Hours of service (HOS)

The rules exist to keep tired drivers off the road; for a broker they are the arithmetic behind every delivery promise.

• 11 hours driving in a day, after 10 consecutive hours off duty.
• All driving within a 14-hour window that starts when the driver goes on duty and does not pause for waiting at a dock. Four hours of detention are four hours of the window gone.
• A 30-minute break after eight hours of driving.
• 60 hours in 7 days or 70 hours in 8 days, reset by 34 consecutive hours off.

Since electronic logging devices replaced paper logs, the clock is exact and audited at roadside, so the driver who “makes it work” is now the driver who gets a violation. A 900-mile load picked up at noon delivers on the second morning, not tonight, and a driver held three hours at the shipper may not be able to reach the receiver before the appointment tomorrow either.

Two practical consequences. A quoted transit time that ignores the clock is fiction; a broker planning delivery appointments should count driving days at about 500 miles. And an ETA from a driver is only as good as the hours behind it; “I’ll be there tonight” from a driver with two hours left means tomorrow. Tracking tools that ask where the truck is should also ask, or infer, whether the driver can get there.