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Truck driver hours of service explained

The limits are the easy part and they are quoted below with the subsection each one lives in. The part that matters if you have been hurt is different: the agency has stated that a carrier is liable for these violations if it had or should have had the means to detect them, whether or not it actually knew.

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By Michael Mangione, Legal Research Editor Last reviewed August 1, 2026 17 min read
Driving in a shift
11 hours
Inside a 14-hour window that does not stop for breaks.
Off duty first
10 hours
Consecutive, before driving at all.
Weekly ceiling
60 or 70
In 7 or 8 days, depending on how the carrier operates.
Carrier knew?
Irrelevant
Liability turns on the means to detect, not on knowledge.

Key takeaways

  • The window does not pause. Fourteen hours runs from coming on duty regardless of breaks, so a long wait to load eats driving time.
  • The break is measured against driving time. Not against the clock since the shift began, which is where most explanations go wrong.
  • A carrier cannot say it did not know. The agency's guidance is that liability turns on whether it had the means to detect the violation.
  • A violation is not automatically a cause. It establishes a breach of a rule, and connecting that to a crash is separate work.
Editorial content, not legal advice

This guide is written and reviewed by our editorial team to be accurate and current. It is general information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every limit below is quoted from the current text of the regulation with its subsection given, so you can check any of it. Whether a rule applied to a particular driver on a particular day, and whether an exception was engaged, is a question for an attorney rather than a website. We are a referral service and are paid by attorneys.

01 Why these limits exist at all

Quick answer

Because a tired driver of an eighty thousand pound vehicle is a danger to everybody else on the road, and because the commercial pressure runs entirely the other way. Miles are money, and the limits exist to put a ceiling on how far that pressure can push.

The hours of service rules sit in Part 395 of the federal regulations. They are not advisory and they are not internal company policy: they bind the driver and the carrier both, and the text says so in terms.

Our guide to the federal rulebook covers how you establish that these rules applied to a particular vehicle in the first place, which is always the first question.

Bottom line: the limits bind the carrier as much as the driver, and that is the whole point of them.

02 The daily limits, quoted

Quick answer

Ten consecutive hours off before driving. Then a fourteen hour window, inside which eleven hours of driving are permitted, with an interruption required after eight hours of driving time. These are for property-carrying vehicles; passenger-carrying vehicles have their own section.

Off duty before the shiftThe regulation reads: a driver may not drive without first taking 10 consecutive hours off duty.49 C.F.R. 395.3(a)(1), start of work shift10 hrs
The windowA driver may not drive after a period of 14 consecutive hours after coming on duty following 10 consecutive hours off duty. It runs continuously and does not pause.49 C.F.R. 395.3(a)(2), 14-hour period14 hrs
Driving inside the windowA driver may drive a total of 11 hours during the period specified in paragraph (a)(2) of this section.49 C.F.R. 395.3(a)(3)(i), driving time11 hrs
Interruption of driving timeDriving is not permitted if more than 8 hours of driving time have passed without at least a consecutive 30-minute interruption in driving status. Short-haul drivers under 395.1(e)(1) or (2) are excepted.49 C.F.R. 395.3(a)(3)(ii)30 min

Each row gives the subsection so you can read it yourself rather than take our word for any of it.

Of all the hours of service rules this is the one that surprises people, and it is the fourteen hour window. It is not fourteen hours of work; it is fourteen hours from coming on duty, running continuously. Three hours waiting at a dock are three hours gone, and the driving time left at the far end shrinks accordingly. That is where the pressure to keep going comes from.

03 The weekly ceilings and the restart

Quick answer

Sixty hours in seven days, or seventy in eight, and which applies depends on how the carrier operates rather than on what the driver prefers. A long enough break restarts the count.

Carrier not operating every day of the weekA driver may not drive after having been on duty 60 hours in any period of 7 consecutive days, where the employing motor carrier does not operate commercial motor vehicles every day of the week.49 C.F.R. 395.3(b)(1)60 / 7
Carrier operating every day of the weekA driver may not drive after having been on duty 70 hours in any period of 8 consecutive days, where the employing motor carrier operates commercial motor vehicles every day of the week.49 C.F.R. 395.3(b)(2)70 / 8
Restarting the periodAny period of 7 consecutive days may end with the beginning of an off-duty period of 34 or more consecutive hours.49 C.F.R. 395.3(c)(1)34 hrs

Note that these are on-duty hours, not driving hours. Loading, waiting and inspecting all count.

One detail worth knowing, because it comes up where a driver works for more than one company. The agency's published guidance states that where a driver is employed full time by one carrier and part time by another, the full-time employing carrier determines which of the two weekly rules applies, and the driver does not have the option of selecting the one they prefer.

04 What the thirty-minute break actually requires

Quick answer

It is measured against driving time, not against the clock since the shift started, and it does not have to be spent off duty. Both points are routinely stated wrongly, including by pages explaining the HOS regulations to drivers.

The trigger is eight hours of driving time accumulating without a qualifying interruption. A driver who has been on duty for eleven hours but has only driven six has not hit it.

