Whether employers have to pay you for drive time depends on what kind of driving it is. Your normal trip from home to work and back is not paid under federal law, but driving between job sites during the day, driving as the main duty of your job, and certain out-of-town and after-hours trips are all compensable. The rules come from the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Portal-to-Portal Act, and they draw sharper lines than most people expect.
These Rules Only Apply to Non-Exempt Employees
Federal drive time rules matter for non-exempt workers, typically hourly employees. If you’re classified as exempt under the FLSA — salaried and meeting the duties tests — your employer owes you your full salary for any week you perform work, and travel hours don’t generate extra pay because you aren’t entitled to overtime in the first place. Everything below assumes you’re non-exempt.
Your Normal Commute Is Not Paid
Driving from home to your workplace and back at the end of the day is not compensable. Federal regulations say so directly: an employee traveling from home before the regular workday and returning at the end of it is engaged in ordinary commuting, and that time is not work time — whether you report to one location or a different job site each day.1eCFR. 29 CFR 785.35 – Home to Work; Ordinary Situation The Portal-to-Portal Act reinforces this by shielding employers from having to pay for travel to and from the place where your principal work activities begin.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 U.S. Code 254 – Relief From Liability and Punishment
Your workday clock starts when you arrive and begin your first principal activity, not when you pull out of the driveway.
When Drive Time Has to Be Paid
The commute rule has several well-defined exceptions. When driving is woven into the job itself, it counts as hours worked.
Travel Between Job Sites During the Workday
Once your workday has started, any driving your employer requires between locations is paid. If you report to an office at 8 a.m. and drive to a client site at 10 a.m., that drive is compensable. The regulation is explicit: travel from job site to job site during the workday must be counted as hours worked.3eCFR. 29 CFR 785.38 – Travel That Is All in the Days Work This is one of the clearest rules in wage law and one of the most commonly missed.
Special One-Day Assignments in Another City
If you normally work at a fixed location and your employer sends you to a different city for a single day, the travel there and back is paid. The Department of Labor’s own example: a Washington, D.C., employee sent to New York for the day gets paid for the entire trip, minus the time they would have spent on their regular commute to their usual office.4eCFR. 29 CFR 785.37 – Home to Work on Special One-Day Assignment in Another City So if your normal commute runs 30 minutes each way and the special trip runs two hours each way, the employer can deduct that 30 minutes in each direction. Meal breaks during the trip are also deductible.
Driving as Your Core Job
When driving is why you were hired — delivery routes, traveling repair calls, long-haul trucking — every minute behind the wheel is paid. Federal regulation treats this as travel that is “all in the day’s work,” including required stops and loading at each location.5U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 22 – Hours Worked Under the Fair Labor Standards Act An employee who drives a truck, bus, or automobile, or rides as a required assistant, is working while traveling, except during genuine meal breaks or employer-provided sleep periods.6eCFR. 29 CFR 785.41 – Work Performed While Traveling
Overnight Travel
Travel that keeps you away from home overnight follows its own rules. Any travel during your normal working hours is paid, even on a day you don’t usually work. If your usual schedule is Monday through Friday, 9 to 5, and your employer books you on a Saturday flight from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., those four hours are compensable.5U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 22 – Hours Worked Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
A critical distinction: if you’re the driver during overnight travel outside your regular work hours, that time is still paid because driving itself is work. If you’re riding as a passenger outside your regular hours, on a plane, train, or in someone else’s car, and you’re free to relax, the DOL does not consider that work time.6eCFR. 29 CFR 785.41 – Work Performed While Traveling If you spend that passenger time reviewing documents, making work calls, or otherwise doing what the employer requires, the time becomes compensable regardless of the hour. Time at a hotel between work days is not paid, as long as you’re genuinely free to use the time for your own purposes.
