HireRight DAC Report: The Complete Guide for Carriers and Drivers

If you’ve spent any time hiring CDL drivers, you’ve heard the two terms used as if they’re the same thing: “pull his DAC” and “run him through HireRight.” They’re related but not identical — HireRight is the company, and the DAC report is the product it runs. That one distinction explains almost everything about how the report behaves: why it’s employer-reported and often incomplete, why drivers can demand a free copy and dispute it, and why a single “not eligible for rehire” flag from HireRight isn’t the verdict a lot of recruiters treat it as. Here’s the definitive breakdown of the HireRight DAC report — what’s in it, how carriers order it, how drivers get and dispute their own, and where it leaves you blind.

What is HireRight?

HireRight is a private, publicly traded background-screening company that operates the employment-history database the trucking industry calls “DAC.” It is a consumer reporting agency (CRA) — a company governed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act that assembles and sells background information used in hiring decisions. HireRight screens across many industries, but in trucking its signature product is the DAC report, the employer-reported driver work-history file most mid-to-large carriers pull before they put someone in a seat.

The company’s roots are older than the HireRight name. DAC Services launched in 1981 to do exactly one thing — collect and share CDL driver work histories among carriers. That database changed hands and brands over the next three decades (more on that below), but the underlying product never went away. When a recruiter today says “run him through HireRight,” they almost always mean: pull HireRight’s DAC employment-history file on this driver, usually bundled with the MVR, PSP, and a Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse query. HireRight also offers DOT-specific employment and drug-and-alcohol verification services staffed by researchers who know the regulations, but the DAC file is the piece carriers ask for by name.

Why “HireRight” became a synonym for “DAC”

HireRight is treated as a synonym for the DAC report because HireRight literally acquired and now runs the DAC database — so the brand and the product collapsed into one word in trucking shorthand. Understanding the history makes the rest of this guide click into place.

The lineage runs roughly like this (dates are widely reported; verify current details against primary sources):

• 1981 — DAC Services. A Tulsa, Oklahoma company begins compiling CDL driver employment histories submitted by carriers. “DAC” = Drive-A-Check.
• USIS Commercial Services. The DAC database is later operated under the USIS Commercial Services banner — many older driver forum posts and dispute letters still reference “USIS.”
• 2008–2009 — the HireRight combination. USIS Commercial Services and HireRight Solutions merge into one large employment-screening entity, and the combined company adopts the HireRight name. The DAC employment-history database carries over intact.
• Today — HireRight. The same Drive-A-Check database now lives inside HireRight’s DOT screening products. (Ownership has continued to change at the corporate level; the operational DAC product has been stable.)

So the three names you’ll hear — DAC Services, USIS, and HireRight — are three eras of the same database. That’s why “is HireRight the same as DAC?” is the single most-asked question on this topic, and why the honest answer is: not exactly, but close enough that the words get used interchangeably. HireRight is the company; the DAC report is the product it sells. For the general “what is a DAC report” walkthrough that isn’t HireRight-specific, see our DAC Report Explained guide.

What’s in a HireRight DAC Employment History Report

A HireRight DAC report is a compiled employment-history file showing what a CDL driver’s former carriers chose to report about their tenure, separation, and safety record. It’s often described as having two halves: a driving-record component (motor vehicle data pulled from state sources) and a work-record component (employment history submitted by past employers). The work record is the part that makes DAC distinctive — it’s information no MVR or PSP carries.

Fields you’ll typically see on a HireRight DAC report include:

• Driver identifiers — name, date of birth, and the like
• Each contributing carrier with employment dates (period of service)
• Reason for leaving / separation (voluntary quit, termination, layoff)
• Eligibility for rehire — Yes / No / Review
• Equipment and trailer types operated and freight/loads hauled
• Driver status and experience level
• DOT-recordable accidents and incidents, with details
• Drug-and-alcohol test results and policy violations
• Truck-driving-school performance, in some records
• Work-record comments

The single field recruiters fixate on is eligibility for rehire. It’s a fast signal — but it’s also the most subjective one on the report, because it reflects one former employer’s judgment rather than a verified fact. Treat it accordingly.