  • The clock that matters is driving time. Not elapsed time since coming on duty, which is the fourteen hour window and a different rule entirely.
  • Off duty is not required. The regulation provides that the interruption may be satisfied either by off-duty, sleeper berth or on-duty not driving time or by a combination of off-duty, sleeper berth and on-duty not driving time.
  • So a long unload can satisfy it. On-duty not driving counts, which surprises people who assume the driver must stop working.
  • Short-haul drivers are excepted. Those qualifying under 395.1(e)(1) or (2) are outside this requirement, which is one reason establishing the type of operation matters.

Anybody comparing a driver's records against the hours of service rules has to apply the right clock to the right rule, and a summary that merges the two produces a violation where there was none, or misses one that was there.

05 The rule that matters most in a claim

Quick answer

A carrier cannot answer a logging violation by saying it did not know. The agency has published guidance on exactly this, and it is the single most useful thing on this page for anybody who has been hurt.

Agency guidance
Liability does not depend upon actual knowledge
FMCSA, regulatory guidance on 49 C.F.R. 395.3, Question 7

The guidance states: The carrier is liable for violations of the hours of service regulations if it had or should have had the means by which to detect the violations. Liability under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations (FMCSRs) does not depend upon actual knowledge of the violations. Read the section

Read what that does. The question stops being whether anybody at the company noticed and becomes whether the company had the means to notice. Where duty status is recorded electronically, the means to detect is not something a carrier has to go looking for; it is generated automatically and sits in a system somebody has access to.

Two cautions, because this cuts both ways and overstating it would be the same error this site criticises elsewhere. A violation of a driving limit establishes a breach of a rule; it does not by itself establish that the breach caused a particular crash, and connecting the two is separate work involving separate evidence. And whether any of it reaches a jury depends on rules that vary by state. Our guide to commercial truck accident claims deals with how a case is actually built from records like these.

06 How the hours are recorded, and how fast that vanishes

Quick answer

Electronically, for most operations, which is why the record exists at all. The problem is not usually whether it was created. It is whether anybody asked for it before the retention period ran out.

A limit nobody records is unenforceable, which is why the recording requirements sit in the same part of the hours of service rules as the limits themselves.

  • The duty status record is the evidence. The limits in sections two and three mean nothing in a claim without the record showing what the driver actually did.
  • Retention is measured in months, not years. Our guide to the research section and our evidence pages cover the periods and why a preservation demand cannot wait.
  • Supporting documents matter as much as the log. Fuel receipts, gate times and delivery records are what a log gets tested against.
  • Nobody is told when a record is destroyed. It simply is not there when somebody finally asks, and by then the argument is about spoliation rather than hours.

How the same rules apply where a carrier operates only within one state is dealt with on our guide to trucking laws by state, which explains why the intrastate version is usually the federal version with a different label.

07 Red flags

Quick answer

A page stating the limits without citing subsections, the break described as eight hours since the shift began, a violation presented as proof of causation, and any suggestion that a carrier is off the hook because it did not know.

The last of those is the one to remember, because it is the argument a carrier will make.

How this subject gets stated wrongly

Limits with no subsections. These rules are short and public. A page that will not cite them is asking to be trusted rather than checked. The break attached to the wrong clock. It is triggered by eight hours of driving time, not by elapsed time since coming on duty. The break described as requiring off duty. The regulation permits on-duty not driving time to satisfy it. A violation offered as a cause. It proves a rule was broken, which is not the same as proving it caused a crash. We did not know. The agency's guidance is that liability turns on the means to detect, not on knowledge.

A closing note on why this page quotes so much and paraphrases so little. The HOS regulations are among the most summarized rules in this field and among the most frequently misdescribed, usually because a summary of a summary loses which clock attaches to which limit. The text is free, it is short, and every limit above carries the subsection it came from so that you never have to take this page's word for anything.

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Help in all 50 states

MVA Lawyer Network is a nationwide guide. Wherever it happened, we can connect you with an independent attorney licensed in that state.

Northeast Southeast Midwest Southwest West Coast Mountain West Gulf States Alaska and Hawaii

The limits quoted on this page are federal and apply nationally to interstate operations. What varies by state, and what decides the claim itself, is different: whether a regulatory violation may be used as evidence of negligence and for what purpose, how fault is apportioned and whether a share of blame reduces or bars a recovery, how long you have to bring a claim, whether damages are capped, what happens when records are destroyed, and who may bring a claim for somebody killed. A breach of a driving limit is not a finding about any of that, and nothing here indicates whether any claim has merit or what it might be worth. The deadline for bringing a claim, known as the statute of limitations, is running now.

Sources and authorities

One regulation and the agency's own guidance on it, each quoted rather than summarized.

