action right away.

Employees who run business errands in their own cars are part of this too. That falls under hired and non-owned auto, which covers vehicles you use but don't own, and some companies will ask how you screen those drivers. A short written rule about who runs errands, and in what, is usually enough of an answer.

For interstate operations running commercial motor vehicles, some of this is already federal law. The driver qualification rules in part 391 apply to people who drive commercial motor vehicles for motor carriers (49 CFR 391.1). A motor carrier must request each new driver's record from every state where they held a license in the preceding three years, within 30 days of hire (49 CFR 391.23). It must then obtain each driver's record at least once every 12 months (49 CFR 391.25).

CDL drivers and non-CDL pickups

Most businesses in this spot run pickups, vans and light trucks that don't need a commercial driver's license. For those drivers, the company's guidelines and your own hiring standards do all the work. The federal CDL rules never come into it.

A CDL driver is a different case. Under the federal disqualification rules, a CDL holder's first conviction for driving under the influence means one year without driving a commercial motor vehicle. The rule reaches convictions in personal vehicles as well (49 CFR 383.51). A driver in that position can't drive your CDL-class truck during the disqualification, whatever the insurer is willing to do. Heavier vehicles bring their own registration and driver-file questions, and the heavy trucks and fleets page goes through them. If hauling for hire is what you sell, start with trucking and transportation insurance instead.

What to send us

• A driver list with each person's full name, date of birth, license number, license state and date of hire.
• For each driver, the violations, accidents and license actions you know about, with approximate dates.
• For any driver who needs an SR-22, which state requires it and the notice or order that says so.
• The vehicle list with VINs and gross vehicle weight ratings, where each vehicle is kept overnight, and what the business does.
• Your current declarations page and any driver exclusion endorsements already on the policy.
• Loss runs from your current or prior insurer, if you've had a policy.
• Your written driver criteria or hiring policy, if you have one.

Where we usually start

Vantage Point Risk quotes more than one commercial auto company side by side, and each one decides eligibility for itself. Driver guidelines aren't the same from company to company, so a driver one of them excludes can be fine with another. We take the same set of records to the companies whose guidelines fit them, and we show you what each one came back with, including any exclusion it wants signed.

For clients in Arizona, California and Colorado, Kemper Auto's commercial program is one of the ones we quote. In our other states we go to the other commercial auto companies we work with.

If you also need a personal filing, we handle that side too. Our DUI car insurance page, along with the SR-22 and non-owner pages, covers the companies we go to for it.

Reviewed for insurance accuracy by Richard Sweet, owner of Vantage Point Risk and an independent insurance advisor. Last reviewed September 24, 2026. How we review this.