Retention windows are commonly cited as roughly three years for drug-and-alcohol information and about seven years for other items, with employment history reaching back as far as a decade. A HireRight DAC report does not include credit scores or general financial data. (Always verify current retention periods with HireRight, since policies and the underlying regulations change.)

How HireRight gets the data: employer-submitted and voluntary

The HireRight DAC database is built entirely from data that carriers volunteer about their former drivers — there is no government mandate forcing any carrier to report, and many don’t. This is the most important structural fact about the report, and the one that trips up both sides of the desk.

Here’s the mechanism. When a carrier participates in the system, it submits employment-record data on departing drivers to HireRight — dates, reason for leaving, rehire eligibility, accidents, and drug-and-alcohol results. HireRight aggregates those submissions into the file a future employer pulls. Two consequences follow directly:

1. Coverage is uneven. Industry write-ups have long estimated that around 90% of mid-to-large carriers use DAC for screening, with the database holding millions of records from thousands of contributing carriers. But “uses it to screen” is not the same as “reports into it.” Plenty of small and mid-size carriers pull reports without ever contributing one, so a driver’s file can have real gaps. (These adoption figures are widely repeated industry estimates — verify current.)
2. Pulling a report enrolls the driver. Ordering a HireRight DAC report on a candidate also typically registers that driver in the database, which is part of why the system has the reach it does — every search feeds it.

Because the data is employer-submitted, accuracy depends on the diligence (and the mood) of whoever filed it. A truck returned in good condition but logged as “abandoned” by a disgruntled former employer is a documented failure mode of the system — and exactly the kind of entry the FCRA dispute process exists to fix.

Employer side: how to order and use a HireRight DAC report

Carriers order a HireRight DAC report through a HireRight employer (client) account, almost always bundled with DOT employment-verification services rather than as a one-off purchase. You set up a screening account, get the driver’s written authorization (an FCRA precondition, not a nicety), and place the order; HireRight returns the contributing-carrier history inside your screening dashboard alongside whatever else you’ve bundled — MVR, PSP, a Clearinghouse query, criminal, and so on.

A few practical notes carriers learn fast:

• There’s no published per-report price for employers. Cost depends on your contract and monthly volume, so it’s negotiated, not posted. (For contrast, FMCSA’s PSP is a flat, published $10 per record — useful as a mental benchmark, but DAC pricing is its own thing. Verify current pricing with HireRight.)
• Get written consent first, every time. No authorization, no report — and skipping it is an FCRA violation, not a paperwork slip.
• The HireRight DAC alone does not close your federal file. Under 49 CFR §391.23, a hiring carrier must investigate an applicant’s safety-performance history with every DOT-regulated employer from the previous three years, and document the attempt. A DAC report can help with the employment-verification piece, but the regulation requires the investigation itself — and since January 6, 2023, the drug-and-alcohol portion runs through the FMCSA Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse, not a DAC entry. For the full pull/order mechanics, see How to Get and Dispute a DAC Report.

Used well, a HireRight DAC report is a corroboration tool: it lets you confirm that the employment dates and separation reasons on a driver’s application line up with what their former carriers reported. Used badly — as a single-flag auto-reject — it’s a lawsuit waiting to happen and a good driver you didn’t hire.

Driver side: how to get your own HireRight DAC report (free annually)

Any CDL driver is entitled to a free copy of their own HireRight DAC report once every 12 months under the FCRA, requested directly from HireRight. This right comes from the FCRA’s free-annual-disclosure rule for nationwide specialty consumer reporting agencies, which covers employment screeners like HireRight. The report includes the driver’s file and a list of every HireRight customer who received a copy in the prior two years — useful for figuring out who’s been looking.

Drivers can request a HireRight DAC report four ways (these contact details are current as of publication — verify current with HireRight before relying on them):

A couple of details surprise drivers. You’ll be asked for identifying information — name, address, Social Security number, driver’s license number, and contact info — so HireRight can match your file. And the report is generally mailed, not handed back digitally on request, with delivery commonly cited at around 10 to 15 days (some sources say roughly two weeks). If a candidate tells a recruiter they’re “waiting on their DAC,” that timeline is real — it’s not a stall. Every driver should pull their own HireRight DAC file before a job search so there are no surprises mid-application.

