Two clocks run over one filing cabinet. Applying the six-month one to the whole file is the most common retention mistake a small carrier makes.
Key takeaways
Two clocks run, and carriers routinely apply the shorter one to everything. Hours of service records are kept for at least six months. The rest of the driver file — the abstract, the training records, the collision and conviction notifications — runs far longer: in British Columbia, section 37.68 of Division 37 of B.C.’s Motor Vehicle Act Regulations requires the records maintained under section 37.67 to be kept and readily accessible for inspection and audit for the calendar year in which they were made and the following four calendar years.
That is a five-calendar-year window, not five years to the day, and it deliberately excludes the records governed by their own rules — hours of service records under Parts 4 to 9 and Part 12 of that Division, and vehicle inspection and maintenance records under Division 25.
A record made in March 2026 is retained through the whole of 2026 and then through 2027, 2028, 2029 and 2030. Read as five years from the date on the document it would be destroyed in March 2031 — nine months early or three months late depending on which way you round. Retention schedules written by month are a common way to be technically non-compliant while feeling organised.
Under section 85(3) of the Commercial Vehicle Drivers Hours of Service Regulations a carrier deposits records of duty status and their supporting documents at its principal place of business within 30 days of receiving them and keeps them in chronological order for each driver for at least six months after receipt. The carrier relying on the 160 km provision keeps its daily on-duty time records and their supporting documents for at least six months from the day each record was made (s.77(3)(c) and s.81(2)(c)). The ELD malfunction register runs six months from the day the device was repaired or replaced (s.78(7)).
None of those cover the qualification file. Nothing in the federal hours of service regulations tells you how long to keep a driver abstract, because that is not what they regulate.
The retention obligation attaches to the record, not to the employment relationship. In British Columbia the section 37.68 window keeps running after a driver resigns, because the audit that examines those records looks backwards over the period the driver was engaged. A carrier that clears out a leaver’s file on their last day has removed the evidence that it hired a qualified driver, at the exact moment that evidence becomes most useful.
For comparison, the American rule is expressed the other way round and is worth knowing if you run cross-border: 49 CFR 391.51(c) requires each driver’s qualification file to be retained for as long as the driver is employed by that carrier and for three years afterwards. A cross-border fleet holding a file for the current calendar year plus four satisfies both without maintaining two schedules.
There is a third clock, for federally regulated carriers. Extra-provincial trucking falls under federal labour jurisdiction, and the Canada Labour Standards Regulations set their own floor: every employer keeps a record of each employee’s start and termination dates for at least 36 months after termination (s.24(1)), and keeps the employee’s name, address, Social Insurance Number, occupational classification and related particulars for at least three years after the work was performed (s.24(2)). Neither period runs by calendar year the way British Columbia’s does, and neither substitutes for the hours-of-service or driver-qualification retention above — it is a separate federal floor that runs alongside them.
Ontario publishes no single retention figure on its CVOR page. What it publishes is the audit scope — driver qualifications, driver training, driver hours of service, driver behaviour, collision reporting and review, vehicle inspection, maintenance and repair, and any related supporting documents — and the fact that violations identified during a facility audit may result in charges against the operator, the driver or both, and may affect the CVOR record.
The practical consequence is that an Ontario carrier should retain to the longest period any regulator or insurer is likely to ask about, and should be able to produce it quickly. A file that exists but takes three days to assemble reads, in an audit, very much like a file that does not exist.
Worked example: a retention schedule that fits on one page
Six months, minimum, from receipt: records of duty status, supporting documents, 160 km daily on-duty records, ELD malfunction register, non-compliance notices and driver acknowledgements.
Current calendar year plus four: driver abstracts, application and employment history, road test or equivalent, training and remedial training records, collision and conviction notifications, safety plan acknowledgements, vehicle inspection and maintenance records to the extent your province requires.
Employment plus the longer of the above: anything that evidences the decision to qualify the driver, because that is what a claim will ask about.
Delete on schedule, and record that you did. A retention policy without a disposal step becomes an indefinite archive of other people’s personal information, which is the failure mode Treadstone Law describes in employee privacy and personal information.
There are good reasons to hold some of the file beyond the statutory window: a collision file that may become litigation, an insurance programme that asks for five years of abstracts, a customer audit clause in a shipper contract. Each of those is a reason you can write down. “We never delete anything” is not, and it increases the volume of personal information you would have to account for after a breach.
The workable middle is a written schedule with three columns: the record, the retention period, and the authority or business reason. Where the authority is a regulation, cite the section. Where it is an insurer or a customer, name them. Anything with neither is a candidate for disposal.
British Columbia requires the records to be maintained at the principal place of business or another location approved in writing by the director and kept readily accessible for inspection and audit (ss.37.67 and 37.68), and section 37.71 lets an inspector require them to be delivered. The form is less important than completeness, attribution and speed of production — but check any provincial approval condition before destroying originals.
An unsuccessful applicant’s abstract and application are personal information collected for a purpose that has ended. Keep only what you need to show a fair process and dispose of the rest on a stated schedule; the considerations are set out in background checks when hiring.
The carrier that holds the safety certificate or CVOR is the party the regulator will ask, so retention has to be dealt with in the transaction rather than left to whoever happens to own the filing cabinet. Deal with it in the agreement, before closing.
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