He asked for a couple of days to see a doctor. The call didn't go the way he expected
For years, a trucking company insisted its truck driver was an independent contractor. When he fell ill and asked for a couple of days off, the relationship ended abruptly on a phone call. A court would later find he had been an employee all along.
Justice A.P. Argento of the Alberta Court of Justice, in a decision dated June 29, 2026, awarded the driver a net judgment of $44,603.93 after finding he had been wrongfully dismissed. The company had treated him as a contractor for eight years and two months, but the court found that label was not determinative.
The driver started in November 2014, signing what the company called a rental agreement for the truck he would drive. He was hired to run bread deliveries for the company's main customer, a bakery, and by 2016 had settled into a five-day-a-week route to Edmonton. The company issued him subcontractor tax slips and made no statutory deductions.
Justice Argento worked through the factors courts use to tell employees from contractors: control over the work, who owns the equipment, and who stands to profit. The company supplied the truck, paid its insurance, fuel, registration and maintenance, and set the driver's rates and routes. He worked only for the company for over eight years, hired no helpers, and carried no business risk.
The court found the driver was an employee, not an independent...
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