Truck drivers in the United States can drive a maximum of 11 hours per day, and their entire on-duty window tops out at 14 hours. These limits are set by federal Hours of Service (HOS) regulations enforced by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and apply to drivers of property-carrying commercial vehicles. Here’s how the daily, weekly, and rest rules work in practice.
The 11-Hour Driving Limit
After taking 10 consecutive hours off duty, a trucker may drive for up to 11 hours total. Those 11 hours don’t need to be continuous. A driver can split them up across the day, stopping and starting as needed for fuel, food, or loading. What matters is that total time behind the wheel doesn’t exceed 11 hours before the next mandatory rest period.
At highway speeds, 11 hours of driving typically translates to roughly 600 to 700 miles per day, depending on speed limits, traffic, terrain, and how often the driver stops. That range is a useful benchmark for planning delivery timelines.
The 14-Hour On-Duty Window
The 11 hours of driving must fit inside a 14-hour window that starts ticking the moment a driver comes on duty. This window includes everything: pre-trip inspections, fueling, loading and unloading, waiting at docks, paperwork, and driving itself. Once 14 consecutive hours have passed since the driver started their day, they cannot drive again, even if they only spent 8 of those hours actually driving.
One important detail: off-duty time during the day does not pause or extend the 14-hour clock. If a driver comes on duty at 6 a.m., takes a 2-hour personal break in the middle of the day, and returns to duty, the window still closes at 8 p.m. The break didn’t push the deadline to 10 p.m. This rule prevents drivers from stretching a workday across too many waking hours, even if they technically rested in between.
Mandatory Breaks During a Shift
Drivers must take at least a 30-minute break after 8 cumulative hours of driving without an interruption. The break doesn’t have to be spent off duty entirely. Any non-driving period of 30 consecutive minutes counts, whether the driver is sitting in the sleeper berth, handling paperwork on duty, or simply parked and off the clock. Most drivers build this break into a meal stop or a fueling pause they’d take anyway.
Rest Between Shifts
Before a driver can start a new 11-hour driving period and a fresh 14-hour window, they must take 10 consecutive hours off duty. This is the minimum rest gap between workdays. In practice, many drivers park for the night, sleep in their truck’s sleeper berth, and resume driving the next morning.
Drivers also have the option to split that 10-hour rest into two periods instead of taking it all at once. One period must be at least 7 consecutive hours in the sleeper berth, and the other must be at least 2 hours off duty (in or out of the sleeper). The two periods must add up to at least 10 hours total. When a driver uses this split-sleeper provision, neither rest period counts against the 14-hour window, which gives long-haul drivers more flexibility to rest during slow periods and drive when traffic is lighter.
Weekly Hour Caps
Beyond the daily limits, truckers face cumulative weekly caps. A driver working for a carrier that operates trucks 7 days a week cannot be on duty for more than 70 hours in any 8-day rolling period. For carriers that don’t operate every day, the limit is 60 hours in 7 days. “On duty” here includes all work time, not just driving.
Once a driver hits the weekly cap, they can reset it by taking 34 consecutive hours off duty. After that restart, the 60 or 70-hour clock starts fresh. Many drivers time their restarts over a weekend, effectively giving themselves a day and a half off before beginning a new cycle.
How ELDs Keep Drivers Honest
Most commercial truck drivers are required to use an Electronic Logging Device (ELD), which connects to the truck’s engine and automatically records driving time. ELDs replaced paper logbooks, which were easier to falsify. When a driver is pulled over for an inspection, enforcement officers can review the ELD data to confirm compliance with all Hours of Service limits. Violations can result in fines, out-of-service orders that ground the driver on the spot, and negative marks on the carrier’s safety record.
Exceptions for Short-Haul and Agricultural Drivers
Not every trucker follows the same rules. Short-haul drivers who operate within a limited radius of their home terminal and return to that location each day may qualify for modified HOS requirements, including exemptions from keeping detailed logs.
Agricultural haulers get an even broader exception. During state-designated planting and harvesting periods, drivers transporting agricultural commodities (livestock, produce, fish, and similar goods) within a 150 air-mile radius of where the commodities originated are fully exempt from HOS rules. Their driving and working hours are not limited within that radius, and they don’t need an ELD or paper logs. Once a driver crosses beyond the 150-mile boundary, standard HOS rules kick in from that point forward, and the driver must begin logging time.
What a Typical Day Actually Looks Like
While the law allows up to 11 hours of driving, most truckers don’t drive the maximum every single day. Loading and unloading can eat 2 to 4 hours of the 14-hour window. Traffic delays, fueling stops, weigh stations, and pre-trip inspections all chip away at available drive time. A realistic average for many over-the-road drivers is closer to 8 to 10 hours of actual driving per day, with the remaining on-duty time spent on non-driving tasks.
Team drivers, where two drivers share a truck and alternate between driving and sleeping in the sleeper berth, can keep the truck moving for roughly 22 hours a day. Each driver stays within their own 11-hour driving limit, but the truck itself covers nearly double the daily distance of a solo operation. This setup is common for time-sensitive freight.