How drivers dispute errors through HireRight

If a driver believes a HireRight DAC entry is inaccurate or incomplete, they file a dispute directly with HireRight for free, and HireRight must reinvestigate — generally within 30 days. The driver explains what’s wrong and attaches documentation (pay stubs, separation letters, emails, drug-test results), and under the FCRA’s reinvestigation rule HireRight has to verify, correct, or delete the item. If the entry can’t be verified, it comes off the report and the driver gets written confirmation. Unresolved issues can be escalated to the CFPB or the FTC.

The 30-day clock can stretch by up to 15 extra days if the driver submits additional relevant information mid-investigation. The practical read for a recruiter: a driver who’s actively disputing a HireRight DAC entry isn’t waving a red flag — they’re using a process that exists precisely because bad entries happen. We cover the dispute step-by-step, including the documentation that actually moves the needle, in How to Get and Dispute a DAC Report.

HireRight’s accuracy track record and the 2012 FTC settlement

HireRight’s accuracy isn’t just a theoretical concern — the FTC formally sanctioned the company over it. In August 2012, the Federal Trade Commission announced that HireRight Solutions agreed to pay a $2.6 million penalty to settle charges that it violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act. At the time it was the first FTC case against an employment background-screening company and the second-largest civil penalty the FTC had ever obtained under the FCRA (behind a $10 million ChoicePoint penalty in 2006).

According to the FTC, HireRight’s alleged violations included:

• Failing to use reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy — some reports failed to reflect expunged criminal records or contained obviously erroneous information.
• Failing to give consumers timely access to their own files and closing dispute investigations without proper written notice.
• Requiring consumers to obtain a copy of their report before the company would reinvestigate a dispute — and failing to provide the results of reinvestigations.
• Failing to follow the rules for CRAs that report public-record information, including notifying consumers that such information was being reported and keeping it complete and up to date.

The consent order required HireRight to fix those practices, maintain compliance records, and report back to the FTC. (Sources: FTC and DOJ press materials from August 2012 — verify current before quoting figures.)

Why does a 14-year-old settlement matter to your 2026 hiring file? Because it’s the clearest documented proof that DAC entries can be wrong, and that the dispute and adverse-action machinery isn’t optional ceremony — it’s the backstop a federal regulator built precisely because this database has gotten things wrong at scale. Treat a HireRight DAC report as evidence to corroborate, not a verdict to rubber-stamp.

Your FCRA obligations as an employer

Because the HireRight DAC report is a consumer report under the FCRA, an employer who pulls one takes on specific legal duties — most importantly the two-step adverse-action process before rejecting a driver based on it. Skipping that process is one of the most common and most litigated FCRA mistakes in trucking hiring, so it’s worth getting exact.

The core obligations:

1. Disclosure and written consent before you pull the report — standalone, not buried in the application.
2. Pre-adverse-action notice. If a DAC entry is part of why you’re going to decline a candidate, before you finalize the decision you must send a notice, a complete copy of the DAC report you relied on, and a copy of “A Summary of Your Rights Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act” (the standardized CFPB form). Then give the candidate a reasonable window — commonly treated as about five business days — to respond or dispute.
3. Final adverse-action notice. Only after that window, if you still decline, send the final notice naming HireRight as the reporting agency (with its contact info) and stating that HireRight didn’t make the decision — you did.

This matters most when an entry is contested: the pre-adverse notice is literally the candidate’s chance to show you the entry is wrong before it costs them the seat. See the FTC’s employer guidance on consumer reports for the detailed mechanics, and our broader truck driver background check guide for how the DAC fits the full screening file.

