For most people an OUI is a serious inconvenience. For a commercial driver it is a threat to the thing that pays the mortgage. The license is the job, and the rules that apply to it are stricter and less forgiving than the ones that apply to everyone else.
Call 207-571-8146 or contact our Maine criminal defense attorneys directly online to schedule a confidential consultation.
Table of Contents
You are held to a lower limit than other drivers
A CDL holder operating a commercial vehicle is over the limit at 0.04, half the level that applies to an ordinary driver. There is no discretion in it and no practical margin. A driver who would be well under the limit in their own car can be charged while behind the wheel of a truck.
How that limit is applied, and what the state has to prove to establish it, is set out in detail in what happens to your CDL in Maine if you get an OUI. This page is about what it costs you and what can be done.
The consequence drivers do not expect
An OUI in your own car, on your own time, in a vehicle that has nothing to do with work, can still disqualify your commercial license.
That is the single most important thing on this page, and it is the part clients consistently get wrong. They assume a personal-vehicle arrest is a personal-vehicle problem. The disqualification rules do not care which vehicle you were driving. A weekend arrest can end a career.
Disqualification, and why it is not the same as suspension
An ordinary driver loses the right to drive for a period and then gets it back. A commercial driver faces disqualification of the commercial privilege, which is a separate consequence running alongside the suspension of the ordinary license. A first offense brings a 1-year disqualification period; a second ends the commercial career in practical terms, as there is a lifetime suspension applied to the CDL.
Refusing the test is treated as severely as failing it, and in some respects worse. Our page on refusing a breath test in Maine covers how refusals are handled generally; for a CDL holder the stakes on that decision are higher than for anyone else.
Call 207-571-8146 or contact our Maine criminal defense attorneys directly online to schedule a confidential consultation.
Your employer will find out
Commercial driving is a regulated industry and the reporting obligations are real. There is typically a duty to notify your employer, within a short window, and the employer has its own obligations in turn. Clients sometimes hope to resolve the case quietly first. That is rarely available, and failing to report can result in termination by your employer, because federal law requires you to report a suspension to the employer within 1 business day.
If you are an owner-operator rather than employed, the equivalent problem is your insurance and your contracts.
How a CDL OUI is defended
The defense is the same as defending any other non-CDL OUI, with more riding on it: whether the stop was lawful, whether there was probable cause for arrest, how the test was administered and whether the result is reliable, and whether the machine’s records hold up. At 0.04 the margin for instrument error matters more than it does at 0.08, because the gap between a reading and the limit is smaller.
The second front is the license itself. The BMV process runs separately and on a short deadline, and for a commercial driver it is often the more urgent of the two. The BMV OUI hearing explains that side. If you lose the BMV hearing, regardless of the result in criminal court, you’ve lost your CDL, and there is no hardship license available for a CDL holder.
Talk to a CDL OUI lawyer in Maine
If you hold a CDL and you have been arrested, the clock on both your case and your license has already started. Call The Maine Criminal Defense Group at (207) 571-8146.
Call 207-571-8146 or contact our Maine criminal defense attorneys directly online to schedule a confidential consultation.
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