Hours of Service (HOS)

Hours of service rules define the maximum driving and on-duty time allowed for commercial truck drivers in the United States. The core rules for property-carrying drivers allow a maximum of 11 hours of driving within a 14-hour on-duty window after 10 consecutive hours off-duty, with a mandatory 30-minute break after 8 cumulative hours of driving. There's also a 60/70-hour rolling limit over 7 or 8 consecutive days, which can be reset with a 34-hour restart. These rules are federally mandated and non-negotiable – violations result in drivers being placed out of service and carriers facing fines.

HOS regulations directly affect shipment planning and transit times. A driver who hits their 11-hour driving limit mid-route must stop – regardless of how close they are to the delivery. This makes HOS a practical constraint in load planning, especially for long-haul lanes that push the edge of a single-day drive. Shippers who don't account for HOS when setting delivery expectations or scheduling dock appointments end up with late deliveries, detention charges, and frustrated carriers.

Since the ELD mandate took full effect in 2019, HOS compliance has become more transparent. Electronic logging devices automatically record driving time, eliminating the paper logbooks that were easy to falsify. For shippers, this means transit time estimates are more reliable – but it also means there's less flexibility in the system. A driver stuck in traffic or delayed at a dock is burning clock hours that can't be recovered. This is one reason detention at origin and destination has become such a hot-button issue: time wasted at the dock directly reduces the driver's available driving hours and can push deliveries to the next day.

Understanding HOS helps shippers set realistic transit expectations, avoid scheduling appointments that create unnecessary driver wait times, and build better relationships with carriers who value shippers that respect their drivers' time.