Reference

Medical certificates split in two on 23 June 2025

CDL drivers went electronic. Everybody else did not. If your fleet runs both — and most construction fleets do — you now have two different processes where you used to have one.

Medical Examiner’s Certification Integration rule · effective 23 June 2025

What actually changed

Until June 2025 the process was the same for every driver: the doctor handed over a paper medical card, the driver gave a copy to the office, and the office filed it. One process, one piece of paper, one place it could go wrong.

Now it depends on whether the driver holds a CDL.

	CDL drivers	Non-CDL CMV drivers
Who sends the result	The examiner files it electronically with FMCSA	The driver hands you the card
Where it ends up	On the driver’s motor vehicle record, via the state	In your filing cabinet
Paper card in the DQ file	No longer required	Still required
How you verify	Pull the MVR — it is now the authoritative record	Look at the card
Check the examiner is on the National Registry	No longer required	Still required

The examiner has a deadline now. Results must reach the federal registry by midnight on the day after the exam. That is a change for the doctor, not for you — but it is why the certification can show up on a driving record within a day or two.

Why this matters more to construction fleets than to trucking companies

A long-haul carrier runs CDL drivers almost exclusively. For them this rule removed a filing job and that was the end of it.

A paving crew, a utility contractor, or an electrical outfit is a mixed fleet. Dump trucks, bucket trucks, service bodies and pickup-and-trailer combinations over 10,001 lbs are commercial motor vehicles, and plenty of the people driving them do not hold a CDL.

For those drivers nothing changed at all. The paper card still has to be collected, still has to be in the file, and still expires without announcing itself. The manual burden did not go away — it concentrated in exactly the kind of fleet that is least likely to have someone watching it.

What to do about it

Split your roster by CDLIt is now the line that determines which process a driver is on. If your driver list does not record it, that is the first thing to fix.
For CDL drivers, get the certification date from the MVRNot from a card in a drawer. The record on the licence is what an auditor and a roadside officer will see.
For non-CDL drivers, keep doing exactly what you were doingCollect the card, file it, diary the expiry.
Don’t throw the old CDL cards away yetPlenty of fleets are still holding copies while the state systems settle in, and there is no harm in that. Just don’t let the copy in the drawer become the thing you rely on.

What has not changed at all: a driver still has to be medically certified to drive. Operating without valid certification is still a violation, and it is still one of the commonest things found at a roadside inspection. The rule moved where the record lives. It did not soften the requirement.

Want to know where your own fleet stands?

Send me your driver list and I’ll send back a written review: what is already past due, what falls due in the next 90 days, and which drivers are on which side of this rule. Free, and yours to keep either way.

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General information from published federal requirements, not legal or compliance advice. Sources: the Medical Examiner’s Certification Integration rule, effective 23 June 2025, and 49 CFR parts 391 and 383.