Fatigue Management: A Guide for Depots, Drivers, and Carriers

A driver who has been awake since 2am looks no different at the gatehouse. Neither does a picker on the sixth night shift in a row, or a refrigeration mechanic on the third call-out of the week. Fatigue management is how a business finds that risk in its own rosters and bookings before it turns up as a forklift strike, a truck off the highway, or a near miss nobody reported.

This guide is for operations managers and safety managers in transport and logistics: distribution centres, depots, and carriers that use employed and subcontracted drivers beside warehouse shift workers. For the practical part first, go to the worked example and the checklist. The examples are illustrations, not customers.

What Is Fatigue Management?

Fatigue management is the work of finding what makes people too tired to work safely, controlling it, and keeping the evidence that you did. Safe Work Australia's model code of practice describes fatigue as "a state of physical, mental or emotional impairment", and says that at work it is "more than feeling sleepy, tired and drowsy".¹

The code sorts the causes into three groups: work hours and shift design; tasks, equipment, or environments; and the individual.¹ The first group is the one an operations manager controls directly. It covers long hours, work during the natural time for sleep, and rosters that leave too little opportunity for sleep or rest.¹

So fatigue management in logistics is mostly a scheduling job: the roster, the dock booking sheet, and the carrier's run sheet decide how tired people are.

What Does the WHS Law Require for Fatigue?

Under section 19 of the model Work Health and Safety Act, a business must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers it engages or causes to be engaged, and of workers whose work it influences or directs, and that other people are not put at risk by its work.² Fatigue is one of those risks: eliminate it so far as is reasonably practicable, and where that is not reasonably practicable, minimise it so far as is reasonably practicable.²

Under section 7, a worker includes an employee, a contractor or subcontractor, a contractor's employee, and a labour hire employee assigned to the business.² More than one business can hold the same duty, a duty cannot be transferred, and each business with it must, so far as is reasonably practicable, consult, co-operate, and co-ordinate with the others.²

The fatigue code closes two gaps. The duty "is not removed or reduced by hours set in employment contracts, enterprise agreements or awards or a worker's preference for certain shift patterns, or willingness to work extra hours".¹ And workers are at work whenever they are doing work for the business, after hours included; separately, the code says the duty to other people may extend to a worker who becomes fatigued at work and puts other road users at risk on the drive home.¹

Is the Fatigue Code of Practice Law in My State?

Not by itself. Safe Work Australia published its model Code of Practice on managing the risk of fatigue at work on 19 September 2025.¹ A model code has no force until a state or territory Minister approves it under that jurisdiction's section 274; once approved, a court may rely on it to decide what was reasonably practicable (section 275).² The code also says compliance may be achieved by another method that provides "an equivalent or higher standard of WHS than the code".¹

New South Wales approved its version from 20 February 2026,³ Tasmania from 28 January 2026,⁴ and the Northern Territory approved its version on 12 January 2026, with effect from its gazettal on 12 March 2026.⁵ Queensland's list of approved codes did not include a fatigue code on 5 November 2026.⁶ Elsewhere, check your regulator's list before treating the code as more than guidance.

Victoria has not implemented the model WHS laws.⁷ Its Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 extends an employer's duties to independent contractors it engages, and their employees, for matters the employer controls or would control if not for an agreement that tries to limit that control (section 21(3)).⁸

The Shift Patterns the Code Treats as Risk Factors.

The code's work-hour hazards read like peak season in a distribution centre: less than 12 hours between shifts, more than 3 successive night shifts, less than 24 hours' notice of a shift, on-call work on top of regular shifts, no full day off each week, travel that eats into sleep, and "night or early morning work, particularly between 2 am and 6 am".¹

Its controls are specific. Workers should have at least a 30 minute break every 5 hours, should not work more than 5 days in a row, should have at least one full day off a week, and should have no less than 12 hours between shifts.¹ Rosters should not run more than 3 successive night shifts. Where the fatigue risk is high, the code says to consider shifts of no more than 8 hours and to avoid overtime, and where it is reasonably practicable, work should not start before 6am or finish after 10pm.¹

The warehouse is in scope too. The code's warehousing example describes workers "lifting hundreds of boxes over a ten-hour shift", with controls that include work scheduling, rest breaks, recovery time, and team rotation.¹ An early loading slot sets the dock team's start time, so it is a roster decision whether anyone treats it as one or not.

