Setting up Fleet

Fleet is for organizations that operate commercial vehicles. It is included in every plan at no extra cost, but it stays hidden until you turn it on, so nobody who only runs crews has to look at trucking screens they will never use.

Turning it on

In Organization settings, find the Fleet card and tick "We operate commercial vehicles". The Fleet section then appears in the menu for everyone in your organization. Turning it off later hides the section but keeps every unit, driver file and inspection exactly where it is, so you can try it without risk.

Federal or provincial

This is the one answer you cannot skip, because it decides which rules the app holds you to. Choose provincial if you operate inside a single province: that province’s hours of service rules apply and the federal electronic logging device mandate does not. Choose federal if you cross a provincial or international border: the federal hours of service regulation applies and a certified electronic logging device is required.

The rest of the profile

• Where you operate. All ten provinces and the three territories. Tick every one you run in — it decides which rules apply and which screens appear.
• Your NSC or safety fitness number, and when the certificate expires.
• Your CVOR number, if you operate in Ontario.
• A default hours of service cycle for new drivers. Any driver can be switched to the other from their own file under Fleet → Drivers — which the file also warns costs 36 or 72 consecutive hours off, depending on which way you are going.
• IFTA and IRP account numbers, if you have them.

Which jurisdictions are checked how far

Every Canadian jurisdiction adopts the National Safety Code standards, which is what makes one set of rules workable across the country. But each enacts them through its own regulation, with its own inspection intervals and its own citations. British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario were built against their own regulations. The rest follow the national standard and work exactly the same way — what has not been done is reading their enacting regulation, so the citations you see are the national ones. Tick one of those and the settings screen tells you so in a sentence.

The practical difference is small and worth knowing: where a rule turns on a prescribed figure — an inspection interval, a defect limit — read it from your own province’s schedule rather than assuming ours. That is already the advice on the trip inspection forms, and it applies more widely.

Driving north of 60

Hours of service are not the same everywhere. National Safety Code Standard 9 sets one set of limits for driving south of latitude 60°N and another for driving north of it: 15 hours driving and 18 on duty rather than 13 and 14, a 20-hour elapsed limit rather than 16, and 80 hours in a seven-day cycle rather than 70. North of 60 also sets no daily off-duty total at all — only the eight consecutive hours.

A note on Ontario

Tick Ontario under where you operate and a CVOR screen appears under Fleet; record your CVOR number here too. It is where you keep your abstracts and the collisions, convictions and inspections behind them, and it estimates your rate between abstracts. The official figure is still the Ministry’s and is entered from your abstract — the app does not pull the abstract for you. See “CVOR: your Ontario record” for how the estimate works and how far to trust it.

The register

The Fleet page shows what needs attention and then your whole register underneath it. Your units are the same assets as in Equipment, shown through what a carrier gets asked about, so you never enter a truck twice. Filter by power unit, trailer or light vehicle, or search by unit number, plate, VIN, make, model, year, type, site, project or equipment manager.

Turning Fleet on also makes the carrier vehicle types available in Equipment — power units, straight trucks, trailers, converter dollies and buses — so you can record a highway tractor as one rather than filing it under Vehicles.

Power units and trailers carry a commercial block on the asset itself: VIN, plate jurisdiction, registered gross weight, and the last and next periodic inspection. Periodic inspection intervals differ by province and by the weight a unit is registered at — use the interval on your own certificate rather than assuming.

Registration and insurance documents

A vehicle holds its registration and insurance alongside their renewal dates. Attach either as a photo or as a PDF — photograph the slip in the cab, or upload the PDF your broker emailed you. Tap a document on the vehicle page to read it there: a PDF opens in a viewer and a photo opens full size, with Open in a new tab beside it if your phone will not draw a PDF inside the page. Keep documents under 5 MB each, and if you are attaching a photo and both documents at once, save between them.

Scanning the unit’s QR tag also offers both documents, so a driver can produce the registration and insurance from the tag on the dash. Worth knowing before you rely on it: the tag is the key. Anyone who photographs the sticker can open those documents later from anywhere, the same way anyone who opens the glovebox can read the paper copies.

Holding a unit off the road

A unit with a major defect must not move until the repair is made and certified. Use the hold button on the unit and say why. It then reads as out of service everywhere, and releasing it is a separate deliberate step. A reason is required, because “out of service” with no explanation means nothing to the next person and is worse than no record at an audit.

Driver files

Every driver gets a file under Fleet → Drivers holding their licence with its class and endorsements, driver abstract, medical certificate, road test, declaration of prior driving record, and anything else the job needs such as air brake or dangerous goods training. The list puts the files that need something done to them first.

