§395.11 requires the carrier to keep up to 8 supporting documents per driver per 24-hour period, in five categories: bills of lading and itinerary, dispatch records and trip records, expense receipts (fuel, tolls, lodging), electronic mobile communication records from fleet-management systems, and payroll records. Drivers submit supporting documents within 13 days of generation. The carrier retains for 6 months.
Severity weight + audit impact
Severity weight 1 per finding — low individually. The audit impact is the real cost: §385 compliance reviews routinely sample HOS records, and gaps in supporting documents are how auditors prove RODs were falsified or inflated. A pattern is evidence of inadequate management oversight.
What counts
A supporting document must (i) be generated or received during the 24-hour period in question, and (ii) include enough information to identify the driver and a date/time/location data point. Receipts without driver identification are weaker. Fleet-management messages timestamped against the ELD position log are strongest.
How to prevent it
- Establish a 13-day driver-submission policy; track submissions per driver per week.
- Auto-ingest fuel-card transactions where possible — they generate location + time + driver-card-number reliably.
- For Samsara/Motive customers, supporting documents auto-classify into §395.11 categories from the ELD's fleet-message log.
- Spot-check a sample of 24-hour periods each month: do the supporting documents corroborate the ROD?
How Roadworthy HQ helps
Roadworthy HQ stores supporting documents under each driver with §395.8(k) 6-month retention. The HOS surface flags any 24-hour period with fewer than the expected supporting docs (1 per 24h floor), and the audit binder export bundles the documents alongside the 7-day RODs.