Truck Driver Daily Log Sheet Excel Template (+ How to Automate Driver Timesheets)

Connor McCormick

Truck driver daily logs are the standard way commercial trucking companies track a driver’s workday. They’re used to document hours worked, time spent driving or waiting, and the jobs completed during a shift—so back-office teams can process payroll, billing, and reporting.

In this guide, we share a free Excel template for daily truck driver logs that helps companies track driver time in a structured way. It includes the necessary time-tracking fields (such as start time, end time, and shift duration), along with additional fields for total mileage, payments or expenses, fuel usage, and maintenance.

Before building your operations around this timesheet, it’s worth being aware of one thing. For companies with lower daily load volume, manual logs can work. But as your fleet grows and trucks run multiple jobs per day, managing driver time manually becomes increasingly difficult.

In fact, it typically results in:

More repeat data entry between dispatch and the back office
More time spent reviewing and cleaning up logs at the end of the day
A higher chance of manual errors that affect driver pay and customer billing
No real-time visibility into driver time or job progress as the day is happening

These reasons are why many trucking companies start looking for a better way to track and manage driver time.

Toro TMS is a dedicated trucking management software that captures driver time digitally as work happens and automatically shares it across dispatch, drivers, payroll, and billing. This eliminates the need to create, review, and reconcile manual daily logs after the fact.

In this guide, we provide our free truck driver daily log template, then show you how Toro automates driver time tracking to reduce manual work and improve accuracy across your operation.

Book a demo to see how Toro TMS automates driver time tracking and eliminates manual daily logs.

Free truck driver daily log sheet Excel template

We created this downloadable truck driver daily log template to help trucking companies record driver time and daily activity in a clear, consistent format. It captures the details needed to track hours worked and job activity accurately while supporting payroll, billing, and basic recordkeeping in a simple spreadsheet.

The template also includes space for your company name and logo, so you can customize it for your operation.

‍Download our free truck driver daily log sheet template

In addition to basics like the driver’s name, date, and truck number, the daily log book has clear fields to document how time is spent throughout the day. This includes time spent driving, on duty, waiting, taking breaks, and completing multiple jobs or stops.

This structure makes the log easy for drivers to fill out correctly and easy for dispatch and back-office staff to review and understand. It also helps reduce confusion when logs are used for payroll calculations or to support customer billing.

To make your own copy in Google Sheets, click "File" → "Make a copy" from the document menu.

If you want to use the template in Microsoft Excel, go to “File” → “Download”, then select Microsoft Excel (.xlsx). This will download the file to your computer so you can open, edit, and save it locally in Excel.

Note: Each sheet in this template is designed to record a single driver’s activity for one 24-hour period. To create a new daily log, right-click the sheet tab at the bottom of the workbook and select “Duplicate” to make a fresh copy. You can also print a blank version if you prefer to complete logs on paper.

Why manual daily log templates can let you down as operations grow

While daily log book templates can be useful, even the most well-designed templates won’t meaningfully reduce the amount of work involved in managing driver time.

That’s because manual logs, regardless of format, have built-in limitations:

Manual logs require drivers to recreate their workday after it’s over. That means remembering start and end times, job durations, wait time, breaks, and total work hours—often hours later or at the end of a long shift. When drivers run multiple jobs or schedules change during the day, important details are easily missed or approximated.
Daily logs don’t provide real-time visibility into driver activity. Since a template can’t automatically capture time as work happens or maintain a mileage log for each job, dispatch and office staff have to wait until logs are submitted to understand how the day went. This makes it harder to respond to delays, long wait times, or schedule changes as they occur.
Manual logs become harder to manage as fleets grow. Once you’re tracking more than a handful of drivers, reviewing logs and following up on missing information becomes time-consuming and frustrating. Small issues compound quickly as driver count and daily job volume increase.
Daily logs don’t connect automatically to payroll and billing. Most companies still have to re-enter driver time into separate systems for payroll, invoicing, or reporting. This repeated data entry increases the risk of errors and slows down payroll and billing cycles.

Toro TMS was built specifically to avoid these issues. It simplifies driver time tracking by capturing time automatically as work happens, without adding unnecessary complexity for dispatchers or drivers.