How HireRight’s DAC compares to PSP, MVR, and the Clearinghouse

A HireRight DAC report covers employer-reported employment history — and almost nothing the other core trucking records cover, which is why carriers pull several. These four records get conflated constantly, but they barely overlap:

The takeaway: no single record substitutes for the others. A clean HireRight DAC tells you nothing about a driver’s inspection history; a clean MVR tells you nothing about why they left their last three jobs. For a full side-by-side, see PSP vs DAC vs MVR and our deeper look at driver rating databases in trucking. If you’re specifically trying to read a “not eligible for rehire” flag, our driver rehire eligibility guide breaks down what that field does and doesn’t prove.

Common mistakes and misconceptions about the HireRight DAC

The HireRight DAC report is one of the most myth-laden documents in trucking hiring, and acting on the myths is how carriers get into FCRA trouble. A few worth clearing up:

• “The DAC is a blacklist.” It isn’t. It’s a compiled employment-history file, not a banned-driver list. A “no rehire” flag from one carrier doesn’t bar a driver from the industry — it’s one data point, and a disputable one.
• “HireRight decides who gets hired.” No — you do. HireRight assembles the report; the hiring decision (and the legal responsibility for it) is the carrier’s. That’s exactly what the final adverse-action notice has to spell out.
• “It’s a government database, so it must be accurate.” It’s neither government-run nor automatically accurate. It’s employer-submitted, voluntary, and — per the FTC’s own 2012 case — capable of carrying errors at scale.
• “If a carrier didn’t report it, it didn’t happen.” The reverse: huge gaps exist because reporting is voluntary. A thin DAC file is not a clean record; it may just be an unreported one.
• “A driver disputing their DAC is hiding something.” Inaccurate entries are common enough that the dispute process is built into federal law. A pending dispute is a prompt to verify, not a disqualifier.
• “Pulling the DAC satisfies my §391.23 homework.” It doesn’t, by itself. The regulation requires the investigation and documentation; the report is one tool inside it.

What the HireRight DAC misses — and how to close the gap

Even a clean, fully reinvestigated HireRight DAC report has a structural blind spot: it only reflects what a former carrier chose to formally report on a form. The things that actually predict a bad hire rarely make it into a DAC entry — chronic no-shows, ghosting after orientation (a driver who finishes paperwork then vanishes), abandoned loads (walking away from freight or the truck mid-assignment), repeated two-week stints, and plain unreliability. A driver’s previous dispatchers and recruiters know these things. They almost never type them into HireRight, because reporting is voluntary and most carriers don’t bother. That’s the reputation layer the DAC leaves out, and it’s the same gap MVR and PSP miss too.

That’s the gap a peer-sourced driver-review database like cdlscan.com is built to fill. Instead of waiting on what a former employer formally coded into HireRight — or didn’t — you can search a driver by name and read what previous carriers said about reliability and rehire-worthiness, the firsthand signals a DAC report skips. It doesn’t replace your required MVR, PSP, DAC, or Clearinghouse checks, and it doesn’t change your adverse-action duties — it adds the behavior layer those records can’t carry, alongside them, never instead of them. A peer driver-review database is most valuable exactly where the HireRight DAC is weakest: the small and mid-size carriers that pull reports but never contribute one. (CDLScan lists more than 1 million driver reviews and runs around 20,000 searches a week; basic search is free — those are the platform’s own figures.)

Glossary

• DAC — Drive-A-Check. The employer-reported employment-history report on a CDL driver, operated by HireRight. Began at DAC Services in 1981.
• HireRight — The consumer reporting agency that owns and operates the DAC database today, after the lineage from DAC Services through USIS Commercial Services.
• FCRA — Fair Credit Reporting Act, the federal law governing consumer reports used in hiring. Gives drivers the right to see and dispute their DAC and imposes adverse-action duties on employers.
• CRA — Consumer Reporting Agency. A company (like HireRight) that compiles and sells background information under the FCRA.
• FMCSA — Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the DOT agency that regulates commercial motor carriers and runs the PSP and Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse.
• §391.23 — The federal regulation (49 CFR §391.23) requiring a hiring carrier to investigate and document a driver’s safety-performance history from the prior three years.
• Adverse action — The FCRA process an employer must follow (pre-adverse notice with a copy of the report plus a rights summary, a waiting window, then a final notice) before rejecting a candidate based on a consumer report like the DAC.

