DOT 60-Hour Rule: Limits, 34-Hour Restart, and Penalties

The DOT 60-hour rule bars a commercial driver from operating after accumulating 60 hours of on-duty time in any rolling 7-day window, and it applies whenever the carrier does not run commercial motor vehicles every day of the week. The limit sits in 49 CFR 395.3(b)(1) and is enforced by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration alongside daily driving caps, rest periods, and break requirements.¹

How the Rolling 7-Day Window Works

The cycle is rolling, not a fixed calendar week. Each day you look back at the previous six days, add up every on-duty hour, and if the total reaches 60 you cannot drive again until enough old hours drop off the back of the window or you complete a full restart.

Your available hours therefore change every day. If last Monday was a 12-hour on-duty day and today you have used 55 of your 60 hours, those 12 hours drop off at midnight and Tuesday opens up considerably. Drivers who run this math daily can plan a heavy Friday without hitting the wall at the worst moment.

One thing to keep straight: the limit tracks all on-duty time, not just time behind the wheel. Two drivers who each drove 45 hours in the same week can have very different amounts of remaining availability if one spent 12 hours loading freight and the other spent three. Every working minute pulls from the same 60-hour bucket.

What Counts as On-Duty Time

Federal rules define on-duty time as all time from when you begin work, or are required to be ready to work, until you are relieved of every work responsibility. That reaches well beyond driving:²

Waiting at a shipper’s dock, sitting in the yard for dispatch, or attending a terminal safety meeting.
Pre-trip inspections, fueling, checking tires, and other vehicle servicing.
Loading, unloading, supervising a lumper, watching the dock crew, and signing bills of lading.
Waiting with a disabled vehicle for roadside assistance.
Travel to and time at a drug or alcohol collection site.
Paperwork, dispatch calls, training, and other administrative work for the carrier.
Compensated work for anyone else, including a side job worked during a layover.

Sitting in a parked commercial vehicle also counts unless you are in the sleeper berth or have been fully relieved of duty. Drivers who pull into a truck stop and scroll their phone for two hours in the driver’s seat are still on the clock if they haven’t been released from responsibility for the vehicle and cargo.

Personal conveyance is the one meaningful carve-out. When you have been completely released from work, moving the truck for personal reasons (finding a place to park after unloading, driving to a restaurant, commuting home) logs as off-duty and does not add to your 60 hours. It cannot be used to get closer to your next pickup, to reposition at the carrier’s direction, or to squeeze in more miles after hitting a limit.³

60-Hour/7-Day vs. 70-Hour/8-Day

Which cap you run under depends on the carrier’s operating schedule. A carrier that does not run commercial motor vehicles every day of the week is on the 60-hour/7-day limit. A carrier that operates seven days a week may use the 70-hour/8-day limit, which gives 10 extra hours spread across one additional day.¹

The 70-hour option is permissive. A seven-day carrier can still put some or all of its drivers on the 60-hour cycle if that fits the schedule better. But a carrier that closes even one day per week cannot use the 70-hour limit at all.⁴

Know which cycle your carrier has assigned you, because it controls how your Electronic Logging Device calculates available hours. A truck running under the wrong cycle produces inaccurate logs, and inaccurate logs attract attention at roadside inspections and compliance reviews.

Bus and motorcoach drivers face the same 60/70-hour weekly caps but different daily limits, and the 34-hour restart discussed below is not available to them.⁵

Resetting With the 34-Hour Restart

Property-carrying drivers who have burned through most of the week’s allowance early can reset the rolling cycle by taking 34 or more consecutive hours off duty. After a valid restart, the full 60 hours become available again without waiting for old hours to fall off naturally.¹

Any combination of off-duty time and sleeper berth time works, as long as the full 34 hours are consecutive and uninterrupted by any on-duty activity. Twenty hours off followed by 14 hours in the sleeper counts. So does 34 straight hours at home.⁶

The restart is optional. Some drivers find it more efficient to spread hours carefully across the week and never need one. But when a heavy Monday and Tuesday have left only a few hours by Wednesday, it is the fastest way back to full availability.

Come back to work even a few minutes early and the restart fails. Your prior rolling history carries forward as if you had never stopped. Inspectors verify restarts through ELD data, and a failed restart often produces an immediate out-of-service order because the driver’s actual available hours are lower than the log shows.