Drivers fill in their own. Under My Driver File a driver can photograph a renewed licence and add it from their phone, which is the only way this stays current without somebody chasing everyone. The same screen carries their Required training panel, where each item has a button that opens a camera and files the ticket against that requirement — see “Required driver training”.

Drivers who do not use the app

Not every driver needs a login. A driver whose hours come from a certified device, and who never opens TruStar, can still have a full file — licence, abstract, medical, expiries and hours — that you keep for them. Use “A driver without a login” when adding a driver, and give a name; an email is optional but makes them easier to match to your fleet system later.

The difference is only who can add to the file. A driver with a login uploads their own renewals from a phone; a driver without one relies on you. Everything else — expiry reminders, the qualified decision, hours — works the same.

If that driver later needs to file their own pre-trips, open their file and use Give this driver a login. The whole file follows: every document, expiry and hour stays where it is, rather than starting a second file beside the first.

Uploading is not verifying

Anything added lands as awaiting review, whoever added it. An owner, admin or manager checks it and either verifies it or sends it back with a reason the driver can see. Only a verified, in-date document counts towards a complete file. That review step is what a facility audit asks about — not whether a scan exists, but who checked it.

Marking a driver qualified is separate again. It is your statement that you have been through the whole file and are satisfied that this person is qualified to drive for you.

What’s expiring

Fleet → What’s Expiring gathers every date that can lapse into one list: periodic inspections, registration and insurance on your units, licences, abstracts, medicals and tickets in your driver files, and your organization’s own safety fitness certificate. It covers the next ninety days and anything already lapsed, grouped by how close it is rather than by what kind of thing it is.

Reminders come as a ladder rather than a single warning: sixty, thirty, fourteen, seven and one day before, and again once something has lapsed. They go to owners, admins and managers. Renewing a document changes its expiry date, which starts a fresh ladder — so renewing early does not mean the next one goes unannounced.

Trip inspections

Turning Fleet on adds two trip inspection forms built around the Schedule 1 systems under National Safety Code Standard 13 — one for power units and one for trailers. Every towed unit in a combination needs its own. A unit’s QR tag opens the right one automatically: a power unit gets the power unit schedule, a trailer gets the trailer schedule, a light vehicle gets the light-duty circle check.

Each system is marked OK, minor defect, major defect, or not applicable. A minor defect is repaired before the next inspection and the unit keeps running. A major defect takes the unit out of service the moment the inspection is submitted, with the reason carried into the Fleet register, and it stays there until somebody releases the hold after the repair is made and certified.

Each item carries a “What counts” link that opens the minor and major defect criteria for that part in the wording of the schedule, so a driver can check the distinction at the truck instead of working from memory. Where a part turns on a prescribed figure — pushrod stroke, air loss rate, tread depth, steering lash, coupler movement — the panel says so and points at your own copy rather than quoting a number.

A filed inspection is colour-coded so you can find the problems without reading every line: green for no defect or a pass, amber for a minor defect, red for a major defect or a fail, grey for not applicable. The printed PDF matches, and the same colours apply to any inspection form whose answers are graded that way.

Who can file one

A power unit or a trailer must be inspected by somebody signed in. Scanning the tag without an account offers a sign-in that comes straight back to the inspection with the unit already selected. The report then lands in that driver’s record, which is what makes it worth anything at a roadside check. Other equipment can still be inspected by a guest who types their name and signs.

Hours of service

If your carrier profile says provincial, your drivers get an electronic log book under Fleet → My Log Book and you get a fleet-wide view under Fleet → Hours of Service. Federal carriers are under the electronic logging device mandate and need a certified device instead, so the log book is not offered to them. See “Hours of service and the electronic log book” for how it works.

Connecting your telematics system

Under Fleet → Telematics an owner or admin connects the fleet system your trucks already run on. Geotab and Samsara are both supported and you connect whichever one you are on. Geotab needs three things: the server (usually my.geotab.com — we follow the redirect if your database lives elsewhere), the database name, and a user, all three visible in the MyGeotab address bar when you are signed in. Samsara needs one API token and the region your organization is in.

Test connection signs in and reports how many vehicles Geotab can see, which is the quickest way to tell a wrong database name from a wrong password.

Matching vehicles and drivers

Sync from Geotab reads the vehicles and drivers in your Geotab database and ties what it can to your own records. It only reads — nothing is written back to Geotab. Vehicles are matched by VIN first, then serial number, plate, unit number and name; drivers by email, then name.