Below, we introduce Toro TMS and explain how it eliminates manual daily logs by capturing driver time digitally as work happens.

How Toro TMS eliminates manual driver log entry and automates time tracking

Many companies modernize driver time tracking with software to avoid the issues that come with tracking driver hours manually.

These tools can help capture driver hours more consistently and centralize time data across dispatch and back-office teams. However, many TMS platforms make time tracking overly complex, requiring drivers and dispatchers to change their workflows or manually update duty status throughout the day.

When that happens, teams often stop using the system entirely and revert to manual driver log sheets. That means driver time—including total hours worked, start and end times for each driver shift, and time spent on all driver activities—must be recorded manually again after the fact. This also means duty status changes get missed; dispatchers and drivers spend more time reviewing and correcting logs; and payroll and billing teams can’t rely on the data to generate invoices and calculate payroll.

Toro TMS solves this by automating driver time tracking with an interface designed for real-world trucking operations. It's easy for dispatchers to use and allows the entire organization to work from the same accurate time records.

With Toro TMS, you can:

Capture driver duty status and hours automatically throughout the day using built-in hourly timesheets.
View driver time and status in real time using GPS and ELD integrations.
Keep driver hours tied directly to dispatched work so time records reflect actual job activity.
Automatically generate payroll and billing from driver time data.
Analyze driver time, detention, and job performance with detailed reports built from accurate time records.

We’ll walk you through these features in more detail below.

Manage new loads and automatically track driver time in a centralized dispatch dashboard

When managing drivers, dispatchers and back-office teams need to understand when a driver starts their day, how their duty status changes over time, and how many hours they’ve accumulated—all within a 24-hour period.

But when driver logs are handled manually, that information lives in different places, such as spreadsheets, paper notes, and phone calls or texts. This makes it harder for dispatchers and back-office teams to get a clear, real-time view of driver hours or verify time data without following up.

Instead, Toro TMS brings driver duty status and time tracking into a single, live dashboard, giving teams real-time visibility into driver hours as the day unfolds. This allows dispatchers to see driver status, active work time, and accumulated hours throughout the shift, along with a live schedule, available trucks or drivers, and loads organized by status.

With Toro’s live dashboard, you can:

See driver duty status and availability in real time: View when drivers are on duty, driving, waiting, or off duty without relying on manual log entries.
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Track hours as they accumulate throughout the day: See driving and on-duty hours update in real time as drivers move between jobs. For example, dispatch can tell by mid-afternoon whether a driver is approaching their daily limits, rather than discovering an issue after logs are turned in.
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Create repeat jobs quickly using load templates: Save common job details like customer info, addresses, contact details, and site notes so dispatch can assign work faster while keeping driver time tied to the correct jobs and schedules.

Easily send dispatch details for recurring loads

Automatically generate hourly driver timesheets: Create structured, hour-by-hour timesheets from captured duty status data so back-office teams have a clear, complete record for each 24-hour period without manual calculations.
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Track detention time as it happens: Monitor when drivers arrive on site and how long they remain waiting, so detention is identified during the day rather than missed or reconstructed later from incomplete logs.
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Keep time records tied to dispatched work: Driver hours remain linked to jobs and assignments, so duty status changes reflect actual work activity rather than estimates made after the fact.

Because driver time is captured and updated in the same system used to manage daily operations, back-office teams don’t need to reconstruct a driver’s day from handwritten logs. The same time records used for visibility during the day are available for payroll, billing, and reporting.

Allow drivers to receive load details via text message and upload documentation digitally

For driver time tracking to work effectively on a TMS, drivers actually need to use the system. If they don’t, dispatchers end up doing double the work because they still need to check in with drivers for updates. Back-office teams also have to wait for manual document submissions to fill in driver timesheets for payroll and invoicing.

Many TMS platforms try to solve this, but they typically offer mobile apps for drivers to download and use for viewing assignments, updating duty status, or submitting documentation. But in our experience, drivers prefer text messages over mobile apps—they don't need to remember login info and learn a new interface to receive load details or submit documents.