Daily Limits That Stack With the 60-Hour Cap

The weekly cap is not the only constraint. Three daily limits apply to property-carrying drivers at the same time:⁵

After 10 consecutive hours off duty, you can drive for a maximum of 11 hours.
You cannot drive after the 14th consecutive hour since coming on duty. Off-duty time during the day does not pause or extend this 14-hour clock.
After 8 cumulative hours of driving you must take at least 30 consecutive minutes of non-driving time, which can be off-duty, sleeper berth, or on-duty not-driving.

Whichever limit you hit first is the one that stops you. It is entirely normal to have 20 hours left on the weekly clock and still be legally parked because the 14-hour window closed.

When the Limits Bend

A few narrow exceptions change the picture.

Short-haul drivers. Drivers operating within a 150 air-mile radius (about 172.6 statute miles) of the normal work reporting location who return within 14 consecutive hours are exempt from full Record of Duty Status logging and ELD requirements. The carrier keeps a simple time record instead. The 60-hour weekly cap still applies. Exceed the 150-mile radius or the 14-hour window even once and a full log is required for that day.⁷

Adverse conditions. When weather, road closures, or traffic that were not foreseeable at the start of the trip delay you, federal rules allow up to 2 additional hours of driving beyond the 11-hour daily limit to reach a safe stopping point. Known or predictable conditions (a forecasted snowstorm, scheduled construction) do not qualify.⁷

Emergency declarations. When the President, a state governor, or FMCSA declares an emergency, drivers providing direct assistance to the relief effort receive a temporary suspension of Hours of Service rules entirely, lasting up to 30 days unless extended. The suspension covers the route to the emergency even through states not named in the declaration. It does not cover CDL, drug testing, or hazardous materials requirements, and drivers are still expected not to operate while fatigued.⁸

Penalties for Exceeding 60 Hours

At the roadside, an inspector who finds a driver over the 60-hour limit issues an out-of-service order. The driver cannot operate the vehicle again until enough time has passed to bring them back under the legal limit. The truck sits where it is, or someone else moves it.

Civil penalties for 2026, from the schedule in 49 CFR Part 386, Appendix B:

Carriers: up to $19,246 per violation for non-recordkeeping offenses, including exceeding the 60-hour limit.
Drivers: up to $4,812 per violation for the same category.
Egregious driving-time violations (exceeding a daily driving limit by more than 3 hours) trigger maximum penalties under law.
Recordkeeping violations: up to $15,846 total, assessed at $1,584 per day.

⁹

Criminal exposure exists as well. Under 49 U.S.C. 521, a person who knowingly and willfully violates motor carrier safety regulations faces up to $25,000 in fines and up to one year in prison per offense. For an employee, criminal penalties generally apply only when the violation could have led to death or serious injury, with fines capped at $2,500 in that case.¹⁰

Repeated violations also feed FMCSA’s Safety Measurement System, raising the carrier’s score in the HOS Compliance Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Category. A high score can trigger an intervention or compliance review and affects insurance rates, customer contracts, and operating authority.

Where Violations Actually Get Caught

Most commercial drivers use an Electronic Logging Device that connects to the truck’s engine and records driving time automatically. The ELD handles the driving portion; the driver is responsible for correctly categorizing non-driving time as on-duty, sleeper berth, or off-duty. Misclassifying two hours of loading time as off-duty looks small, but it compounds across the week and can put a driver over 60 hours without the log showing it.

Falsification is treated far more seriously than a straight hours violation. FMCSA treats knowing falsification as its own offense category, and it can serve as evidence of willfulness that turns a routine civil penalty into criminal exposure. When an inspector cross-checks ELD data against fuel receipts, toll records, and GPS breadcrumbs and finds discrepancies, the investigation rarely stops at a single log entry.

1
eCFR. 49 CFR 395.3 – Maximum Driving Time for Property-Carrying Vehicles
2
eCFR. 49 CFR 395.2 – Definitions
3
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Personal Conveyance
4
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. May a Motor Carrier Switch From a 60-Hour/7-Day Limit to a 70-Hour/8-Day Limit or Vice Versa?
5
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Summary of Hours of Service Regulations
6
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Interstate Truck Driver’s Guide to Hours of Service
7
eCFR. 49 CFR 395.1 – Scope of Rules in This Part
8
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Emergency Declarations, Waivers, Exemptions and Permits
9
eCFR. Appendix B to Part 386 – Penalty Schedule
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 49 USC 521 – Civil Penalties