DVIR requirements: when a report is required and what it must contain

A driver vehicle inspection report is required under §396.11 at the end of each day's work, for each vehicle the driver operated, when the driver found or was told about a defect or deficiency that would affect safe operation or cause a breakdown. When there is nothing to report, no report is required. The report covers eleven listed parts, the driver signs it, the carrier certifies that the defect was repaired or that repair was unnecessary, and the next driver reviews it before the vehicle goes out again. It is kept for three months. Paper and electronic reports are both acceptable, and the section does not apply at all to a carrier that operates only one commercial motor vehicle.

When a report is required

§396.11(a)(1) puts the obligation on both sides. The carrier must require its drivers to report, and the driver must prepare a written report at the completion of each day's work on each vehicle operated. Intermodal equipment tendered by an intermodal equipment provider is carved out of that sentence and handled separately under §396.11(b), which is a different regime with its own nine-item list and is not covered here.

The sentence that changes everything is in §396.11(a)(2)(i): drivers are not required to prepare a report if no defect or deficiency is discovered by or reported to the driver. That has been the rule for property-carrying vehicles since a final rule took effect on 18 December 2014. The same 2014 rule kept a daily report for passenger-carrying vehicles, and for six years bus drivers filed a report every day whether or not they found anything. A further final rule published in August 2020 removed that sentence. The section as it reads today draws no line between property and passenger operations. Everyone reports when there is something to report.

"Each vehicle operated" means what it says. A driver who runs three tractors in a day and finds a defect on two of them prepares two reports, one per vehicle. The paragraph is explicit that a report must be prepared for each vehicle operated when there is a defect on it.

The one-vehicle carrier

§396.11(a)(5) says the rules in the section do not apply to a private motor carrier of passengers (nonbusiness), a driveaway-towaway operation, or any motor carrier operating only one commercial motor vehicle. That last clause covers a lot of owner-operators, and it is rarely explained. If your authority runs one truck, §396.11 is not your section. The report, the certification, the next-driver review and the three-month retention do not apply to you.

What it does not exempt is the inspection itself. §392.7 still requires the driver to be satisfied that the listed parts are in good working order before the vehicle is driven, and §396.3 still requires the carrier to keep the vehicle in safe condition and to keep maintenance records. The exemption removes the paperwork about the defect. It does not remove the duty to find it and fix it. The moment a second unit is added, including a trailer that counts as a commercial motor vehicle in its own right, the exemption is gone.

"No report required" is a normal outcome

A driver who walks the unit, finds nothing, and files nothing has done exactly what the rule asks. There is no gap in the record and nothing to explain to an investigator. The absence of a report for a given day is not a missing report. It is the expected state of a vehicle with no defects.

A carrier can still decide it wants a signed report every day, defects or not. Plenty do, because a daily report proves the walkaround happened and gives the shop a steady picture of each unit. That is a reasonable choice, and it is company policy, not federal law. It matters to say it that way to drivers. A driver who is told the DOT requires a daily report has been told something that is not true, and will eventually find that out from a roadside inspector. Say instead that the company requires it, and why.

FMCSA was asked during the 2026 electronic DVIR rulemaking to bring back the no-defect report and declined, standing by the reasoning it gave in 2014. The neutral outcome is settled policy, not a loophole.

The eleven items

§396.11(a)(1) says the report shall cover at least the following parts and accessories. The list is in sub-paragraphs (i) through (xi), in this order:

1. Service brakes including trailer brake connections
2. Parking brake
3. Steering mechanism
4. Lighting devices and reflectors
5. Tires
6. Horn
7. Windshield wipers
8. Rear vision mirrors
9. Coupling devices
10. Wheels and rims
11. Emergency equipment

"At least" is doing work in that sentence. A form with more items on it is fine, and most printed forms have thirty or forty. A form with fewer is not. The eleven are the floor, and a report that does not cover one of them is a report that does not meet the section. The same eleven parts appear, in the same order, in the pre-trip list in §392.7(a), which is not a coincidence. The 2014 rule aligned the two lists deliberately so the driver checks the same things before driving that they report on afterwards.

The report must also identify the vehicle, under §396.11(a)(2)(i). Unit number, plate or VIN, any of them will do, but a report that does not say which truck it is about cannot be matched to a repair and is close to useless as evidence.

Who signs, and when one signature is enough

§396.11(a)(2)(ii) says the driver must sign the report. On a two-driver operation, only one driver needs to sign, provided both drivers agree as to the defects or deficiencies identified. That is a small concession and it is often overstated. It does not mean a team can share one report for a week. It means that on a given day, for a given vehicle, one signature serves for both if they agree on what is wrong. If they do not agree, each should report what they found.

This rule is often cited as paragraph (a)(4). That is the retention paragraph, §396.11(a)(4). The signature rule is (a)(2)(ii).

What happens to a defect

A reported defect starts a chain with three links, and the record is only complete when all three are there.

