Ontario requires your fleet to have a documented PM program. Here's what that means.

By Fares · Mobile fleet mechanic, Mississauga · Updated July 2026 · Rules verified against ontario.ca

Here's the requirement almost no small fleet in the GTA has actually read: under Ontario's commercial vehicle safety rules, operators are legally required to perform scheduled preventive maintenance as part of a documented maintenance program — with records. Not "should." Not "it's a good idea." Required.

Most 5–20 van operations I've seen run maintenance the same way: something breaks, somebody's cousin fixes it, the receipt lives in a glovebox. The trucks mostly run. And then one of three things happens — an MTO facility audit, a roadside inspection that escalates, or an incident where your maintenance history suddenly becomes very interesting to an insurer or a lawyer. That's the day "we take care of our trucks" needs to exist on paper, and for a lot of operators it doesn't.

The three layers of the obligation

1. Daily trip inspections

Every commercial vehicle needs a documented driver inspection within the 24 hours before it's driven, done to the prescribed schedule (the framework is O. Reg. 199/07, aligned with National Safety Code Standard 13). Minor defects get recorded and reported. A major defect grounds the vehicle — it doesn't move until fixed. Your drivers are probably doing some version of the walk-around already; the legal question is whether it's documented and whether defect reports actually flow to someone who fixes them.

2. Scheduled preventive maintenance

The program part: each unit needs planned maintenance on a defined schedule — time or mileage based — not just repairs when things fail. "Documented program" means you can show what the schedule is and show that it's being followed.

3. Records

Per unit: what was done, when, at what odometer, by whom — PM, repairs, defect fixes — plus the trip-inspection reports. The audit test is brutally simple: pick any van in your yard — can you produce its maintenance history, right now? Keep everything; storage is free and "we didn't keep that" is the worst sentence you can say in an audit. (Vehicles over 4,500 kg also carry annual inspection and CVOR obligations on top of this.)

What an auditor actually wants to see

• A schedule that exists — per unit, with defined intervals appropriate to the vehicle and its duty cycle.
• Evidence it's followed — service records that line up with the schedule, dated, with odometer readings.
• A defect loop that closes — trip-inspection reports flowing to repairs, majors grounded until fixed, and the fix documented on the same unit's file.
• Producibility — the whole story per unit, on demand, without a week of digging.

Notice what's not on the list: fancy software, a maintenance manager, a binder with tabs. The law cares that the program exists, runs, and is written down — not what it's written down in.

How a 10-van fleet stays onside without hiring anyone

This is the part where I tell you the obvious thing: this is literally what my fleet service produces as a by-product of the wrench work.

• The schedule: at the free yard assessment we set per-unit PM intervals matched to duty cycle (here's the schedule logic). I track the intervals and show up — the schedule runs itself.
• The records: every unit I touch gets a photo condition report and a digital service entry — date, odometer, work performed, findings, my name on it. Over months, that becomes exactly the per-unit maintenance history the requirement describes: audit-ready, forwardable, and honestly great for resale value too.
• The defect loop: anything your drivers flag or my inspections find gets a photo, a flat price, and a yes/no — fixed at the yard, documented on the unit's file. Declined items stay visible in the report so nothing silently disappears.

Sources: ontario.ca — "Commercial vehicle safety requirements" (operator PM and record obligations, daily inspections, CVOR context) and related e-Laws (O. Reg. 199/07). Verified July 2026. General information for Ontario operators, not legal advice — confirm edge cases against the current ontario.ca pages or with MTO.