Tow truck driver payroll: per call, hourly, and the ESA floor

Per call, hourly, or a blend — the ESA floor does not move

Paying a flat fee per completed tow rewards speed and volume, and plenty of towing companies run drivers this way. The ESA treats it like any other piece-rate arrangement: total earnings divided by actual hours worked in the pay period still has to reach at least minimum wage, and if a slow shift with three calls falls short, the difference is owed as a top-up. That means logging clock-in and clock-out times for per-call drivers too, even though nobody is paid directly on the clock.

Many shops run a blend on purpose: experienced drivers on a per-call rate to reward speed on busy nights, newer drivers or yard staff on straight hourly while they learn the routes and the paperwork. Both streams still land in the same payroll run, and the top-up test has to be applied to each driver individually rather than averaged across the crew.

What counts as an hour when the truck is idle at 3 a.m.?

Towing runs 24/7, and most companies staff overnight coverage with a driver waiting on a call rather than working continuously. Whether that waiting time counts as hours of work under the ESA generally depends on how free the driver actually is — required to stay at a specific location on standby reads differently than free to be anywhere and simply reachable by phone, and the answer is fact-specific rather than a blanket rule. A driver required to remain at the yard overnight is in a very different position than one who can be home asleep and simply answer a page, even though both are technically on call for the same shift.

We work through that test with each shift pattern before assuming an overnight rotation is unpaid standby, because getting it wrong in either direction either overpays for genuinely free time or underpays for hours the ESA would treat as worked.

Overtime, holiday pay, and the three-hour rule

Ontario's standard overtime threshold is 44 hours in a week, paid at time-and-a-half on hours beyond it, and it applies to per-call drivers the same as anyone else — computed from what their actual earnings imply per hour worked, not from the per-call rate alone. Public holiday pay is calculated from the driver's average daily wage over the prior weeks, per-call earnings included, and a driver called in for a job that gets cancelled after arrival is still owed a minimum call-in payment under the ESA's three-hour rule.

The three-hour rule matters more in towing than in most trades, because a dispatched driver can genuinely arrive to find the vehicle already gone — a friend showed up first, or the customer flagged down someone else — and the minimum call-in payment still applies even though no tow ever happened.

TSSEA certification and WSIB: costs that ride with every driver

Since Ontario's tow-truck certification requirements began taking effect, driver certificates under the Towing and Storage Safety and Enforcement Act have become a cost of putting someone behind the wheel, not just a licensing formality — track certification and renewal dates the same way you track a driver's licence, because a lapsed certificate can pull a truck off the road. WSIB coverage is mandatory for towing given the roadside and live-traffic risk, and premiums are calculated on total insurable earnings including per-call pay, so a driver who books a heavy month costs more in WSIB that same month, not just in wages. Training time for certification renewal, where it is paid, needs to be logged as hours of work like any other paid training, and reimbursed certification fees are a taxable benefit unless structured as a direct employer-paid cost rather than a reimbursement to the driver. Vehicle and fleet costs that sit alongside payroll are covered in our towing company bookkeeping service, and payroll itself runs through our payroll services.