Waiting and Loading Time
You’ve arrived at a dispatch point or loading dock and you’re waiting. If you’re fully relieved of duties, told in advance you can leave, and given enough time to do something useful with the break, that waiting time is off the clock. If any of those conditions fails — you have to stay with the vehicle, you might be called at any moment, or the wait is too short to be genuinely useful — you’re working while waiting, and the time is paid.7U.S. Department of Labor. FLSA Hours Worked Advisor – Off Duty Waiting Time
Driving a Company Vehicle
Using an employer-owned vehicle to commute does not automatically make the trip paid. The Portal-to-Portal Act specifically addresses this: commuting in a company vehicle is not a principal work activity, as long as the travel stays within the employer’s normal commuting area and a written agreement about the vehicle’s use exists between you and the employer.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 U.S. Code 254 – Relief From Liability and Punishment
The picture changes when the employer attaches strings. If you’re required to transport heavy equipment, pick up coworkers along the route, or follow a mandated path that prevents personal stops, those restrictions can turn the commute into compensable work. The more control the employer exercises over how and where you drive, the harder it is to call the trip a mere commute.8U.S. Department of Labor. Travel Time
Remote and Hybrid Workers Driving to the Office
If you work from home and occasionally drive to a corporate office, the trip is generally treated as an unpaid commute under the same home-to-work logic. In a 2020 opinion letter, the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division addressed an employee who teleworks part of the day and then drives to the office for the rest. The agency concluded that when the employee has enough personal time between the two work segments, the drive to the office is ordinary commuting and not compensable.9U.S. Department of Labor. WHD Opinion Letter FLSA2020-16
The key factor is whether you had a genuine break between working at home and heading in. Close your laptop, run errands, and drive in an hour later, and it looks like a commute. Finish a call at home and immediately drive to a meeting, and the line between worksite-to-worksite travel and commuting gets blurry. Courts have reached mixed conclusions on these facts. When in doubt, log exactly when you stopped home-based work and when you started driving.
Mileage Reimbursement Is a Separate Question
Whether your drive time is paid and whether your employer reimburses mileage are two different things. No federal law requires mileage reimbursement across the board. Only a handful of states, including California, Illinois, and Massachusetts, require employers to reimburse work-related vehicle expenses.
There is a federal floor, though: if unreimbursed driving expenses effectively push your hourly earnings below the minimum wage, your employer must cover the difference. The DOL treats costs incurred primarily for the employer’s benefit the same way it treats uniform costs, so no deduction or unreimbursed expense may reduce your pay below the required minimum wage or cut into overtime.10U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 16 – Deductions From Wages for Uniforms and Other Facilities Under the FLSA This protection matters most for lower-wage employees who drive their own vehicles extensively for work.
When employers do reimburse voluntarily, many use the IRS standard mileage rate, which for 2026 is 72.5 cents per mile for business travel.11Internal Revenue Service. 2026 Standard Mileage Rates That rate is a tax benchmark, not a legal requirement, but it’s the most common yardstick in practice.
State Laws Can Give You More
Federal rules are the floor, not the ceiling. The FLSA explicitly provides that state or local laws setting higher standards take precedence.12Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC Chapter 8 – Fair Labor Standards – Section 218 Some states define the start of the workday more broadly, for example counting time from when a construction worker arrives at a designated meeting point rather than the remote job site. Others impose stricter rules on employer-required travel or on-call driving. Look up your state labor agency’s guidance on travel time; your employer must follow whichever law gives you the greater benefit.
What to Do If You’re Not Being Paid
Start by documenting everything: pay stubs, your own travel logs, company policies on driving and vehicle use, and any emails or texts directing you to travel. If your employer doesn’t have a system for logging travel time, keep your own daily log noting when you left, where you drove, and when you arrived. That’s far better than reconstructing months of travel from memory during a dispute.
Then raise the issue with your employer or HR directly. Many underpayments are genuine oversights, especially at companies with mobile workforces where travel patterns shift often. If that doesn’t resolve it, you can file a complaint with the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division by calling 1-866-487-9243 or visiting their website.13U.S. Department of Labor. How to File a Complaint You can also file with your state labor agency, which may offer faster processing or broader protections. The federal statute of limitations is two years from the date of the violation, extending to three years if the violation was willful.14Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 U.S. Code 255 – Statute of Limitations
Federal law prohibits your employer from retaliating against you for raising a wage complaint, whether formally with the DOL or informally with a manager. Retaliation includes firing, cutting hours, demoting, threatening, or making conditions bad enough to force you to quit. The protections apply even if your complaint turns out to be based on a mistaken understanding of your rights.15U.S. Department of Labor. FAB 2022-2 – Protecting Workers From Retaliation If the DOL finds retaliation, remedies can include back pay, reinstatement, and additional damages.