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Hours of Service: the Federal Clock Every Truck Driver Runs On
Federal law limits how long a commercial truck driver may drive before rest: 11 hours of driving, inside a 14-hour window, capped at 60 or 70 on-duty hours a week.
The limits exist because a fatigued driver at the wheel of 80,000 pounds is a predictable catastrophe.
Carriers know the rules. Freight schedules pressure drivers to bend them anyway.
When a driver over his hours causes a wreck, the violation is more than background. It is the negligence, written in the company's own logs.
This page covers the limits, the exceptions carriers stretch, and how a violation becomes proof.
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At-a-Glance: the Federal Driving Limits
- A property-carrying driver may drive 11 hours within a 14-hour window after 10 consecutive hours off
- Driving must pause for a 30-minute break once 8 cumulative hours of driving have passed
- The weekly ceiling is 60 on-duty hours in 7 days, or 70 in 8, reset by 34 hours off
The 11-Hour, 14-Hour, and 70-Hour Limits at a Glance
The core limits for property-carrying drivers sit in 49 CFR 395.3, and they interlock: each one closes a loophole the others would leave open.[1]
| Rule | The Limit | What It Prevents |
|---|---|---|
| Start-of-shift rest | 10 consecutive hours off duty before driving | Shifts that begin already exhausted |
| Driving limit | 11 total hours of driving per shift | Marathon runs on diminishing attention |
| Driving window | No driving after the 14th consecutive hour on duty | Stretching a shift with breaks that don't restore alertness |
| 30-minute break | Required once 8 cumulative hours of driving pass without one | Unbroken driving through the fatigue curve |
| Weekly ceiling | 60 on-duty hours in 7 days, or 70 in 8 for daily operations | Chronic sleep debt built across a week |
| 34-hour restart | 34+ consecutive hours off resets the weekly clock | Weeks that never actually end |
| Sleeper-berth split | The 10-hour rest may be split into qualifying pairs, such as 7 and 3 | Neither period may fall under 2 hours, and one must be 7+ in the berth |
The rules were last substantively revised in 2020. Claims that "the rules just changed" are usually a carrier talking point; the limits above are current.
The Exceptions Carriers Stretch: Short-Haul, Adverse Weather, Sleeper Splits
Section 395.1 carves out exceptions, and the exceptions are where hours cases are fought.[2]
The short-haul exception frees certain local drivers from keeping full logs when they operate within a 150 air-mile radius and return to base inside 14 hours. It was written for the delivery route that ends at the home terminal every night. It gets stretched to cover drivers who are neither short nor local, and a driver running log-free on a misapplied exception has no records at all until his employer's other data betrays him.
The adverse driving conditions exception allows up to 2 extra driving hours when weather or traffic that could not have been anticipated slows the run. The key word is anticipated: rush hour is not adverse, and neither is a forecast snowstorm the dispatcher routed into anyway.
Sleeper-berth splits are lawful when the math works, and the math is strict. Splits get abused as an accounting device, recording rest that the vibration, noise, and schedule of a moving truck never actually delivered.
How an Hours Violation Becomes Negligence in an Injury Case
Hours-of-service rules are safety regulations with the force of federal law, and courts treat their violation seriously. In many states, violating a safety regulation designed to protect the public is negligence per se, meaning the violation itself establishes the breach of duty and the trial moves straight to causation and damages. In others it is powerful evidence of negligence for the jury to weigh. Either way, a driver who was past his 11th hour when he drifted across the center line has handed the case its backbone.
An hours violation also implicates the company. Dispatch built the schedule, and dispatch had access to the driver's remaining hours in real time. A load that could not legally be delivered on time is evidence against the carrier, which is why the truck accident attorneys handling these cases read the delivery schedule as closely as the logs. The regulatory paper trail, and how violations reach a jury, is covered further in our guide to FMCSA violations as evidence, and the human toll behind the numbers in our page on fatigued truck drivers.
Where the Hours Are Actually Proven: Devices, Documents, and Gaps
Since the federal mandate, most interstate trucks record duty status electronically, and the electronic logging device data is the primary record of a driver's hours. It is checked against supporting documents: fuel receipts, toll transponder hits, weigh station records, bills of lading, and the engine's own data. A driver's logs can claim rest; a toll gantry 300 miles away at the same hour says otherwise.
Those records are only retained for months, so the hours question has to be asked early. A case that waits a year to wonder about the driver's week is usually asking about records that no longer exist.