Which Heavy Vehicles Do the Fatigue Rules Cover?

Under the Heavy Vehicle National Law (HVNL), a heavy vehicle has a gross vehicle mass (GVM) or aggregate trailer mass of more than 4.5 tonnes.⁹ A fatigue-regulated heavy vehicle, the kind the work and rest hours apply to, is a vehicle with a GVM over 12 tonnes, a combination with a GVM over 12 tonnes, or a bus over 4.5 tonnes fitted to carry more than 12 adults including the driver.¹⁰⁹

The driver's own duty now reaches further than the hours do. From 1 August 2026, section 228 says a person "must not drive a heavy vehicle on a road while the person is impaired by fatigue or unfit to drive".⁹ Before then it covered only fatigue-regulated heavy vehicles and said nothing about fitness to drive, and the maximum penalty in the Act rose from AU$6,000 to AU$20,000.¹¹⁹ Indexed, that maximum is AU$28,230 for 1 August 2026 to 30 June 2027.¹² A driver of a 6 tonne rigid on a suburban run, with no hours limit and no work diary, is now inside the duty.

A driver is impaired by fatigue if their ability to drive a heavy vehicle safely is affected by fatigue, and fatigue includes feeling sleepy, physically or mentally tired, weary or drowsy, or exhausted or lacking energy.⁹ The hours are not a safe harbour: a court may find a driver impaired by fatigue or unfit to drive even if they kept to the maximum work and minimum rest requirements, and the NHVR says the duty applies "even if the driver is within their permitted work and rest hours".⁹¹³

What Are Standard Hours for a Solo Driver?

Standard hours are the default work and rest limits for the solo driver of a fatigue-regulated heavy vehicle. They are set in Table 1 of Schedule 1 of the Heavy Vehicle (Fatigue Management) National Regulation, and the NHVR restates them:¹⁴¹³

In any period of	Work no more than	Rest at least
5 hours 30 minutes	5 hours 15 minutes	15 continuous minutes
8 hours	7 hours 30 minutes	30 minutes, in blocks of 15 continuous minutes
11 hours	10 hours	60 minutes, in blocks of 15 continuous minutes
24 hours	12 hours	7 continuous hours of stationary rest
7 days	72 hours	24 continuous hours of stationary rest
14 days	144 hours	2 night rest breaks, plus 2 more night rest breaks taken on consecutive days

A night rest break is 7 continuous hours of stationary rest taken between 10pm and 8am the next day, in the time zone of the driver's base, or a 24 continuous hour stationary rest break.¹³ Those limits are a ceiling, not a roster. A driver can work 12 hours in 24 inside them and still be impaired by fatigue.

What Replaced Basic and Advanced Fatigue Management on 1 August 2026?

ACA-Fatigue. Until 1 August 2026 an operator could step outside standard hours through accreditation in Basic Fatigue Management (BFM), whose hours were set out in the regulation,¹⁵ or Advanced Fatigue Management (AFM). The NHVR now says ACA-Fatigue "replaces the previous NHVAS Basic Fatigue Management (BFM) and Advanced Fatigue Management (AFM) modules and is available from 1 August 2026".¹⁶ The HVNL itself changed on that date, fatigue requirements included.¹⁷

An accreditation in force immediately before the change keeps running under the law as it stood until it expires or is cancelled,⁹ and the NHVR says BFM holders may keep operating under their accreditation's conditions until then, or move to the new Heavy Vehicle Accreditation (HVA) scheme when they choose.¹³

ACA-Fatigue sits inside the HVA scheme and lets an operator seek Alternative Compliance Hours. An operator must also hold General Safety Accreditation, and it rests on a safety case and a fatigue risk management system. For solo drivers, work in any 24 hours cannot exceed 15.5 hours, with at least 7 hours of continuous stationary rest, and drivers under the accreditation carry the certificate, a signed letter confirming they operate under it, and a work diary.¹⁶

Work Diaries, the 100 Kilometre Rule, and Fatigue Records.

