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.
The compliance burden is real.
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. You join our consortium, your drivers go into a combined random pool, and we handle the entire program — selection, scheduling, lab coordination, MRO review, results management, and Clearinghouse reporting.
The alternative is doing it yourself: a stand-alone pool too small to randomize fairly, 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.
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.
Ready to put this in Patron's hands?
Talk to a specialist about migrating your records and getting started.