When a previous employer never replies
Silence is the normal case. It is not a gap in your file — provided you can show what you did about it.
The single most common question about § 391.23 is what happens when the other end simply never answers. Former employers go out of business, get acquired, lose the fax line, or decide that answering reference requests is not their problem. None of that is within your control, and the regulation does not pretend otherwise.
A documented effort is a complete file
Where the required information cannot be obtained, the carrier must document a good-faith effort to obtain it. The obligation is to try properly and prove you tried — not to succeed.
Read that closely, because it sets the evidentiary bar precisely. A note saying "no response" is not the record. The record is who, where, when, and how many times.
What a defensible attempt log looks like
| Not sufficient | Defensible |
|---|---|
| "Called, no answer." | Employer name and address as held on file, with the date of each attempt. |
| A date with no channel. | Channel recorded per attempt — email, fax, or mail letter. |
| One attempt, then nothing. | A sequence of attempts across the window, each timestamped. |
| An outcome nobody wrote down. | The outcome of each attempt, including the failures to make contact at all. |
Remember whose clock is running
A previous employer has 30 days from receipt of your request to respond. An employer who has had your letter for eight days is not refusing — they are inside their window. That is precisely why a single attempt on day 25 is weak evidence of a good-faith effort, while three attempts beginning on day 1 is strong.
Why this is worth automating
The good-faith standard is not hard to meet. It is hard to evidence eighteen months later, across a few hundred hires, when the attempts lived in one recruiter's sent folder and that recruiter has since left.
This is the part CDLVOE is built around. Every attempt is logged with its channel, timestamp, and outcome, automatically. Where automatic follow-ups are enabled, they go out on a schedule instead of relying on someone remembering. Closing the file on a silent employer produces the documented good-faith record rather than an empty slot — and it exports into the driver's binder alongside the replies that did arrive. See how the multichannel send works, or how this maps to an FMCSA review.
Every one of these deadlines, tracked for you.
CDLVOE sends the § 391.23 inquiries in your company’s name, chases the silent employers automatically, and files every reply — and every documented attempt — into one audit-ready record per driver.