Dispatcher: pay in Quebec and Greater Montreal
A truck dispatcher plans routes, assigns drivers to loads and tracks their driving and rest hours. Around Montreal, the work sits with carriers and distribution centres in Montreal, Laval, the Montérégie and the Laurentides. This page covers the duties, the shifts, the training, and wages by region — plus what the occupation behind the table actually pools together.
- Quebec median
- $28.50/h
- Range
- $20.25 – $38.50/h
- Montreal
- Quebec median
Guichet-Emplois (Job Bank), edition 2025 · CNP 14404
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Dispatcher pay, region by region
| Region | Low | Median | High | vs Quebec | Offered in postings |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All of Quebec | $20.25 | $28.50 | $38.50 | — | — |
| Montérégie | $20.25 | $26 | $34.87 | −9% | — (6) |
| Montréal | No data of its own: Job Bank shows the Quebec figures | $27.77 (11) | |||
| Laval | $21.22 | $28.85 | $38.52 | +1% | — (2) |
| Lanaudière | $21.17 | $28.36 | $38.16 | −0% | — (3) |
| Laurentides | $20.12 | $27.74 | $36.91 | −3% | — (2) |
The table covers NOC 14404, “Dispatchers”. It pools the truck dispatcher with the 911 dispatcher, the ambulance, taxi and tow truck dispatcher, and the radio operator. Road transport dispatch is not measured on its own.
Low, median and high wages published by Job Bank (NOC 14404), and pay offered in Greater Montreal job postings (6 months, February to August 2026); in brackets, the number of hourly postings — under ten, no median is shown.
Quebec median by file edition: 2023: $25/h · 2024: $25/h · 2025: $28.50/h.
What the job postings say
Of 35 postings on Job Bank in Greater Montreal (6 months, February to August 2026), 26% mention a night shift, 29% an evening shift and 17% weekends.
Dispatch follows the fleet, and a fleet rarely runs on one shift. Days are pickups, dock appointments and customer calls; evenings and nights are long-haul departures, border crossings and tracking trucks already rolling. The shift changes the nature of the job: on days you are interrupted constantly and arbitrate between the customer, the driver and the warehouse; at night the calls thin out but you are often the only one deciding, with no supervisor behind you and no mechanic on site. Job Bank puts the occupation at 35 to 40 hours a week; a fleet that runs weekends needs on-call coverage on top of that. Settle that availability before the interview, not after the offer.
What a dispatcher does
- Build the day's plan: match every load to a driver, a tractor and a trailer
- Track driving and rest hours on the electronic logging device and rebuild the plan when a driver's window closes
- Book, move and confirm dock appointments with customers, warehouses and distribution centres
- Follow trucks on the road and relay traffic, closures and road conditions to drivers
- Confirm a valid pre-trip safety inspection covers the departure and pass reported defects to maintenance
- Prepare and check shipping paperwork: bill of lading, shipping documents, customs papers for cross-border loads
- Find backhauls, through brokers or the customer's own volume, to cut empty miles
- Keep driver records current: hours, mileage, fuel, repairs
- Handle what the shift throws: breakdowns, dock delays, a driver calling in, a trailer stuck in the yard
- Tell the customer about a delay before the appointment time, not after, and log the cause
Requirements, cards and certifications
- Secondary school diploma — the employment requirement the National Occupational Classification lists for NOC 14404
- Working knowledge of the Règlement sur les heures de conduite et de repos des conducteurs de véhicules lourds, Quebec's hours-of-service regulation: 13 hours driving, 14 hours on duty, a 16-hour window, and a cycle capped at 70 hours over 7 days or 120 hours over 14 days
- Comfort with a transportation management system, a spreadsheet and the electronic logging device portal
- A TDG training certificate as soon as the person offers dangerous goods for transport or prepares the shipping documents, as Part 6 of the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Regulations requires
- Knowledge of the pre-trip safety inspection and its 24-hour validity, so the plan is not built on a departure that cannot happen
- Geography of Greater Montreal, the corridors toward Ontario and the Maritimes, and the border crossings
- Functional French for a Quebec carrier's drivers, customers and paperwork
Training
No specialized diploma opens the door. The National Occupational Classification lists a secondary school diploma as the employment requirement for NOC 14404 and notes that on-the-job training is the normal route, except for emergency service dispatchers, who follow a formal program. To get ahead of the curve, Inforoute FPT lists the AEC Logistique du transport (LCA.DS), a college attestation in transport logistics: 1,230 hours, 255 of them an internship, at Cégep André-Laurendeau in LaSalle. The same college runs a recognition-of-prior-learning path for the program, which suits someone already working in a yard. Longer and broader, the DEC Gestion des opérations et de la chaîne logistique (410.A1) runs 2,445 hours, about three years, at Cégep André-Laurendeau and Collège Lionel-Groulx. Add dangerous goods training: the certificate an employer issues is valid 36 months for road transport.