A driver of a fatigue-regulated heavy vehicle working beyond 100 km of their base under standard hours, or who has done so in the last 28 days, must keep a work diary covering the previous 28 days and have it with them while driving (section 293).⁹ Drivers working up to 100 km from base under standard hours do not need a National Driver Work Diary, but they must still record their work and rest in a local area record and give it to their record keeper.¹⁸

The base matters because it sets the radius. Under the HVNL a driver's base is the place they normally work from; it becomes the vehicle's garage address only where a driver who must record a base in a work diary has not done so (section 5).⁹ The NHVR's record keeping page puts it more simply as "the garaged address of the vehicle", so make sure every driver's base is recorded.¹⁸

The law decides who the record keeper is: the employer for an employed driver, the driver if self-employed, and the operator where the driver works under the operator's fatigue alternative compliance accreditation (section 317).⁹ For drivers working beyond 100 km, the record keeper holds the driver's name, contact details, and licence number, their rosters and trip schedules including changeovers, copies of work diary entries, and payment records, time sheets included where the driver is paid by time at work (section 321).⁹ Records for local drivers add daily and weekly totals of work and rest and the driver's base (section 319).⁹

Those records are kept for 3 years after they are made, or for copies received from the driver, such as work diary pages, 3 years after they are received (section 341). They are kept where an authorised officer can reach them, in a form that stays readable.⁹¹⁸

Your Duty When You Schedule, Load, or Contract Out the Driving.

A business does not have to employ a driver to carry a fatigue duty. Every party in the chain of responsibility, including an employer, operator, scheduler, consignor, consignee, loading manager, and loader, must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the safety of its transport activities, and that its conduct does not directly or indirectly cause or encourage a driver to break the law (section 26C).⁹ Our guide to who is in the Chain of Responsibility and what the Primary Duty requires covers the full duty and its penalties.

A scheduler is anyone who schedules the transport of goods by the vehicle, or the driver's work and rest times, so a distribution centre that sets dispatch times may be one. For the fatigue chapter, a person is a loading manager only for premises that load or unload an average of at least 5 fatigue-regulated heavy vehicles each day they operate, and the term includes a person assigned to supervise the loaders (section 5).⁹ Below that threshold, a site can still be a consignor, consignee, scheduler, or loader.

The Act puts the cause-or-encourage limb, like the rest of the duty, under "so far as is reasonably practicable".⁹ The NHVR reads it strictly: "If a CoR party causes or encourages a driver who is impaired by fatigue or otherwise unfit to drive, they are in breach of their Primary Duty under the HVNL."¹⁹

What a Business Must Not Ask a Driver to Do.

Section 26E makes it a separate offence to ask, direct, or require, directly or indirectly, a driver or another party to do or not do something you know, or ought reasonably to know, would cause the driver to drive a heavy vehicle while impaired by fatigue or unfit to drive, or to drive a fatigue-regulated heavy vehicle in breach of their work and rest hours. It is also an offence to enter into a contract you know, or ought reasonably to know, would have those effects, or would encourage the driver, or encourage another party to cause them.⁹ The NHVR's indexed maximum for an individual is AU$28,230 for 1 August 2026 to 30 June 2027,¹² and where an offence sets one maximum, as this one does, a court may fine a company up to 5 times the individual maximum (section 596).⁹

The duty can also land on you personally. Under section 26D, an executive of a company that is a party in the chain must exercise due diligence to ensure the company complies with its primary duty, and an executive officer includes any person 'who is concerned or takes part in the management of the corporation' (section 5), so whether an operations or safety manager is one depends on the role.⁹ Under the model WHS Act, an officer, as defined by section 9 of the Corporations Act 2001, must exercise due diligence to ensure the business complies with its duties (section 27), and every worker, while at work, must take reasonable care for their own health and safety and that their acts or omissions do not adversely affect the health and safety of others (section 28).²

Contracting the run out changes none of this. The NHVR says parties "remain a CoR party even when their transport activities are contracted, or subcontracted, to another party", and its fatigue controls include rosters that consider fatigue risk, contract terms requiring drivers to disclose secondary employment, welfare calls during night driving, and giving drivers the authority to rest when they need to.²⁰

Does the HVNL Apply in Western Australia and the Northern Territory?

