Daily trip inspections in Alberta: AR 121/2009

The thing to understand about Alberta is what it does not do. It does not write its own inspection schedule. It adopts the national one by reference, which means the defect list your drivers work from is the CCMTA list, unchanged.

That sounds like a technicality until you run trucks in more than one province, because Ontario does the opposite and the two disagree on at least one defect.

This page is Alberta only. The national standard and the other provinces are on the hub, and the annual mechanical inspection is CVIP, a separate requirement.

Get the form first, read the rest after

This is the national Schedule 1 form, and because Alberta adopts the national schedule, it is the correct one to run here without modification. Free, no email required. The Ontario version is a separate form for the reason set out below.

Which vehicles are caught

Section 10 (1) draws the line at 4500 kilograms: a commercial vehicle, or a combination of commercial vehicles, that has a registered gross weight of more than 4500 kg or that weighs more than 4500 kg and is not a bus. Buses are captured separately, at any size.

Read that "or" carefully. It is registered weight or actual weight. A unit registered just under the threshold and loaded over it is inside the regulation on the day it is loaded over it, which is the version of this rule that catches small operators running a heavy one-ton.

What Alberta actually requires

• No major defect, no exceptions. Section 10 (2): the owner or carrier shall not permit a driver to drive, and a driver shall not drive, unless the vehicle has been inspected and no major defect was detected.
• Valid for 24 hours from the time in the report. Section 10 (3), and the wording matters. The clock runs from the time you recorded, so a report with a vague or missing time is a report with no defensible validity window.
• Schedule 1 for trucks, tractors and trailers. Section 10 (4) (a). Buses take Schedule 2, motor coaches may use Schedule 3.
• The carrier keeps the schedule in the vehicle. Section 10 (9) puts that duty on the carrier, not the driver, including any modifications made under subsection (10).
• You may modify the schedule. Section 10 (10) lets a carrier add information or items, and delete a portion covering a component the vehicle is not required to have and does not have. A fleet-specific schedule is allowed within those limits.
• Someone other than the driver may inspect. Section 10 (7) lets the carrier or owner authorize a person to conduct inspections and prepare the reports.

The only exemption in section 10 is subsection (6), for a vehicle transporting goods or passengers to provide immediate relief in a natural or human-caused disaster. Alberta's list is far shorter than Ontario's.

Schedule 1: Alberta uses the national list

Section 2 (g) adopts National Safety Code Standard 13, Part 2 (Trip Inspection), made by the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators, and names the schedules it takes: Schedule 1 (Truck, Tractor and Trailer), Schedule 2 (Bus), Schedule 3 (Motor Coach, Daily) and Schedule 4 (Motor Coach, 30 Days or 12 000 Kilometres). Section 9 (b) then defines a major defect as an item specified as a major defect in one of those schedules.

The full 23 item national Schedule 1, with the minor and major defect for each, is reproduced on the hub page. It is not repeated here, because in Alberta it is the same list and there is no value in you reading two copies of it.

What is worth saying here is where that leaves you against Ontario.

Source: Commercial Vehicle Safety Regulation, Alta Reg 121/2009, consolidated up to 136/2025, retrieved from the Alberta King's Printer and verified 16 August 2026. Ontario column from O. Reg. 199/07 on Ontario e-Laws, verified the same day. The wheel seal comparison rests on Alberta adopting the CCMTA Schedule 1 unchanged and Ontario enacting its own. Confirm the current version of both before relying on any of it.

If your drivers run Alberta and Ontario, that first row is the one to train on. A driver who learned in Calgary that a weeping wheel seal parks the truck is right in Alberta and wrong in Ontario, and a driver who learned the Ontario answer and brings it west is wrong in the direction that matters.