The limits and the liability position

  • 49 C.F.R. 395.3, Maximum driving time for property-carrying vehicles, current text. Source of every limit in sections two and three: the ten consecutive hours off duty before driving at 395.3(a)(1), the fourteen hour period at (a)(2), the eleven hours of driving at (a)(3)(i), the thirty minute interruption after eight hours of driving time at (a)(3)(ii) together with the short-haul exceptions it references, the sixty and seventy hour ceilings at (b)(1) and (b)(2), and the thirty-four hour restart at (c)(1). Cornell Legal Information Institute.
  • Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, regulatory guidance on 49 C.F.R. 395.3, Question 7. Source of the statement quoted in section five that the carrier is liable for hours of service violations if it had or should have had the means by which to detect them, and that liability does not depend upon actual knowledge.
  • Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, regulatory guidance on 49 C.F.R. 395.3, Question 2. Source of the point in section three that where a driver works full time for one carrier and part time for another, the full-time employing carrier determines which weekly rule applies and the driver may not choose.

A version trap worth recording. The 2010 edition of the Code of Federal Regulations states the driving limit in different words and does not contain the interruption provision in its present form. Both editions were retrieved while this page was written and only the current text is quoted. Anybody updating this page should confirm which edition they are reading before altering a figure, because an old edition reads plausibly and is wrong.

What this page does not attempt. It does not cover passenger-carrying vehicles, which have their own limits in a separate section, and it does not work through the sleeper berth provisions or the adverse driving conditions exception. Those are real and they change the arithmetic, and a page claiming to give a complete account of Part 395 in a few thousand words would be overstating itself. What is here is quoted accurately with its subsections; what is missing is named here so you know to ask.

Why the citations sit inside each row. A figure and the subsection it came from travel together in the table above, so neither can be lifted without the other. On a subject this heavily summarized, a number without its provision is exactly how the misdescriptions start.

Our editorial standards

How we keep this guide accurate and worth trusting.

01

Every limit carries its subsection

So no figure on this page has to be taken on trust.

02

We quote rather than summarize

These rules are misdescribed precisely because they get condensed.

03

We name what we left out

Sleeper berth and adverse conditions are not covered, and we say so.

04

We check which edition we are reading

An old CFR edition reads plausibly and gives a different answer.

Michael Mangione, Legal Research Editor
Michael Mangione Verified editor
Legal Research Editor · Founder, The Mangione Group, Inc.

MVA Lawyer Network is edited by Michael Mangione, who has spent more than twelve years working inside contingency-based law firms, building intake departments, designing qualification frameworks, and studying how claims are screened and pursued from the first call through resolution. Almost every account of these rules attaches the break to the wrong clock. The regulation is four paragraphs long and settles it in a sentence.

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Common questions, answered

General information, not legal advice. Whether a rule applied to a particular driver on a particular day is a question for an attorney.

How many hours can a truck driver drive in a day?

Eleven hours of driving, inside a fourteen hour window that begins when the driver comes on duty after ten consecutive hours off. The window runs continuously and does not stop for breaks or loading, so a driver who waits three hours at a dock has three fewer hours available at the far end. Those figures are at 49 C.F.R. 395.3(a)(1) to (a)(3)(i) and are quoted in section two.

When does the thirty-minute break apply?

After eight hours of driving time have passed without a qualifying interruption. It is measured against driving time and not against the clock since the shift began, which is the most common error in explanations of this rule. It also does not require the driver to go off duty: the regulation permits off-duty, sleeper berth or on-duty not driving time, or a combination, to satisfy it.

What are the weekly limits?

Sixty on-duty hours in any seven consecutive days where the carrier does not operate every day of the week, or seventy in any eight consecutive days where it does. These are on-duty hours rather than driving hours, so loading, waiting and inspections all count. A period of seven consecutive days may end with the beginning of an off-duty period of thirty-four or more consecutive hours.

Can a carrier avoid blame by saying it did not know?

The agency's published guidance says otherwise. It states that a carrier is liable for hours of service violations if it had or should have had the means by which to detect them, and that liability does not depend upon actual knowledge. Where duty status is recorded electronically, the means to detect is generated automatically rather than being something the company would have to go looking for.

Does a violation prove the crash was the driver's fault?

No, and overstating this would be a mistake. A breach of a driving limit establishes that a rule was broken. Connecting that breach to a particular collision is separate work requiring separate evidence, and whether a regulatory violation may be put to a jury at all, and for what purpose, depends on rules that vary by state. It is a strong starting point rather than an answer.

Why does this page not cover sleeper berth or bad weather?

Because both genuinely change the arithmetic and neither can be summarized honestly in a line. The sleeper berth provisions allow the required off-duty time to be split, and the adverse driving conditions exception extends limits in defined circumstances. We have named them rather than gesturing at them, so you know there is more in Part 395 than appears here and can ask about it.

How long do the records last?

Months rather than years, which is the practical problem in most cases. The limits are worth nothing in a claim without the duty status record showing what the driver actually did, and nobody is notified when a record reaches the end of its retention period and is destroyed. That is why a preservation demand is urgent work rather than something to do once liability looks clear.

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Injury firms generally work on a contingency basis, meaning the fee is a percentage of what is recovered set out in the written agreement and there is nothing to pay up front. Case costs, meaning experts and records and filing fees, are a separate item from the fee, and the agreement should say plainly who carries them and what happens to them if the case does not succeed.

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