Frequently asked questions

Is HireRight the same as DAC? Not exactly. HireRight is the company; the DAC (Drive-A-Check) report is the product it runs. The DAC database started at DAC Services in 1981, passed through USIS Commercial Services, and is now owned and operated by HireRight — so the two names get used interchangeably, but technically HireRight is the CRA and DAC is the report.

What is a HireRight DAC report? It’s an employer-reported employment-history file on a CDL driver, compiled by HireRight from data former carriers submit voluntarily: employment dates, reason for leaving, rehire eligibility, equipment operated, DOT-recordable accidents, and drug-and-alcohol test results.

How do I get my HireRight DAC report for free? Request it directly from HireRight — one free copy every 12 months under the FCRA — by online form, phone (866-521-6995), fax (918-664-5520), or mail to HireRight’s Consumers Department in Tulsa, OK. You’ll provide identifying info, and the report is mailed, not delivered instantly.

How long does it take to get a HireRight DAC report? Delivery is commonly cited at around 10 to 15 days (roughly two weeks) by mail. If a candidate says they’re waiting on their DAC, that timeline is real.

Who can see my HireRight DAC report? Carriers with a HireRight employer account and your written authorization can pull it during screening. When you request your own copy, HireRight also gives you a list of every customer who received your report in the prior two years.

How long does information stay on a DAC report? Commonly cited windows are roughly three years for drug-and-alcohol information and about seven years for other items, with employment history reaching back as far as a decade. Verify current retention periods with HireRight.

How do I dispute an error on my HireRight DAC report? File a dispute directly with HireRight for free, explaining the error and attaching documentation (pay stubs, separation letters, test results). HireRight must reinvestigate and verify, correct, or delete the item — generally within 30 days, with up to 15 extra days if you add information mid-process.

Is the DAC report run by the government? No. It’s run by HireRight, a private consumer reporting agency. The data comes from former employers, not FMCSA. That’s a key reason entries can be incomplete or wrong.

Is a HireRight DAC report required to hire a driver? No. The DAC is voluntary. What’s mandatory is the underlying §391.23 safety-history investigation, and a DAC report is one tool that can help satisfy the employment-verification piece — but it doesn’t check that box on its own.

Can a former employer put false information on my HireRight DAC? Inaccurate or even retaliatory entries do happen — a returned truck logged as “abandoned” is a known example. That’s why the FCRA gives drivers the right to dispute, and why a single negative flag shouldn’t end a hiring decision by itself.

How much does a HireRight DAC report cost an employer? There’s no published per-report price. Employer cost depends on your HireRight contract and volume and is negotiated, not posted. (FMCSA’s PSP, by contrast, is a flat $10 per record — a useful benchmark, not the DAC price.)

What does an employer have to do before rejecting a driver over a HireRight DAC report? Follow the FCRA adverse-action process: get consent before pulling, then send a pre-adverse-action notice with a full copy of the report and the CFPB summary of rights, allow a reasonable response window (commonly about five business days), and only then send a final adverse-action notice if you still decline.

Why did the FTC fine HireRight? In 2012 the FTC fined HireRight Solutions $2.6 million — then the second-largest FCRA penalty ever — for failing to assure maximum possible accuracy, failing to give consumers timely access to their files, requiring consumers to buy a report before reinvestigating a dispute, and mishandling public-record reporting.

Can I rely on a HireRight DAC report alone to make a hiring decision? No. It’s employer-reported and often incomplete, it doesn’t satisfy §391.23 by itself, and it misses informal behavior like no-shows and abandoned loads. Pair it with the MVR, PSP, Clearinghouse, your documented §391.23 inquiries, and a reputation check such as peer driver reviews.

What’s the difference between a HireRight DAC report and a PSP report? The DAC is employer-reported employment history from HireRight. The PSP is FMCSA crash and roadside-inspection data. They cover different ground and miss different things — most carriers pull both, plus the MVR and a Clearinghouse query. See our PSP report explainer for the details.