Federal Drug & Alcohol Consortium Administration.
On top of the many challenges you face in your day-to-day operations, the use of a Third-Party Administrator (TPA) mitigates a large portion of the regulatory and risk-management workload from your employees — while keeping you compliant with Part 40 and Sec. 382 of the federal regulations.
Part 40 + §382 violations are the costliest you can have.
If you employ CDL drivers, you must have a Drug & Alcohol program — pre-employment testing, random pool participation, post-accident testing, reasonable suspicion protocols, return-to-duty processes, and full FMCSA Clearinghouse compliance. The penalties for running this incorrectly are some of the steepest in the regulatory book.
A C/TPA (Consortium / Third-Party Administrator) is the FMCSA-authorized way to handle all of this. Patron runs both types of pool, and we match you to the right one based on fleet size. If you have six drivers or fewer, you go into our combined consortium pool — your drivers are randomized alongside other small carriers so the pool is large enough to meet federal selection rates fairly. If you have more than six drivers, we set you up with your own stand-alone pool, randomized only against your drivers, with the same Patron-managed selection, lab coordination, MRO review, results management, and Clearinghouse reporting.
Either way, you get the same fully-administered program — we handle selection, scheduling, chain of custody, results, and reporting — and you stay in control of how your fleet's pool is structured.
A lot of other C/TPAs take a shortcut: they dump every carrier — large and small — into one giant combined pool. That sounds convenient, but it works against the larger fleets. Your selection rate gets diluted, your random history is tangled up with hundreds of other companies, and when an FMCSA auditor pulls your pool documentation they're sorting through carriers that have nothing to do with you. We don't do that. Once your fleet crosses six drivers, you get your own pool, your own selection records, and a clean audit trail that belongs to you.
The alternative to either model is doing it yourself: a homemade pool with no documented randomization, paper chain-of-custody forms that get lost, missed selections, undocumented results, and an audit finding waiting to happen. We replace that with online portal access, paperless workflows, and 24–48 hour result turnaround.
Real-world compliance failures we've seen carriers face.
Not hypothetical — these are scenarios that show up in our intake calls every month.
Missed random selection
A small carrier was selected by the consortium for a random drug test but the DER never received the email. Driver wasn't tested. FMCSA audit found one missing selection — recorded as a violation. Multiple missed selections can put your random rate below the 50% federal minimum.
Positive test handled wrong
Driver tested positive. Carrier put them back to work after a 30-day "cooling off." FMCSA Clearinghouse was never notified. Driver crashed. Discovery of the positive + the missed Clearinghouse report turned a civil case into a wrongful-hiring exposure.
Post-accident testing window blown
Driver in a fatal crash. Carrier didn't test within the 8-hour alcohol / 32-hour drug window. Federal regulation requires documenting why the test wasn't done. Carrier had no documentation. FMCSA cited it on the post-crash investigation.
Patron handles all of it.
Typical use cases.
You have CDL drivers — period
Any carrier with one or more CDL drivers must have a Drug & Alcohol program. Joining a consortium is the simplest, lowest-overhead way to comply.
A driver tests positive — what now?
A positive result removes the driver from safety-sensitive duty immediately. Patron coordinates the full return-to-duty path: Substance Abuse Professional (SAP) evaluation, Employee Assistance Program (EAP) referral, prescribed treatment, return-to-duty test, follow-up testing for up to 5 years, and Clearinghouse reporting at every step.
Non-DOT covered employees
For employees not under DOT regulations but still safety-sensitive (warehouse, equipment operators), we run non-DOT consortiums with similar discipline.
Owner-operator / single-truck
You still need a random pool — but a pool of one doesn't pass federal scrutiny. Joining our consortium puts you in a real pool, fairly.
We were running our drug program out of a binder. Patron put us into their consortium, transitioned every driver, and now we get an email if anything needs attention. We haven't had a finding since.
Thank you to our satisfied clients
A few of the carriers and operators who trust Patron with their compliance.
My Dumpster Guy
Florida-based roll-off dumpster rental serving residential, contractor, and commercial customers — moving containers across the region every day with a small, focused fleet.
Patron handles the driver qualification files, MVR monitoring, and drug program so the team can stay focused on swapping containers — not chasing paperwork.
Ready to put this in Patron's hands?
Talk to a specialist about migrating your records and getting started.