• Repair before dispatch. §396.11(a)(3)(i) says that before requiring or permitting a driver to operate the vehicle, the carrier or its agent must repair any listed defect that would be likely to affect the safety of operation. Not every reported item meets that test. A cracked mirror housing that still holds the glass may not. A trailer brake connection that leaks does.
• Certify on the report. §396.11(a)(3)(ii) requires the carrier or its agent to certify, on the report that lists the defect, that it has been repaired or that repair is unnecessary, before the vehicle is operated again. "Repair unnecessary" is a legitimate outcome written into the rule. A mechanic who looked at the item and decided it did not need work records exactly that. What the paragraph does not allow is a report with a listed defect and no certification at all.
• Next driver reviews and signs. Under §396.13(b) the next driver must review the last report if one was required, and under §396.13(c) must sign it to acknowledge the review and the certification that repairs were made. The one exception in (c): the signature is not needed for a defect listed on a towed unit that is no longer part of the combination. The trailer that was dropped in the yard with a bad light is somebody else's problem now, on its own report.

Note the phrase "if one was required" in §396.13(b). After a no-defect day there is no report, so there is nothing for the next driver to review. The chain only exists when a defect started it.

Trailers, dollies and multi-unit rigs

The section talks about "each vehicle operated", and a trailer is a vehicle. In a tractor-trailer combination the driver has operated two, and a defect on the trailer is reported against the trailer. The practical question is whether that goes on one form or two, and the rule does not say. Either works, as long as the report identifies which unit the defect is on. Where carriers get into trouble is the trailer swap: the tractor's report follows the tractor, but the trailer's defect was written on it, and the trailer left with a different tractor before the shop saw it. A report that identifies the trailer by its own number, kept with the trailer's records, is the fix.

Converter dollies in doubles and triples are the same story. The list item "coupling devices" covers the fifth wheel, pintle hook, drawbar and safety chains on every unit in the combination, so a bad pintle on the dolly is a reportable defect on the dolly. If your operation runs doubles, make sure the form has somewhere to write a dolly number.

Retention

§396.11(a)(4) requires the carrier to maintain the driver vehicle inspection report, the certification of repairs, and the certification of the driver's review for three months from the date the written report was prepared. All three pieces, together, for three months. A report filed without its repair certification is an incomplete record for the whole period, not just until someone gets round to it. The clock starts on the date the driver prepared the report, not the date of the repair, and a report kept longer than three months is never a violation. The retention periods for every other record are in the retention guide.

Electronic reports

§396.11(a)(6) says the report may be created and maintained in electronic format in accordance with §390.32, and §396.13(d) says the same of the next driver's review. The word is "may". Nothing in Part 396 requires an electronic report, and a pad of triplicate forms in the door pocket meets the section in full. The electronic option exists for carriers that want it.

If you do go electronic, §390.32 sets the conditions. The document has to reflect the required information accurately, be retained for the required period, and be reproducible for anyone entitled to see it. Signatures can be electronic under §390.32(c). And under §390.32(d), electronically generated records do not satisfy the rule unless they include proof that the person consented to electronic records, as required by 15 U.S.C. 7001(c). That consent record is the part most often missing. A driver who taps through an app has not necessarily agreed to electronic records in a way the rule recognises, and the carrier needs to be able to show that they did.

The pre-trip is a different rule

Drivers say "pre-trip" and "post-trip" as if they were two halves of the same thing. They are two different sections. §392.7(a) says no commercial motor vehicle shall be driven unless the driver is satisfied that the listed parts and accessories are in good working order. It is a duty to inspect and to be satisfied. It produces no document. There is no pre-trip report in the federal rules, and an investigator who asks for your pre-trips is asking a question the regulation does not answer.

§396.11 is the post-trip. It produces a document, but only when there is a defect. And §396.13 is the bridge between the two: the next driver, before driving, must be satisfied the vehicle is safe, review the last report if there was one, and sign it. So the sequence over a day is inspect under §392.7, drive, report if needed under §396.11, certify the repair under §396.11(a)(3), and the next morning review and sign under §396.13 before inspecting again. When a driver hands you a "pre-trip DVIR" with no defects on it, what you have is evidence the §392.7 inspection happened, which is useful, and not a report the rule required.

Do you need software for this?

Not for the rule. A carrier with four trucks, a book of carbonless forms in each one, and a shop that signs the yellow copy is compliant. What the forms cannot do is keep a defect from being forgotten. The report goes in the door pocket, the truck goes out again on Monday with nobody having certified the repair, and the record now shows a defect that was dispatched over. That is the finding that shows up in reviews, and it is a process failure rather than a paperwork one. Ledger Road keeps a reported defect open until it is certified and reviewed and flags the unit in the meantime, and it records a no-defect day as no report required, in plain grey, because that is what it is. If your shop already does that with a whiteboard, you don't need it. Where the line falls is covered in the guide on spreadsheets and software.