How long to keep driver and employee records: I-9s, payroll, drug tests, and exposure records

How long to keep each employee record

Each employee record has its own federal minimum, and the longest rule that reaches a record sets how long you keep it. The grid below covers the records a NEMT employer typically holds. Several rules apply only above a headcount or only to certain kinds of work, so the last column says who has to follow each one. Trip records, claims, and vehicle files run on separate clocks, covered in the NEMT documentation requirements guide.

The citations behind each row are in the sections below. State law and broker contracts can add time to any of them.

Which date starts each clock

The rules count from different events, which is why one departing driver’s file can expire in pieces. The starting points:

• Form I-9. USCIS’s handbook gives a shortcut: if the person worked for you less than two years, keep the form three years after the first day of work; if more than two years, keep it one year after the last day. Never destroy the form of a current employee.
• Payroll and time cards. From the last date of entry (29 CFR 516.5 and 516.6).
• Employment tax records. Four years, starting from the tax’s due date or the day you paid it, whichever came second.
• Hiring and firing records. One year, counted from the later of two days: the day the record was created or the day of the hiring, promotion, or firing decision. A fired employee’s personnel records stay one year from the termination date (29 CFR 1602.14).
• OSHA logs. Five years, counted from the close of the calendar year the logs cover (29 CFR 1904.33).
• Driver qualification files. From the end of employment, plus three years (49 CFR 391.51(c)).

An example of how it plays out: a driver starts on March 2, 2026, and quits on August 14, 2026. The Form I-9 stays until March 2, 2029, because three years after hire comes later than one year after leaving. The last payroll entry is the August 2026 paycheck, so payroll records stay until August 2029 and time cards until August 2028. For an employer with 15 or more employees, the application and hiring records can go a year after the hiring decision, around March 2027, and the separation paperwork a year after the August 2026 departure. The employment tax records for those paychecks stay until at least the fall of 2030. If the driver worked a Modivcare contract, the training roster covering that driver stays for ten years.

Hiring files and Form I-9

Hiring records run on two federal rules. The first is the EEOC’s: an employer that had at least 15 employees on the payroll for 20 or more calendar weeks during this year or the one before must keep every personnel or employment record it makes, including requests for reasonable accommodation, applications, and records of hiring, promotion, demotion, transfer, layoff, termination, pay, and selection for training, for one year (29 CFR 1602.14). That covers applicants you turned down. At 20 or more employees, counted over the same 20-week test, the age discrimination rule applies as well: three years of payroll records showing each employee’s name, address, birth date, occupation, pay rate, and weekly pay (29 CFR 1627.3).

The second is immigration law. Each worker’s Form I-9 stays for the period in the grid (8 CFR 274a.2(b)(2)), along with any copies or electronic images of the identity and work documents you made. Only the pages with information on them need to be kept, not the instructions or the list of acceptable documents. The forms can be stored on paper, microfilm, microfiche, or electronically, but they must be produced within three business days when an inspector asks. What that inspection looks like is in the guide to I-9 audits, and how Form I-9 fits with E-Verify is in using E-Verify in a NEMT company.

Background check reports belong in the hiring file too. They follow the one-year EEOC rule while you keep them and the FTC’s Disposal Rule when they go, which means burning, pulverizing, or shredding the paper and erasing or destroying the files until they cannot practicably be read or reconstructed (16 CFR 682.3).

Payroll, time cards, and tax records

Pay records answer to two federal agencies, and the shorter periods come from the Department of Labor. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act rules, payroll records and the other records holding the required employee data stay three years or more after the last entry, and the basic time cards that log when each workday began and ended stay at least two years (29 CFR 516.5 and 516.6). Which fields those records must contain is listed in hiring your first NEMT employee, and capturing driver hours cleanly is covered in NEMT driver timekeeping.

The IRS asks for longer. Publication 15 sets four years as the minimum for every employment tax record, kept where the IRS can review it, including W-4 forms, dates of employment, the amounts and dates of wage payments, and tax deposit dates and amounts. Keeping every payroll file four years satisfies both the wage rule and the tax rule at once.

Some states go further. New York’s Labor Law sets six years as the minimum for payroll records (section 195(4)). Check your state labor department’s rule before you apply the federal minimums.

