DOT Hours of Service and Electronic Logging Devices
Federal hours-of-service rules limit how long a commercial driver may drive and be on duty, and require most of those drivers to record their duty status on an electronic logging device that captures engine power-up and power-down events, vehicle motion and location automatically.
For an employer, the compliance burden isn't mainly the driving limits - drivers manage those. It's the records: six months of duty status data, supporting documents, and payroll records that federal rules explicitly name as part of the hours-of-service audit trail.
First, a correction worth making
You will see "13 hours of driving" cited as the limit. That is the Canadian rule, not the U.S. rule.
| United States | Canada | |
|---|---|---|
| Daily driving limit | 11 hours | 13 hours |
| Daily on-duty limit | 14 consecutive hours | 14 hours |
| Required off-duty before driving | 10 consecutive hours | 8 consecutive hours |
If you run cross-border, both sets apply on their respective sides of the border. Within the U.S., the number is 11.
The limits - property-carrying drivers
11-hour driving limit. A driver may drive a maximum of 11 hours after 10 consecutive hours off duty.
14-hour window. A driver may not drive after 14 consecutive hours have passed since coming on duty following 10 consecutive hours off.
The word doing the work is consecutive. This is a wall clock, not an accumulator. It does not pause for meal breaks, fuel stops, dock detention, or the 30-minute break. Once the 14th hour passes, driving stops - even with unused driving hours remaining. Only three things extend it: adverse driving conditions, a qualifying sleeper-berth split, and the emergency provision.
10 consecutive hours off duty resets both clocks.
30-minute break. Required after 8 cumulative hours of driving time without at least a consecutive 30-minute interruption. Two points employers get wrong:
- The trigger is 8 hours of driving, not 8 hours on duty. This changed with the 2020 rule; older guidance still circulating says otherwise.
- The break may be off-duty, sleeper berth, or on-duty-not-driving. A 30-minute dock wait spent on duty satisfies it.
60/70-hour limit. No driving after 60 hours on duty in 7 consecutive days if you don't run vehicles every day of the week, or 70 hours in 8 consecutive days if you do.
34-hour restart. A 7- or 8-day period may end with 34 or more consecutive hours off duty. Worth stating plainly because outdated guidance is everywhere: the current rule carries no 1 a.m.-5 a.m. condition and no once-per-168-hours limit. Those were suspended and are not in the current text. The restart is optional.
Sleeper berth split. Two rest periods, neither shorter than 2 consecutive hours, one of at least 7 consecutive hours in the sleeper berth, together totalling at least 10 - so 8/2 and 7/3. When the split qualifies, neither period counts against the 14-hour window. That's the entire operational point.
Adverse driving conditions. Up to 2 additional hours, extending both the 11-hour limit and the 14-hour window. The definition matters: conditions "not known, or that could not reasonably be known" before the duty day began. Foreseeable congestion doesn't qualify.
Short-haul exception. Operating within a 150 air-mile radius of the normal work reporting location, returning and being released within 14 consecutive hours, with the required off-duty separation. Short-haul drivers are exempt from both the records of duty status requirement and the 30-minute break. The carrier must keep time records for 6 months. (This was expanded from 100 air-miles and 12 hours by the 2020 rule.)
Passenger-carrying drivers are genuinely different
| Property | Passenger | |
|---|---|---|
| Driving limit | 11 hours | 10 hours |
| Duty limit | 14 consecutive hours | 15 hours on duty |
| Required off duty | 10 hours | 8 hours |
| 30-minute break | Required | Not required |
| 34-hour restart | Available | Not available |
Two of these are structural rather than cosmetic:
The 15 hours is an on-duty limit, not a consecutive-hours window. Off-duty time during the day does extend a passenger driver's shift - the opposite of how the property 14-hour window behaves. Content that treats the two as parallel is wrong.
There is no restart for passenger carriers. The 60/70-hour count just rolls. A motorcoach driver cannot reset it with 34 hours off.
Who is actually covered?
