Hire a dispatcher in Greater Montreal
A dispatcher is hired on what they know how to refuse: a load that will not fit inside a driver's hours-of-service window, a dock appointment that cannot be made up. The rest — your software, your customers, your yard — is learned at your place. This page gives you a job description to copy, the requirements the regulations really impose, and eight interview questions.
Job description to copy
Replace what is in brackets, then post it as is.
Dispatcher
Location: [city], Greater Montreal · Schedule: [day / evening / night], [number] h per week
Pay: [to be set] (benchmark: median $28.50/h in Quebec (Job Bank))
Responsibilities
- Build the daily plan and match every load to a driver, a tractor and a trailer
- Track driving and rest hours and turn down the assignment that would blow the window
- Book, move and confirm dock appointments with customers and warehouses
- Follow trucks on the road and relay traffic and road conditions to drivers
- Confirm a valid pre-trip safety inspection covers the departure and pass defects to maintenance
- Prepare and check paperwork: bill of lading, shipping documents, customs papers
- Find backhauls to cut empty miles
- Keep driver records current: hours, mileage, fuel, repairs
- Warn the customer about a delay before the appointment time and log the cause
Requirements
- Secondary school diploma, the employment requirement the National Occupational Classification lists for NOC 14404
- Working knowledge of Quebec's Règlement sur les heures de conduite et de repos des conducteurs de véhicules lourds and of the electronic logging device
- Comfort with a transportation management system and a spreadsheet
- A TDG training certificate if the person offers dangerous goods for transport or prepares the shipping documents, as Part 6 of the federal regulations requires
- Geography of Greater Montreal and of the corridors toward Ontario, the Maritimes and the border
- Functional French, and English if your loads cross the border
Assets
- Experience with the freight you run: dry van, reefer, bulk, flatbed, container
- Habit of border crossings and customs paperwork
- A current dangerous goods training certificate
- Hands-on experience with the transportation management system you already run
- Knowledge of the hours-of-service rules that apply in the United States, for lanes that go there
- Time behind the wheel: a former Class 1 driver knows what can be asked of a driver
What we offer
[benefits, insurance, shift premiums, training]
Dispatcher pay benchmark
| Region | Median | Offered in postings |
|---|---|---|
| All of Quebec | $28.50/h | — |
| Montérégie | $26/h | — |
| Montréal | Quebec figures | $27.77 (11) |
| Laval | $28.85/h | — |
| Lanaudière | $28.36/h | — |
| Laurentides | $27.74/h | — |
Median published by Job Bank (NOC 14404) and median offered in job postings (6 months, February to August 2026); in brackets, the number of hourly postings.
Eight interview questions
- A driver is near the end of their driving day and the customer wants delivery tonight. What do you do, and who do you call first?
- Tell me about the last time you said no to a customer. How did you deliver it, and when?
- Before a departure, how do you confirm a valid pre-trip safety inspection covers the truck?
- Walk me through how you build a day plan: where do you start, and what slack do you keep?
- A driver reports a brake problem far from the terminal. Take me through the next ten minutes.
- Which transportation management systems and which ELD portal have you used, and for what fleet size?
- How do you know a load needs a driver trained in transporting dangerous goods?
- Which shifts can you cover, and how do you handle weekend on-call?
Timelines and difficulties
Dispatchers are hard to hire for a plain reason: the job is barely taught anywhere. The National Occupational Classification asks only for a secondary school diploma and on-the-job training, and while Inforoute FPT lists transport logistics programs in the region, none of them carries dispatcher as its title. The pool is therefore trained by carriers themselves. Add that Job Bank rates employment prospects for the occupation as limited in Quebec, with roughly 5,600 people in it: the pool is narrow, and the people in it already know someone else's customers, drivers and yard. Two things shorten the search. Name the fleet in the posting: unit count, freight type, local or long-haul, border crossings — a local bulk dispatcher and a cross-border dispatcher are not doing the same job. And state the shift and the on-call rotation up front; someone who finds out at the end of the interview that a phone has to be answered on Sunday withdraws, and you start over. Budget for a ramp-up on your customers and your lanes as well: even an experienced dispatcher arrives blind to your network.
We run this search for employers in Montreal, Laval, Longueuil, the North Shore and the South Shore. Our recruitment service: logistics and supply chain
If the placement does not hold six months, we replace it.
The replacement is on us. You do not pay twice for the same role.
A role to fill?
Fifteen minutes on the phone is enough to know whether we can deliver your mandate, and to tell you straight whether the salary range holds.
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