A plain-language breakdown of the Hours of Service rules for Canadian commercial drivers, and how Easy Fleet automates compliance tracking.
Hours of Service (HOS) regulations exist to prevent driver fatigue — one of the leading causes of serious commercial vehicle accidents in Canada. Non-compliance carries significant consequences: driver fines, carrier penalties, vehicle out-of-service orders, and increased liability exposure.
Cycle 1 (7 days): Maximum 70 hours of on-duty time in any 7-day period. After reaching the limit, drivers must take 36 consecutive hours off duty to reset.
Cycle 2 (14 days): Maximum 120 hours of on-duty time in any 14-day period. After reaching the limit, drivers must take 72 consecutive hours off duty to reset.
Drivers with a sleeper berth can split the required off-duty period. A common split is 8 hours in the sleeper berth and 2 hours off duty, which satisfies the 10-hour minimum off-duty requirement when combined.
Easy Fleet's Driver Portal includes a built-in Canadian HOS Engine that tracks drive, on-duty, and off-duty time in real time, calculates remaining available hours for both cycles simultaneously, issues warnings at configurable thresholds, logs violations with severity levels, and generates daily logs accessible to both drivers and fleet managers.