Anything ambiguous is left alone rather than guessed at. Two of your units carrying the same plate, or two drivers with the same name, will show as unmatched so that somebody looks — filing one driver’s hours against another driver’s name is worse than filing none.

Unmatched rows come first and say plainly that nothing from them will be recorded. Set or clear any match by hand from the dropdown beside it. Re-syncing adds new matches but never moves an existing one, so a match you set by hand stays where you put it.

Importing what you do not have yet

If Geotab knows about vehicles or drivers you have never entered here — which is normal on the first connection — tick them and create them in one step. They are matched at the same time, so the unmatched list gets shorter rather than longer. Select all takes every unmatched row on the tab, which is what you want for a fleet being set up for the first time.

Importing vehicles asks what kind of equipment the batch is: power units, trailers, or anything else in your equipment types. Geotab cannot tell us — its device type describes the tracking device under the dash, not the vehicle it is fitted to — so import a batch at a time and set each batch’s type. Imported units land in the Fleet register straight away with their VIN, plate, serial and unit number filled in from Geotab.

Imported drivers become driver files with no login. Nobody is invited and no password is set: you simply have somewhere to hold their hours and documents. Give any of them a login later from their file and everything already there follows.

Odometers

Pull odometers brings each matched unit’s reading from Geotab into the register. The point is not the number on the screen — it is that a service due at 250,000 km maintains itself rather than drifting until a truck is overdue and nobody knew.

On a unit with a telematics device, the device is the reading of record. It is taken off the engine rather than read through a windscreen, so it is the more accurate of the two and a hand-entered figure does not hold it back. A unit with no device keeps whatever was last entered by hand — which is the only way its reading was ever going to arrive. Each unit shows where its reading came from and when it was taken.

An inspection on a unit with a device opens with the odometer already filled in and a line saying where the number came from. It stays editable: a driver looking at the dash is entitled to disagree with it, and what they enter is what gets recorded on that inspection.

A unit metered in hours is left alone. An odometer is not an hour meter, and writing one into the other would move every maintenance interval measured against it. A unit metered in miles gets the reading converted.

Pull odometers tells you how many of your matched units reported nothing. That number is worth reading: a unit that never reports is a unit whose distance-based services stop advancing, and on a large fleet “twelve units updated” can look like success while a dozen others sit still. Parked or off-network units are the ordinary explanation; a unit that never appears is worth asking about.

If your vehicles do not report an odometer at all, the sync falls back to your fuel tax records. Some tracking devices never publish an odometer reading, and where that is the case Geotab still records one every time a vehicle crosses a provincial or state line. Those readings are used instead, so a service due at a kilometre reading still comes due on its own.

When it does that it says so, and it tells you how old the oldest reading is. A reading taken at the last border crossing can be a few weeks old, and a unit has travelled at least that far and possibly further — so a service will come due late rather than early. It also tells you how many of the readings Geotab estimated rather than read.

A recovered reading is never allowed to move a unit backwards. If a unit already holds a newer or a higher reading — including one somebody typed in — that one stands and the sync says how many it left alone. A stale figure overwriting a fresher one would push a service further out, which is the thing this is meant to stop.

To check what your own system sends, open "What is your fleet system actually sending?" at the bottom of the Telematics screen and run the odometer check. If it comes back empty, run the fuel tax one underneath it: that is the other place the reading can come from.

Pulling hours of service

Pull hours brings the last fourteen days of duty status from Geotab and files it against each matched driver. It needs at least one matched driver — with none, there is nowhere for the hours to land, and the button says so by staying disabled rather than reporting nothing afterwards. Logs belonging to drivers you have not matched are counted in the result so you know how many are waiting.

Once hours are in, Fleet → Hours of Service works for a federal carrier exactly as it does for a provincial one: every driver on one screen, anyone over a limit or with unsigned days first. Your drivers can read their own under My Log Book.

Two mappings are worth knowing because they are regulatory judgements rather than translations. A Geotab yard move is recorded as on duty, not driving, so it does not eat a driver’s thirteen hours. Personal conveyance is recorded as off duty. Signing in, signing out and certifying a day arrive on the same feed and are left out, because none of them is a state a driver is in for a stretch of time. If a pull reports that it found logs but none of them were duty status, that is usually all it found, and it says so.

The operating zone the vehicle is in — Canada south of 60, north of 60, or the United States — also arrives on that feed, and it is not left out. It is not an entry in the log either: it is the device saying which hours of service rules the driving after it falls under, so it sets the zone for that driver from that moment and the days are measured against the right part. Pull hours tells you how many zone changes it read. If it read none, it says so and the entries are measured against the rules for south of 60, which are the stricter — so you know the question was never answered rather than assuming it was.