A commercial motor vehicle, for these purposes, is one used on a highway in interstate commerce that:
- Has a gross vehicle weight rating or combination weight of 10,001 pounds or more; or
- Is designed or used to transport more than 8 passengers including the driver, for compensation; or
- Is designed or used to transport more than 15 passengers including the driver, not for compensation; or
- Transports hazardous material in a quantity requiring placarding
The threshold is 10,001 pounds, not 26,001. The 26,001-pound figure is the commercial driver's licence threshold - a different regulation for a different purpose. Content saying hours-of-service applies to vehicles over 26,001 pounds understates coverage enormously.
Hours-of-service applies to plenty of non-CDL drivers. A 12,000-pound box truck, or a three-quarter-ton pickup pulling a trailer to a combined 10,001 pounds, in interstate commerce, is covered. No CDL involved.
Interstate commerce is broader than it sounds. It includes transportation between two places within a state when that movement is part of a journey originating or terminating outside the state. A truck that never crosses a state line can still be in interstate commerce if the freight is on a continuing interstate journey. "We only run in-state" is not by itself an answer.
What an ELD records automatically
Eight data elements: date, time, geographic location, engine hours, vehicle miles, driver identification, vehicle identification, and carrier identification.
Recorded at these events:
| Event | Recorded |
|---|---|
| Driver-indicated duty status change | All eight |
| Engine power up and engine power down | All eight |
| Intermediate recording while in motion | All eight, at least every 60 minutes |
| Login and logout, malfunctions, diagnostics | Date, time, identification |
| Driver certification of the daily record | Date, time, driver ID |
The engine power-up and power-down events are the ignition record - captured automatically every time, independent of anything the driver does.
How driving status is set. The device's in-motion speed threshold must not be configurable above 5 mph. When duty status is driving and the vehicle has been stationary for 5 consecutive minutes, the device prompts the driver; if there's no response within 1 minute, it automatically switches to on-duty not driving.
What can and cannot be edited. The technical specification prohibits an ELD from allowing automatically recorded driving time to be shortened. Driving time can be lengthened or annotated; it cannot be reduced. Every change must be annotated, and the original record is preserved alongside the edit.
A carrier may request an edit but the driver must confirm or reject it, and it takes effect only on the driver's recertification. A carrier may not request edits before the driver has submitted the records, may not alter or erase original data, and may not coerce a false certification.
That preserved original-plus-annotation trail is precisely what an auditor examines.
Records and retention
| Record | Retain for |
|---|---|
| Records of duty status | 6 months from date of receipt |
| Supporting documents | 6 months from date of receipt |
| ELD data and back-up data | 6 months |
| Short-haul time records | 6 months |
| Driver qualification file | Employment + 3 years |
The back-up copy obligation is a separate exposure. A carrier holding only a vendor-hosted copy, that then changes vendors, has a problem.
Your payroll records are hours-of-service records
This is the part employers consistently miss, and it's textual, not inference.
Supporting documents fall into five categories, and the fifth is:
payroll records, settlement sheets, or equivalent documents indicating payment to a driver
The others are bills of lading and itineraries; dispatch and trip records; expense receipts related to on-duty-not-driving time; and fleet management communication records.
The carrier must retain no more than eight supporting documents per driver per 24-hour period - and where there are more than eight, must keep the ones containing the earliest and latest time indications. You keep the bookends of the duty day.
Each supporting document must carry: driver name or identifier, date, location to the nearest city or town, and time convertible to local time.
Two consequences:
First, this is how falsification cases are made. An investigator pulls the duty status records and the settlement sheets and looks for the gap - miles or stops the logs can't account for within the driver's available hours, or a fuel receipt timestamped somewhere the log says the driver was off duty. The case is usually built on the documents around the log, not the log itself. A carrier running hours-of-service and payroll as two disconnected systems is generating its own evidence.
Second, most payroll systems produce documents that fail the data requirements. A settlement sheet with a date and a dollar amount - no location, no time - is a record you're required to retain but that cannot be reconciled to a log. Few employers realise their settlement sheets are regulated records with prescribed fields.
The pay problem nobody solves
Hours-of-service rules govern when a driver may drive, not compensation. Pay comes from wage and hour law, and the two regimes don't line up.