What has to be on the report

Section 12 (4), and it is a longer list than most carriers' forms carry:

• The licence plate number, vehicle identification number or unit number
• The odometer or hubometer reading at the time of the inspection
• The name of the carrier operating the vehicle
• The municipality, or the location on the highway, where the vehicle was inspected
• Each defect in the operation of every item required to be inspected, or a statement that no defect was detected
• The time and date the report is made
• The name of the person who inspected the vehicle, and a statement signed by that person that the vehicle was inspected in accordance with section 10
• The name and signature of the driver or the person making the report

Section 12 (3) requires it legible, either in writing or in an electronic format acceptable to the Registrar. Section 12 (5) then says no driver may drive without the trip inspection report of a valid inspection in their possession, and section 12 (6) requires it produced to a peace officer on request.

The hubometer allowance in the second item is the one people miss on trailers. A trailer with no odometer is not exempt from the reading, it is a hubometer reading.

The 160 km exemption that no longer exists

This one comes up often enough to be worth its own heading.

Section 12 (7) exempts a driver from preparing a trip inspection report where the driver operates within a 160 kilometre radius of the home terminal, returns to the home terminal each day to begin at least 8 consecutive hours off duty, and is not driving under an hours of service permit.

Section 12 (8): "Subsection (7) is repealed on January 1, 2010."

Both subsections are still printed in the consolidated regulation, which is exactly why carriers keep finding subsection (7), reading it as current, and building a local-haul practice on it. It has not been in force since the start of 2010. If somebody in your operation is running short-haul units without trip inspection reports on the strength of a 160 km rule, that is the paragraph they found.

The three clocks: 20 days, 30 days, then six months per vehicle

Alberta splits this into three obligations where most provinces have two.

1. The driver has 20 days. Section 13 (1): forward the original of the report to the home terminal of the carrier responsible for the vehicle, within 20 days after completing it.
2. The carrier has 30 days from receipt. Section 13 (2) (b): deposit the original at its principal place of business within 30 days of receiving it.
3. Then six months. Section 13 (2) (c): keep each original in chronological order for each vehicle for at least 6 months after receiving it.

That third one carries a filing instruction, not just a duration. Chronological, per vehicle. A carrier with six months of reports in a box by month rather than by unit has the records and still cannot answer the question an auditor actually asks, which is every report for this trailer across this period.

When a defect has to reach the carrier

Sections 14 and 15 use the same two-speed rule:

• Without delay if the defect is a major defect.
• In a timely manner, and not later than the next required daily trip inspection, in all other cases.

Section 14 covers defects found during the inspection. Section 15 covers defects the driver observes while driving, and requires them recorded in the trip inspection report or otherwise in a written document, and reported to the carrier on the same timing. Section 15 applies whether or not a trip inspection report was required in the first place.

"Not later than the next required daily trip inspection" is a real deadline, not a courtesy. It means a minor defect found Monday morning has until Tuesday morning to reach the carrier, and a system that relies on the paperwork arriving at the office in twenty days does not meet it.

Where this meets your safety program

Alberta carriers get sampled on trip inspection records in a safety fitness audit, and holders of COR in Alberta get sampled again through the certifying partner. Both look for the same thing: that the inspections happened continuously, that defects found were repaired, and that the repair closed back against the report that raised it.

The open defect is the finding. It is the same shape as a corrective action left open in a COR audit, and it comes from the same root cause: the record got collected and nobody owned reading it.

Doing this on paper, and doing it in the app

Alberta's three clocks are what paper struggles with. Twenty days to the home terminal, thirty more to the principal place of business, then six months filed chronologically per vehicle. Every one of those steps is a place where a sheet in a door pocket stops moving.

In the app, the same daily trip inspections are completed in the cab against the national schedule, the report is filed against the unit the moment it is submitted so the chronological per vehicle requirement is satisfied by default, and a defect notifies whoever owns the repair straight away, which is what "without delay" needs in order to mean anything.

If the written program those inspections sit inside is the part you are missing, we build carrier safety programs and stand them up in your own copy of the app.

Related

• Daily trip inspections across Canada is the hub, with the full national Schedule 1.
• Trip inspections in Ontario is the province that writes its own schedule.
• NSC Standard 11 is the maintenance program these inspections feed.
• CVIP inspections is the annual mechanical inspection, a separate requirement.
• COR certification in Alberta if the audit side is what you are working on.