Career path
An experienced dispatcher takes on a heavier territory first, then lead dispatcher. From there, two directions: supervising supply-chain coordination and scheduling — which the classification puts in a different group, NOC 12013, broader than transport alone, or fleet management, planning and customer service on the shipper side. Dispatchers who know the border often move into freight brokerage and third-party logistics. Driving is not a required step, but a former Class 1 driver arrives knowing exactly what can and cannot be asked of a driver.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a truck dispatcher make in Quebec?
The table above gives the Quebec median and the median for each Greater Montreal region, drawn from Job Bank data. It covers NOC 14404, which is broader than road transport alone — the note under the table spells out what it pools. Where a region has no figure of its own, the cell stays empty rather than repeating the provincial median.
What training do you need to become a dispatcher?
A secondary school diploma gets you in the door: that is the employment requirement the National Occupational Classification lists for NOC 14404, and the rest is learned on the job. To get ahead, Inforoute FPT lists the AEC Logistique du transport (LCA.DS), a transport logistics attestation of 1,230 hours including a 255-hour internship, at Cégep André-Laurendeau in LaSalle.
What does a transport dispatcher have to know before the first shift?
Three things, and none of them is a diploma. Quebec's hours-of-service regulation, because it decides what a driver can legally still do. The pre-trip safety inspection and its 24-hour validity, because a departure without one is a departure that cannot happen. And dangerous goods rules, because the paperwork carries its own training requirement.
Who are the biggest carriers in Quebec?
This page does not rank carriers. What changes the job is fleet size: on a handful of trucks the dispatcher also invoices and answers customers; on several hundred, they hold one territory. The Commission des transports du Québec keeps the public registry of heavy vehicle owners and operators, where each one carries an identification number and a safety rating.
What does a truck dispatcher do during a shift?
They assign loads to drivers, book dock appointments, track trucks on the road and rebuild the plan every time a breakdown, a delay or the end of a driver's window breaks it. Job Bank adds a steady administrative share: keeping driver records, hours, mileage, fuel and repairs up to date.
What is the difference between a truck dispatcher and a 911 dispatcher?
The work has nothing in common: one plans deliveries, the other handles emergency calls. The National Occupational Classification still files both under the same group, NOC 14404, which is why the table above mixes them. Emergency dispatchers also get formal on-the-job training under an official program, and usually a radio operator licence.
Is a transit or bus dispatcher the same job?
No, and the classification says so: bus dispatchers in a public transit network are excluded from NOC 14404 and filed under NOC 72024. A road transport dispatcher handles freight, trailers and hours of service; a transit dispatcher handles routes, timetables and line drivers. The tools overlap; the constraints do not.
Can you become a dispatcher with no experience?
Nothing rules it out: the National Occupational Classification requires no specialized diploma and expects on-the-job training. What cannot be improvised is knowing the territory, the customers and the hours-of-service rules. Neighbouring roles lead there: transport clerk, customer service representative, dock clerk.
Do dispatchers need to know hours-of-service rules?
Yes — they are the constraint that decides the plan. Quebec's Règlement sur les heures de conduite et de repos des conducteurs de véhicules lourds bars driving beyond 13 hours of driving, 14 hours on duty or 16 hours elapsed since the last 8-hour rest, and caps the cycle at 70 hours over 7 days or 120 over 14.
Can a dispatcher work from home?
Partly. Job Bank describes phone, radio and computer-aided dispatch systems, and that share travels with the person. What does not travel is the yard — seeing a trailer, catching a driver, unblocking a dock. How much on-site presence a role needs depends on where the trucks sleep.
What shifts do dispatchers work?
Whatever the fleet runs. Days cover pickups, dock appointments and customer calls; evenings and nights cover long-haul departures and tracking trucks already rolling. Job Bank puts the occupation at 35 to 40 hours a week, and a fleet that runs weekends needs on-call coverage on top of the schedule.
What is a dispatcher called in French in Quebec?
Répartiteur, or répartitrice. Yard slang also uses “dispatcheur”, borrowed straight from English, but the official title in the Classification nationale des professions is répartiteur, NOC 14404. Job postings around Montreal use both, sometimes in the same sentence.
Hiring a dispatcher?
A job description to copy, interview questions and a pay benchmark by region.
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