The motor carrier exemption removes covered drivers, helpers, loaders and mechanics from federal overtime requirements - overtime only; minimum wage still applies. A statutory carve-out restores overtime for work involving vehicles of 10,000 pounds or less.
Notice the near-collision: hours-of-service coverage begins at 10,001 pounds; the overtime carve-out ends at 10,000. A driver in a 9,500-pound vehicle is generally outside hours-of-service and inside overtime. The same driver in an 11,000-pound vehicle flips both ways at once.
Now put that against a per-mile pay structure. The 30-minute break may lawfully be taken on-duty-not-driving. Dock detention is on-duty time and generates zero miles. A per-mile rate silent about non-driving time can drop a long-detention week below minimum wage for hours the ELD itself documents.
For wage and hour purposes, the ELD is a timeclock the employer is legally required to run.
Penalties
| Violation | Amount |
|---|---|
| Recordkeeping violations | $1,584 per day, up to $15,846 |
| Knowing falsification of records | Up to $15,846 |
| General violation | Up to $19,246 |
| Driver operating during an out-of-service order | Up to $3,961 first; not less than $7,924 subsequent |
| Employer knowingly permitting it | $7,155 to $39,615 |
(Current as of July 2026. These are inflation-adjusted annually - check before relying on them.)
Note the structure of the recordkeeping penalty: per day, per driver. A systemic problem across a fleet does not produce one fine.
Safety scores. Hours-of-service violations feed the Hours-of-Service Compliance category of the federal safety measurement system, drawing on 24 months of roadside inspection data, severity- and time-weighted, ranked as a percentile against similar carriers. Intervention thresholds: 50% for passenger carriers, 60% for hazardous materials carriers, 80% for general freight.
A form-and-manner violation with no fatigue behind it lands in the same category as a genuine 11-hour overage, and counts for the same 24 months.
On driver licensing: hours-of-service violations do not themselves disqualify a commercial licence. The exposure is indirect - violation leads to an out-of-service order, and driving in violation of that order carries disqualification of 180 days to a year for a first conviction.
What's changing
Nothing in the core numbers. The 11/14/10/30-minute/60-70/34 framework is unchanged. Any page advertising "new 2026 hours-of-service rules" is wrong.
Two pilot programs are the real story. A split duty period pilot would let a driver pause the 14-hour window once per day for between 30 minutes and 3 hours - including on-duty-not-driving time at a pickup or delivery location, which aims directly at the detention problem. A flexible sleeper berth pilot would test 6/4 and 5/5 splits alongside the current 8/2 and 7/3. Driver recruitment for a pre-testing phase began in March 2026.
These grant temporary exemptions to a small number of volunteers and change nothing for anyone else - but they're the clearest signal of direction.
Frequently asked questions
Is the driving limit 11 hours or 13?
11 in the United States. 13 is the Canadian daily driving maximum.
Does the 14-hour window pause for breaks?
No. It's 14 consecutive hours from coming on duty. Only a qualifying sleeper-berth split, adverse conditions, or an emergency extends it.
Can the 30-minute break be taken on duty?
Yes. Off-duty, sleeper berth, or on-duty-not-driving all qualify.
Do hours-of-service rules apply to non-CDL drivers?
Yes. Coverage starts at 10,001 pounds, well below the CDL threshold.
We never leave the state. Are we exempt?
Not necessarily. Interstate commerce includes in-state movement that's part of a journey originating or terminating out of state.
How long do we keep records?
Six months for duty status records and supporting documents, including back-up ELD data. Driver qualification files: employment plus three years.
Are payroll records really part of this?
Yes. Payroll records and settlement sheets are one of the five named supporting document categories, retained six months, and each must carry date, location and time.
Can a driver edit their logs?
Non-driving status can be corrected with annotation. Automatically recorded driving time cannot be shortened. The original is always preserved.
Can we edit a driver's logs?
You can request an edit. The driver must confirm or reject it, and only after they've submitted the records.
Does light duty on the 30-minute break count?
On-duty-not-driving satisfies the break requirement. Whether it's paid is a separate question under wage and hour law, and often the answer is yes.
This guide is general information about reporting requirements, not legal advice. Verify current deadlines, thresholds and penalty amounts against the issuing agency before you file.