Driver files and drug test results

The federal driver file rule applies only when FMCSA treats your vans as commercial motor vehicles; when NEMT vans fall under USDOT rules explains the tests. For those carriers, each driver qualification file stays on hand during the driver’s employment and three more years once it ends. Some items can be pulled sooner: the yearly driving record, the note documenting the annual review, and the medical certificate can each come out once three years have passed since it was created (49 CFR 391.51(c) and (d)).

Drug and alcohol testing records have a federal period only when the testing itself is required by DOT, mainly drivers required to hold a CDL and the contractors of federally funded transit agencies. In that case, 49 CFR 40.333 sets five years for verified positive drug tests, alcohol results of 0.02 or higher, refusals, and follow-up testing records; three years for test information obtained from previous employers; and one year for negative and cancelled results. The records must sit in a location with controlled access. For a typical wheelchair van driver tested under a broker contract, keep results as the contract or state rule says. The drug testing guide covers who has to test.

OSHA logs and exposure records

OSHA injury logs outlast every pay record. A company whose headcount went above 10 at any point during the previous calendar year keeps the OSHA 300 log, the privacy case list, the annual summary, and the 301 incident reports for five years, counted from the close of the calendar year they cover. During those five years, the stored logs have to be updated when a new recordable case is discovered or an old one changes (29 CFR 1904.33).

Exposure and medical records last decades. When a driver’s duties can bring contact with blood, such as cleaning up after a rider who is bleeding, the bloodborne pathogens standard requires a medical record for each exposed employee: hepatitis B vaccination dates, exam and follow-up results after an exposure, and the healthcare professional’s written opinion. Those records last as long as the job plus 30 years. They stay confidential and are released only with the employee’s written consent or where the law requires it (29 CFR 1910.1030(h)(1)). Training records stay three years after each session (1910.1030(h)(2)). The OSHA guide for NEMT covers when drivers are covered.

Broker contracts and state laws that ask for more

The three broker contracts below each set ten years, which outlasts every federal minimum above except exposure records:

• Modivcare. Providers sign Modivcare’s 2025 annual compliance attestation, certifying that they keep proof that owners and drivers finished the required training (acknowledgments, rosters, or certificates) for at least ten years and will hand it to Modivcare free of charge when asked. The roster sheet attached to it collects the company name and, for each employee, the full name, the course or courses, when each was finished, and a signature confirming the training was done.
• MTM. Pennsylvania publishes MTM’s standard provider agreement, dated January 1, 2023. It has providers keep complete records of everything they do under the agreement for ten years, longer when a law, a regulation, or MTM’s client calls for it.
• WellTrans. Under the Indiana in-network agreement, finalized in October 2025, every record tied to the agreement stays through the end of the contract and ten more years, and copies must be handed over within three days when asked.

State employment law can also run longer than the federal rule. California, for example, requires employers covered by its fair employment law to keep applications and personnel files for four years after they are created or after the employment action (Government Code 12946). Put the longest period that reaches each record into your retention schedule so nobody has to work it out again.

Storing employee records and letting them go

Keep medical information out of the main personnel file. FMLA rules require leave certifications and medical histories to be kept as confidential medical records in separate files (29 CFR 825.500(g)), and the bloodborne pathogens standard imposes its own confidentiality rule. Electronic storage is allowed for the records with the most specific rules: USCIS allows electronic Forms I-9, the FMLA rule allows microfilm and computer records if clear copies can be produced, and DOT allows electronic testing records that are easy to access, legible, and organized (49 CFR 40.333(e)). If you are moving old paper files into a computer, the steps in scanning paper records apply to personnel files too.

When a record’s last period ends, destroy it the same way you would a trip log. Shred paper, and erase or destroy drives and devices so the information cannot be read or reconstructed; the guide to HIPAA record disposal covers methods and vendors. Hold everything connected to a discrimination charge, a lawsuit, or an investigation until it is finally resolved, which 1602.14 requires for EEOC charges and actions.

Driver hours and credential dates in HealthRide

Two parts of a driver’s file change every week, and HealthRide keeps both current. Timecard hours come from real clock-ins and export alongside miles. In fleet and credentials, each license, certification, and training record is listed with the date it expires. HealthRide sends reminders ahead of each deadline, and a credential that has run out is flagged when dispatch assigns a trip.