FMCSA Hours of Service Rules: The 11 and 14 Hour Limits

US Hours of Service (HOS) rules let a property-carrying driver drive up to 11 hours within a 14-hour on-duty window, and the window only opens after 10 consecutive hours off duty. A 30-minute break is required once you've driven 8 cumulative hours without a qualifying break. A weekly limit then caps you at 60 hours on duty in 7 days or 70 hours in 8 days, depending on whether your carrier operates every day. Those numbers, 11, 14, 10, 30, and 60/70, make up the framework most drivers need to know.

Drivers misread the 14-hour window more than any other limit. Once it opens, it runs on the wall clock and does not pause for breaks, fuel stops or loading. You can drive for only 11 of those 14 hours, and the window keeps counting whether the truck moves or not, so a long detention or a slow load comes straight out of your available driving time.

Two exceptions come up often enough to matter. The 150 air-mile short-haul exception lets qualifying drivers skip records of duty status, provided they start and end at the same reporting location and are released within 14 hours, though the carrier must still keep time records for them. The 16-hour "big day" exception lets certain drivers who return to their work reporting location extend the on-duty window to 16 hours once every 7 consecutive days, or again after a 34-hour restart, if they meet its conditions.

The 34-hour restart lets a driver reset the weekly 60/70-hour clock to zero by taking at least 34 consecutive hours off duty. The sleeper-berth provision lets drivers split the required 10 hours off into two qualifying periods. Each one comes with specific conditions, and the ELD is what tracks whether a driver stayed inside them.

On-duty time is all the time from when a driver starts work, or must be ready to work, until the driver is relieved of all work and all responsibility for it. That definition in 49 CFR 395.2 is why the 14-hour window fills faster than many drivers expect: driving is only one of the activities that count.

The regulation lists the rest. Waiting at a terminal, a shipper or another facility to be dispatched counts, unless the carrier has relieved the driver from duty. So does inspecting or servicing the truck, loading and unloading or supervising it, staying with a vehicle being loaded, repairing a disabled truck or waiting with it, giving a drug or alcohol test sample when the carrier directs it, and any other work for a motor carrier. Paid work for a company that is not a motor carrier counts too, so a second job eats into the same limits.

Two details change how the log is kept. Resting in a parked truck or in the sleeper berth is not on-duty time. And the 30-minute break no longer has to be off duty: under 49 CFR 395.3, it can be off duty, sleeper berth, on-duty not driving, or a combination, as long as the 30 minutes are consecutive and without driving. A driver who spends 30 minutes at the dock without driving has taken the break, provided the ELD logs that time as on-duty not driving.

Passenger-carrying drivers work under different limits, set in 49 CFR 395.5. A bus or motorcoach driver may drive up to 10 hours after 8 consecutive hours off duty, and may not drive after having been on duty 15 hours following those 8 hours off. The weekly limits match the trucking rules: 60 hours on duty in 7 consecutive days, or 70 hours in 8 days if the carrier runs vehicles every day of the week.

The 15-hour limit works differently from the 14-hour window for trucks. It adds up on-duty hours, so off-duty time taken during the day does not count toward it, while the property-carrying window runs on the clock from the moment the driver comes on duty. The 34-hour restart in the property-carrying rules is not part of the passenger-carrying limits. A fleet that runs both trucks and buses needs each driver's ELD set to the right ruleset, or the clocks on the display will be wrong for one group of drivers.

Hours of Service is the reason the ELD mandate exists. An Electronic Logging Device ties the driver's duty status to the vehicle's engine and movement data, so the 11-hour and 14-hour clocks run on their own and the driver, the dispatcher and an inspecting officer all see the same record. A good ELD warns drivers before they run out of hours, which lets them plan a stop instead of taking a violation.

For a fleet, HOS compliance no longer depends on someone doing the math by hand at the end of a shift. The platform's GPS tracking device handles HOS logging alongside GPS tracking and diagnostics, so dispatch can see who has hours left before assigning the next load. Nobody finds out a driver is out of hours after they've already committed to the run.

The US property-carrying limits and main exceptions in one table. Rulemaking can change any of them, so confirm with the FMCSA before you rely on an exception.