Alberta Reference Guide For Hours of Service Training Development

Carrier Services, a section of Alberta Transportation, is responsible for ensuring the safe performance of commercial truck and bus carriers under Alberta's National Safety Code (NSC) Program. One standard of the NSC program governs limiting a driver’s hours of service so as to help reduce the severity and frequency of fatigue-related collisions involving commercial vehicles and drivers.

All jurisdictions in Canada have legislation that addresses this safety area. Transport Canada regulates extra-provincial undertakings by both truck and bus carriers while each provincial and territorial jurisdiction regulates intra-provincial undertakings.

On January 1, 2007, Transport Canada implemented new regulations that govern federally regulated carriers and drivers. Carriers who operate a commercial truck that is registered for a gross vehicle weight of more than 4,500 kilograms or a commercial passenger vehicle with a manufactured seating capacity of 11 or more persons, including the driver, and that have operated/or intend to operate outside of Alberta with such a vehicle (after January 1, 2006) are regulated under the Federal legislation.

This applies to all of the carrier’s drivers of those commercial vehicles, even those who have never personally operated the vehicles outside of Alberta. These carriers must have an Alberta Safety Fitness Certificate (SFC) displaying a “Federal” Operating Status or an equivalent certificate issued by another jurisdiction.

To assist these companies and individuals, Carrier Services has prepared a comprehensive "reference guide" titled "Alberta Reference Guide for Hours of Service Training Development" to help registered owners of commercial vehicles (whether an individual or a company) and their drivers to better understand their hours of service compliance requirements.

This reference guide has been developed in a modular format so you can obtain the entire document or just the specific modules that interest you. In addition, for each information module, we have included a PowerPoint file that summarizes the information in that module and that can also be used by an instructor to lead people through the module.

This reference guide is NOT a training course. However, the information has been laid out so that a detailed training course may be easily developed by adding lesson plans, speaker notes, etc.

Manual Updates:

As legislation changes or as new information is obtained, Carrier Services will continue to update and improve this document. It is your responsibility to periodically check to ensure that you have the most recent version.

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If you want to purchase a copy of this document instead of printing it on-line, contact one of the following organizations:

For More Information and to Provide Feedback:

If you have questions regarding commercial vehicle, driver or owner compliance requirements that are not answered in the department's web site or if you would like to provide comments and suggestions on how to improve this education manual, please contact Carrier Services or send us a completed copy of the feedback form included below.

Feedback Form (pdf 39 K)