Truck Driver Hours of Service Rules Explained, the 11-Hour Limit, the 14-Hour Window and the 70-Hour Week
Every truckload in the United States moves on a clock set by federal regulation. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s hours of service rules decide how long a driver can drive, how long their working day can stretch, and how much rest they need before they start again. Those rules shape freight capacity as much as the number of trucks does. A driver who runs out of hours 40 miles from the warehouse is a truck that isn’t moving.
The rules below are the core limits for property-carrying drivers, the people hauling freight rather than passengers. Passenger carriers such as bus and coach operators have a separate, stricter set.
The three daily limits
The 11-hour driving limit. After 10 consecutive hours off duty, a driver may drive a maximum of 11 hours. Driving time is time behind the wheel, not total work time.
The 14-hour window. After coming on duty following those 10 hours off, the driver cannot drive beyond the 14th hour. The window runs on the clock. Waiting at a shipper’s dock, fueling, inspecting the truck or taking a break inside the window doesn’t stop it. That’s why detention at loading docks matters so much: three hours waiting for a load can turn an 11-hour driving day into an 8-hour one.
The 30-minute break. A driver must take a break of at least 30 consecutive minutes after 8 cumulative hours of driving. Since the 2020 rule changes, the break can be any non-driving period, including on-duty time such as loading, rather than strictly off duty.
The weekly limit and the restart
On top of the daily rules sits a rolling weekly cap. A driver may not drive after 60 hours on duty in 7 consecutive days, or 70 hours in 8 consecutive days, depending on whether the carrier operates every day of the week. Most long-haul carriers use the 70-hour, 8-day rule. On-duty time includes all work, not just driving.
The 34-hour restart resets that cap. A driver who takes at least 34 consecutive hours off duty starts a fresh 7 or 8-day period. For long-haul drivers, the restart is effectively the weekend, wherever on the road it falls.
The flexibility built in
The rules have several exceptions that carriers plan around:
The sleeper berth provision lets a driver split the required 10 hours off into two periods, one of at least 7 hours in the sleeper berth and the other at least 2 hours, totalling 10. Neither period counts against the 14-hour window when they’re paired correctly. Teams and drivers stuck in traffic use it to avoid burning the window.
The adverse driving conditions exception adds up to 2 hours to both the 11-hour driving limit and the 14-hour window when unexpected weather or traffic conditions arise that the driver couldn’t have known about at the start of the trip.
The short-haul exception covers drivers who stay within 150 air miles of their normal work location and return there within 14 hours. They don’t have to keep full logs or take the 30-minute break. Much local delivery and construction trucking runs under it.
How it’s enforced and why it matters
Since the electronic logging device mandate took full effect in December 2019, nearly all long-haul drivers record their hours on an ELD tied to the truck’s engine, replacing paper logbooks. That made the rules much harder to stretch, and it made the cost of shipper delays visible in the data.
For freight markets, the hours of service rules set the practical range of a truck in a day, typically 500 to 600 miles of highway driving, and they turn every hour lost at a dock into lost capacity. When regulators debate changes, extending the window, loosening the break rules or adjusting the restart, they’re adjusting national trucking capacity without adding a single truck. That’s why the rules draw more lobbying from carriers, drivers and safety groups than almost any other piece of freight regulation.
For definitions of the other terms that come up in road freight, see the Referently transportation glossary.