No. The HVNL has not commenced in Western Australia or the Northern Territory, but it applies to vehicles from both once they cross into a state or territory where it does, and in some cases drivers must comply with parts of it, such as work diary requirements, before they cross the border.¹⁷

In Western Australia, driver fatigue sits in Part 4.10, "Driving commercial vehicles", of the Work Health and Safety (General) Regulations 2022. It covers a commercial vehicle driver: a worker who drives a commercial vehicle for work and whose work time is over 60 hours a week, or more than once a week runs over 10 hours in 24 hours or includes midnight to 5am (regulation 184C).²¹ A commercial vehicle includes a motor vehicle over 4.5 tonnes GVM used to carry goods for hire or reward, and most duties sit on the responsible person at a workplace, which includes a business conducting work there; drivers carry duties of their own (regulations 184D(2), 184E, and 184G(2)). Check the exclusion in regulation 184B, for commercial goods vehicles that must be licensed under the Transport Co-ordination Act 1966.²¹

The WA limits differ from standard hours. So far as is reasonably practicable, a driver takes breaks totalling at least 20 minutes for every 5 hours of work time, including one of at least 10 consecutive minutes, and works no more than 168 hours in any 14 days. A driver without a relief driver also needs at least 27 hours of non-work time in any 72 hours, including 3 periods of at least 7 consecutive hours no more than 17 hours apart, and at least 2 periods of 24 consecutive hours off in any 14 days (or 4 in any 28 days, where work time stays at or under 144 hours in any 14 days). Two-up drivers, and drivers doing shiftwork on 5 or more consecutive days, have further rules (regulation 184E).²¹ The responsible person must make sure drivers keep to those hours and hold a certificate from a registered medical practitioner that they were examined and passed against Assessing Fitness to Drive, or an equivalent or higher standard, not more than 5 years before the driving, have a driver fatigue management plan developed and kept current by a competent person, and keep a record of work and non-work time for at least 3 years from the last entry, each backed by a fine.²¹

The Northern Territory Runs Its Own Fatigue Rules.

The Northern Territory has decided not to adopt the HVNL's fatigue provisions. Inside the Territory, the NT Government says operators must implement a system to manage the risk of fatigue under the Work Health and Safety (National Uniform Legislation) Act 2011, whose duty, as in the model Act, applies so far as is reasonably practicable, and that a national work diary is not specifically required; for operators crossing its borders, the Territory recognises the HVNL fatigue options and the WA system.²²

A Distribution Centre's Peak Season, Worked Through.

A third-party logistics business runs a distribution centre on Brisbane's southside for a group of retail customers. In Queensland the HVNL is the schedule to the Heavy Vehicle National Law Act 2012 (Qld),¹⁷ and the warehouse team is covered by the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Qld), whose section 19 matches the model Act.²³ Queensland had not approved the 2025 fatigue code by 5 November 2026, so here the code is guidance on what is known about the risk, not an approved code.⁶

It is the second week of November, volume is up by half, and three things are happening at once.

The roster. Pickers are on 10-hour night shifts, and the overtime list fills gaps with whoever volunteers first. A handful have worked 6 nights straight, with 10 hours between shifts.

The loading slots. Two customers have moved their dispatch slots earlier so trucks reach regional stores before trading. The dock team now starts at 3am.

The carrier. The subcontracted carrier on the regional runs, working more than 100 km from its base, has started putting the same driver into the 4am slot after an evening run for another customer, then back for a 3pm reload.

None of these is necessarily a breach on its own. Together they are hazards the code describes, more than 3 successive night shifts, less than 12 hours between shifts, and work between 2am and 6am,¹ plus a driver's day the distribution centre is helping to build. The site loads far more than 5 fatigue-regulated trucks a day, and its booking terms are conduct it can be judged on.⁹

What the Operations Manager Changed, Asked For, and Kept.

Scheduling. Night shifts were capped at 3 in a row, with at least 12 hours between shifts and a full day off each week. Overtime was offered only inside those limits, however keen the volunteers were, because a worker's willingness does not reduce the duty.

Loading bookings. Most of the dock moved to a 5am start, with a small early crew on rotation for the one customer that could not move its slot. The booking rules changed so the same truck cannot hold an early slot and a same-day reload unless the carrier confirms the driver's day fits inside their hours with room to spare, and a truck delayed on the road is rebooked rather than charged.