That's why Toro TMS allows dispatchers to send job and schedule details directly to a driver’s phone via text message—without requiring an app download.

When dispatch assigns or updates a load, Toro sends drivers a text message with all the required information they need to complete the job correctly, including:

Where to pick up and deliver
Scheduled appointment times or delivery windows
Location-specific instructions, like check-in requirements or unloading rules
Important site notes, such as limited access hours

That text also includes a secure upload link drivers can use to submit shipping documents and any other paperwork related to the load. As soon as they’re uploaded by drivers, those files are immediately available to the back office and used for payroll and billing.

Toro automatically extracts key details from all documents and notes, then syncs them to the correct load and driver activity. This information can be used for accounting tasks, so back-office teams have accurate records that can be used to verify driver hours, detention, payroll, and billing.

Easily sync driver time with accounting so back-office teams can instantly generate invoices and calculate driver pay

Once driver time is captured throughout the day, back-office teams need a simplified way to use that information for payroll, billing, and accounting. It should be easy enough so they don't need to re-enter data or reconcile manual logs.

Toro makes this possible, so you can:

Automatically generate driver pay from time records: Apply driver-specific pay rules such as hourly rates, job-based pay, or detention to digital timesheets with driver profiles. From there, you can generate clear pay summaries without manually reviewing or correcting log sheets.

Create invoices using verified driver time and job data: Build customer invoices from the same time-stamped records used for payroll, so billed driving hours, wait time, job info, and other key details align with the work actually performed.
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Reduce payroll and billing disputes: As driver time and supporting documents are captured together, back-office teams can quickly verify hours and resolve issues without chasing drivers or reviewing handwritten logs.
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Sync time and financial data with your accounting system: Toro integrates with accounting tools like QuickBooks, automatically syncing driver time and billing data while eliminating duplicate entries.

Generate detailed reports to analyze driver time and job performance

Toro TMS goes much deeper than manual truck driver daily log sheets by providing reporting tools that give teams clear visibility into how driver time is actually spent across jobs and duty statuses.

Since Toro collects driver time directly from dispatched work and hourly timesheets, its reporting tools allow you to:

Analyze driver hours by duty status: Get clear breakdowns of driving time, on-duty time, waiting, and off-duty hours to understand how each driver’s day is structured and where time is being lost.
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Review job-level time performance: See how long drivers spend on individual jobs or stops and identify recurring delays, long wait periods, or locations that consistently run over schedule.
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Monitor detention and wait time trends: Track how often detention occurs and how long drivers are held on site, making it easier to spot customers or locations that contribute most to lost time.
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Reduce empty miles and fuel waste: Use automated mileage tracking to see when trucks are moving without revenue and identify routes with excessive deadhead miles, so you can adjust planning to improve utilization and control fuel costs.

These reports provide a level of insight that manual driver log sheets and spreadsheets can’t offer, so teams can actually use driver time data to improve day-to-day operations.

Toro TMS: A better way to manage driver time as operations grow

A manual driver log sheet can work when you’re running a small operation with simple schedules. But as fleets add more drivers, handle more jobs, and rely on accurate time data for payroll and billing, manual logs can quickly turn into extra work and slow your team down.

What looks like a low-cost solution on the surface often comes with hidden trade-offs. Driver hours are recorded after the fact; duty status changes are missed; logs require review and correction; and back-office teams spend hours reconciling time before they can even begin payroll or invoicing.

Toro TMS replaces manual driver log entry with digital, hourly time tracking that captures duty status as work happens. This eliminates repeat data entry, so all driver time is recorded once and shared across dispatch, payroll, billing, and reporting.

With Toro, you can:

Automatically record driver work time continuously throughout the day with digital timesheets that update as duty status changes.
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Collect driver timesheets and load paperwork digitally, so all time records, BOLs, and scale tickets are accurate and available immediately.
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Calculate driver pay and generate invoices using verified driver time with no need for manual re-entry or reconciliation.
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Use driver time data to identify profitability and performance trends, giving teams better insight into how time is spent across jobs and customers.

Book a demo today to see how Toro TMS automates driver time tracking and helps your team spend less time fixing logs and more time running the business.