Do school bus drivers need to fill out a DVIR? The rules, the form and how long to keep it

A DVIR — driver vehicle inspection report — is the written report a driver makes about the condition of their vehicle at the end of the day, with any defects they found. Truck drivers know it well. For school bus companies the question is less clear: do school bus drivers need to fill out a DVIR?

The short answer: it depends on the trip and on your state. Here's how the rules fit together, how to fill one out, and how long to keep them.

Do school bus drivers need to fill out a DVIR?

Start with the federal rules. School bus operations — home-to-school and school-to-home transportation of students — are exempt from most of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations (49 CFR 390.3(f)(1)). State rules govern them instead. So for regular routes, the federal DVIR rule usually isn't what applies — your state's rules are.

But trips that aren't home-to-school — charters, some field trips, and trips across state lines — can fall under the federal rules. And many states require daily inspection reports and records for school buses anyway, under their own rules and on their own forms.

Where the federal rules apply, drivers of passenger-carrying vehicles such as buses must complete a DVIR at the end of each day's work when they found a defect or deficiency. Since September 17, 2020, a federal rule no longer requires a "no-defect" DVIR for passenger carriers — it had already been dropped for property-carrying trucks in 2014. A company can still require one every day as its own policy, and many do.

How to fill out a DVIR, line by line

Our free, printable driver vehicle inspection report (DVIR) form follows the federal rule's list of parts. Here's how to fill it in:

1. 1The top: carrier or company name and address, the date and time, the vehicle number, the odometer and the driver's name.
2. 2Parts and accessories: mark each one OK or Fail — service brakes (including trailer brake connections), parking brake, steering mechanism, lighting devices and reflectors, tires, horn, windshield wipers, rear-vision mirrors, coupling devices, wheels and rims, and emergency equipment. Coupling devices only matter if the bus pulls a trailer — write N/A if it doesn't.
3. 3Remarks: describe every defect you found — what, where, and how bad. Left rear marker light out is useful; lights isn't.
4. 4Driver's signature: sign it, even if everything was OK.
5. 5Repairs: the mechanic ticks one — the condition of this vehicle is satisfactory, the defects listed above have been corrected, or the defects listed above need not be corrected for the safe operation of the vehicle — and signs.
6. 6Next driver: before driving, the next driver reviews the report and signs that they did.

Print the DVIR form — it's free to print or save as a PDF. If your state has its own school bus form, use that one; the parts list here is a good checklist to compare it against.

DVIR, pre-trip and post-trip: how they fit

• Pre-trip inspection — before the first run, the driver checks the bus. See how to do a school bus pre-trip inspection.
• Post-trip inspection and child check — after each run, the driver walks the bus so no child is left on board and checks for new problems. See the school bus child check procedure.
• DVIR — the written end-of-day report of the bus's condition and any defects, signed off when repairs are made. On many buses the post-trip at the end of the day and the DVIR are the same piece of paper.

How long to keep DVIR records

Where the federal rules apply, the DVIR (with the mechanic's certification of repairs) is kept 3 months (49 CFR 396.11). For home-to-school buses, your state decides how long daily reports are kept — check its rules, and your district contracts, which can ask for more.

Related records have their own periods under the federal rules: the annual inspection report is kept 14 months — see annual inspection for school buses — and maintenance records are covered in school bus maintenance records requirements.

• Keep reports filed by bus and by date, so you can pull a given day quickly.
• Keep the defect and the repair together — the report means little without the sign-off.
• When in doubt, keep them longer than the minimum.

Doing it in FleetCommander

In FleetCommander, drivers do their inspections on their phone from My Day: they tap Pre-trip inspection or Post-trip inspection, mark each item Pass, Fail or N/A, add an optional photo under any item and say what's wrong under a failed one, fill in the odometer, sign and Submit. The checklists are your own templates, so you can build the end-of-day one with the parts your state's form (or the DVIR) lists. Check whether your state accepts electronic reports before you drop paper.

A failed item becomes a defect automatically, with the driver's note and photo, and a notification goes out to the office. The same inspection opens a work order for the repair by itself — Urgent when a safety item failed — and its defects start as Assigned, then move to In repair, Resolved and Closed. For a defect reported by hand, Create work order for this defect fills one in. The whole history stays with the bus. Any inspection prints as a clean report — or many at once with Manage › Print. See the defects guide, the driver inspections guide and the inspection app page.

Ava (Beta), the assistant in the app, keeps the office on top of it: Any open defects?, What's wrong with bus 102? or Failed inspections last week. When a repair is done, say Mark the defect on bus 102 as fixed: replaced the mirror — she asks how it was fixed if you don't say, shows a card, and nothing changes until you press Mark resolved.