Three of the four tests are pass-or-fail and belong in software. The fourth is a management judgement, and running it first is how fleets end up arguing with the rules.
Key takeaways
Assign in four gates, always in this order: lawful capacity, then qualification, then equipment, then fairness and cost. The first three are pass-or-fail and can be checked by software. The fourth is a judgement and belongs to a dispatcher. Fleets that run the gates in the wrong order — picking the driver they want and then checking whether it works — end up negotiating with the rules instead of applying them.
The federal Commercial Vehicle Drivers Hours of Service Regulations prohibit a motor carrier from requesting, requiring or allowing a driver to drive after 13 hours of driving time or 14 hours of on-duty time in a day, and after 16 hours have elapsed since the end of the last period of at least 8 consecutive hours off duty. The 16-hour rule is the one that catches dispatchers, because it runs on elapsed time rather than worked time: a driver who started at 05:00 and spent five hours at a receiving door has burned the window whether or not the wheels turned.
Over the week, the cycle governs. A driver following cycle 1 must not drive after accumulating 70 hours of on-duty time in any period of 7 days; a driver on cycle 2 must not drive after 120 hours in 14 days, or after 70 hours without taking at least 24 consecutive hours off duty. Resetting is not instant: ending a cycle and starting a new one requires at least 36 consecutive hours off for cycle 1 and 72 for cycle 2. A driver who needs a reset on Wednesday is not available on Thursday, and an assignment board that shows them as available is lying to you.
Two provisions give real flexibility and both leave a paper trail. A driver not splitting off-duty time may defer a maximum of 2 hours of daily off-duty time to the following day, provided the deferred time is not part of the mandatory 8 consecutive hours, total off-duty time over the two days is at least 20 hours, total driving over the two days does not exceed 26 hours, and a declaration appears in the record of duty status. And a driver who encounters adverse driving conditions south of latitude 60°N may extend the permitted 13 hours by the time needed, provided driving, on-duty and elapsed time are not extended more than 2 hours, the 8 consecutive hours off is still taken, and the trip could have been completed under normal conditions. Neither is a scheduling tool. Both are exceptions used after the fact.
Licence class is the obvious test and the least often failed. The ones that get missed are commodity-specific. If the load is regulated dangerous goods, the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Regulations require the person who handles, offers for transport or transports them to be adequately trained and hold a training certificate, or to work under the direct supervision of someone who does — and an employer must not direct or allow an employee to do that work otherwise. Certificates expire. An assignment system that stores an expiry date and blocks on it is doing more for you than one that stores a scan.
Driver records are a standing obligation, not an onboarding one. In British Columbia, a carrier must maintain at its principal place of business a transcript of the driving record of each driver engaged within British Columbia, issued by the responsible agency in the jurisdiction that licensed the driver, dated the later of the date of engagement and one year from the previous transcript — that is an annual refresh, not a one-time file. Any driver whose transcript is overdue should be visible on the board.
Then there is the standing prohibition. No motor carrier, shipper, consignee or other person may request, require or allow a driver to drive if driving would be likely to jeopardize the safety or health of the public, the driver or the carrier’s employees, if the driver is the subject of an out-of-service declaration, or if doing so would not comply with the Regulations. An out-of-service declaration is not a suggestion: it applies for 10 consecutive hours where a driver contravenes the daily driving limit, 8 hours for the mandatory off-duty provisions, and 72 hours where records have been falsified or duplicated. That driver comes off the board for a fixed period, and the period is knowable.
Trailer type and temperature capability are the obvious half. The half that surprises eastern dispatchers is seasonal route equipment. In British Columbia, where a sign requiring chains is posted, a commercial vehicle at or above 11,794 kg licensed gross vehicle weight towing one trailer is only “equipped with chains” if steel chains are fastened on at least two tires on each side of a single drive axle, or on the specified combination across a tandem or tridem — and for those heavy configurations, a traction device may only be substituted where the minister has authorised it in writing for the carrier, the authorisation is in the driver’s possession, and its terms are complied with. Assigning a truck that is legal in Ontario to a February run over a BC pass is an equipment failure, not a driver failure.
Cargo cover is the other equipment-adjacent test. British Columbia’s cargo insurance requirement does not apply to a business vehicle licensed and operated exclusively for a listed set of bulk commodities — water or snow, bulk petroleum, logs and poles, coal or ore, bulk grain, baled hay and others. If your policy or exemption is commodity-scoped, the assignment rule has to be commodity-aware.
Only now do you get to the question dispatchers think they are answering: who should get it. Rotation, home time, pay equity between drivers, developing a newer driver on an easier lane, keeping a good driver on the account that asked for them. These are management decisions and they have consequences a scoring model cannot see.
Two legal edges are worth knowing here. First, hours-of-work and rest obligations under provincial employment standards sit alongside the hours of service rules and are not the same thing — see the hours of work limits Ontario employers have to observe. Second, if your assignment logic scores drivers using telematics or location data, that is monitoring. In Ontario, covered employers must have a written policy on electronic monitoring and provide it to employees, and the concept is broad enough to reach GPS tracking on a company vehicle. Federally regulated transportation businesses also fall under PIPEDA: the Privacy Commissioner notes that PIPEDA applies to employee information in federal works, undertakings and businesses, such as transportation companies.
The rule we would write into any assignment procedure: software may rank; a named dispatcher assigns; the assignment is recorded with the reason. That is defensible to a regulator, an insurer and a driver, in that order.
Worked example: a twelve-truck fleet that kept assigning the same three drivers
A Southwestern Ontario carrier found its four best-paying accounts were being run by three drivers. Everyone else got the leftovers, two of them quit, and the shipper started asking why service dipped when those three were off.
The fix was not a fairness policy. It was ordering the gates. The dispatch board was rebuilt to show, for each driver, remaining hours in the current cycle, the date of the next required reset, dangerous-goods certificate expiry, driving-record transcript age, and endorsements. Drivers failing any gate simply did not appear for that load.
What surfaced was that the “preferred” three were not preferred on merit. They were the only three whose paperwork the dispatcher was confident about. Once the other nine were visibly qualified on screen, the concentration halved within a quarter without anyone writing a rotation rule.
The fleet still assigns by hand. The board just stopped hiding who was eligible.
You can let it hold a provisional plan. We would not let it commit one. The prohibition in section 4 of the hours of service rules attaches to the carrier and to the person who requires the driving; a queued assignment nobody reviewed is a weak place to be standing. See who covers dispatch after hours.
It is common, and it interacts with employment standards, any collective agreement and human rights obligations. Those are legal questions specific to your workforce — get advice on the policy before you publish it, rather than after a grievance.
Hours remaining is a ceiling, not a certificate of fitness. The Regulations independently prohibit driving that would be likely to jeopardize safety or health, and fatigue can be considered a form of impairment and a workplace hazard, influenced by shift rotation patterns, workload balance and the timing of tasks. The driver’s declaration ends the discussion.
Treat it as a capacity problem, not an assignment problem — the answer is usually a second certificated driver or a different tender. Read it with how to automate load tender acceptance.
A short review of your assignment logic usually finds eligible capacity nobody is offering loads to.
