06

Staying qualified: the file and the medical certificate

Being licensed is not the same as being qualified. A carrier must be able to prove, from a file, that every driver it employs met a standard before they drove and still meets it now — and half that file is the driver’s to supply.

In this chapter

• +What “qualified” means in full, and which parts of it the driver owes rather than the carrier
• +The checks a carrier must run before you drive and every year after, and the clocks they run on
• +How medical certification works, who may perform the examination, and what your self-certification decides