The carrier. The operations manager put the carrier questions below to the carrier in writing, before the next run.

What was kept. The roster before and after, the new booking rules with the date they started, the carrier's written answers and accreditation certificate with its expiry, the dock's arrival and departure times for the carrier's trucks, and every fatigue report from the floor or the cab. If a driver on those runs crashes in January, that file shows the distribution centre saw the risk and changed its own part of it.

The distribution centre is not the carrier's record keeper (section 317) and has no access to its work diaries unless the contract gives it. Our guide to what a carrier file has to hold sets out the rest of that file.

Night Work for Facilities Contractors.

The same duty runs through property and facilities management, where most of the night shift is contractors. Take a property manager with a portfolio of suburban shopping centres. Cleaners work from 11pm to 6am after trade, security guards cover 12-hour nights, and HVAC and electrical contractors take after-hours call-outs for breakdowns that cannot wait for morning.

Under the model Act, each of those people is a worker of the property manager's business as well as of their employer's, so both businesses hold the duty and must, so far as is reasonably practicable, consult, co-operate, and co-ordinate on it.² And a labour hire business placing shift workers "must consider the cumulative fatigue arising from all the different workplaces the worker is sent to", and working for more than one business is itself a listed hazard.¹ On-call work counts too: the code suggests keeping on-call rosters to a minimum and not putting workers on call during their breaks.¹

Planned after-hours work moved out of the 2am to 6am window unless a shutdown required it. The security contractor confirmed that no guard works more than 3 nights in a row, counting its other clients' sites. The HVAC contractor now rotates the on-call week. And the site manager reviews cleaners' sign-in and sign-out times each week, so a cleaner signing out at 6am and back at 2pm is noticed before it becomes a habit.

A Fatigue Risk Checklist for Rosters, Docks, and Carriers.

Run this against an ordinary week and a peak week; each item needs a yes or no and a record behind it.

1. Roster. No one works more than 5 days in a row or has less than 12 hours between shifts, and everyone gets a full day off each week.
2. Shift length. Long shifts, and overtime on top of them, are approved by someone who can see the whole week.
3. Night work. No one works more than 3 night shifts in a row, and work between 2am and 6am is there because it has to be.
4. Travel. Commutes and drive time between sites count when the roster is built, including the drive home after nights.
5. Loading windows. Early slots and same-day reloads are checked against the dock roster and the driver's day.
6. Carrier checks. Every carrier on runs beyond 100 km has answered the questions below in writing, with any accreditation certificate on file.
7. Reporting. Anyone can say they are too tired to continue without losing pay or the job, and those reports are recorded and acted on.

The questions to put to a carrier, before the first run and each year after:

• Which hours do your drivers on our runs work under: standard hours, a BFM or AFM accreditation still in force, or ACA-Fatigue?
• Who is the record keeper, and how often are work diaries and local area records checked against rosters?
• Do your drivers also drive for other customers or hold second jobs, and how do you find out?
• How does a driver tell you they need to stop, and what happens to the load and their pay when they do?
• Do you subcontract our runs, and how do you check the subcontractor's fatigue arrangements?

Keeping the Carrier and Contractor File Current.

Most of that checklist concerns other businesses. ComplyFlow does not build rosters or keep work diaries; it holds what you ask carriers and contractors for, and shows when it lapses.

In ComplyFlow, a contractor category can carry the documents a contractor must provide, and each request appears on the dashboard of every contractor assigned to that category, so a carrier category can be set to request an accreditation certificate or a fatigue management plan.²⁴ Carriers go through prequalification by questionnaire, with mandatory answers such as insurances, then upload the documents listed on their dashboard.²⁵ One report shows documents across the account, including anything due to expire within a set number of days.²⁶ At a site, each sign-in point can present checkboxes a person must tick to sign in or out, and every sign-in and sign-out is recorded in the Sign In Book.²⁷

Start With Next Week's Roster.

Fatigue builds from an early slot here, an extra night there, and a carrier saying yes to one more run. Put next week's roster and booking sheet beside the checklist, fix the worst run of shifts you can find, and send the carrier questions before peak season starts. To see carrier documents, prequalification, and site sign-ins in ComplyFlow, book a demo.