By the TruckerNavi compliance team, led by Dmitry Borovoy, a New Jersey-licensed insurance producer and author of "Safety Manager: From Zero to Expert".
The short answer. The short-haul exception in 49 CFR 395.1(e)(1) exempts a driver from exactly two sections: 395.8, the record of duty status, which is what the ELD mandate hangs on, and 395.11, supporting documents. To hold it you must stay inside a 150 air-mile radius (172.6 statute miles) of your normal work reporting location, return to that same location and be released within 14 consecutive hours (the regulation carves out the driver-salesperson from that one condition), and have at least 10 consecutive hours off duty between each 14 hours on duty, 8 hours for a passenger-carrying driver. Your carrier must keep time records for 6 months. Nothing else is removed. The 11-hour driving limit, the 60/70-hour limit and the 10-hour reset are all still on you.
The 16-hour exception is a different rule entirely. 395.1(o) stretches the 14-hour driving window to 16 hours, once every 7 consecutive days, for a property-carrying driver who has come back to the normal work reporting location for the previous five duty tours. It gives you two extra working hours, not driving hours, and it does not touch your logs. People mix the two up constantly because both say "short haul" and both mention 16 hours. They do opposite things: one removes paperwork, the other buys time.
Read the first line of the regulation literally. "A driver is exempt from the requirements of 395.8 and 395.11 if..." That is a closed list. Everything in Part 395 that is not 395.8 or 395.11 remains in force, with one carve-out that lives in a different section.
| Rule | Applies to a short-haul driver? | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Record of duty status, and therefore the ELD | No, exempt | 395.8 |
| Supporting documents (BOLs, dispatch records, receipts, payroll) | No, exempt | 395.11 |
| 30-minute break after 8 hours of driving | No, exempt | 395.3(a)(3)(ii) excludes 395.1(e)(1) and (e)(2) |
| 11-hour driving limit | Yes | 395.3(a)(3)(i) |
| 14-hour driving window | Yes, and the exception is stricter: you must be released by hour 14 | 395.3(a)(2) and 395.1(e)(1)(ii) |
| 10 consecutive hours off before driving | Yes, written into the exception itself | 395.3(a)(1) and 395.1(e)(1)(iii)(A) |
| 60 hours in 7 days or 70 hours in 8 days | Yes | 395.3(b) |
| 34-hour restart | Yes, available | 395.3(c) |
| Time records kept by the carrier for 6 months | Yes, this is the price of the exception | 395.1(e)(1)(iv) |
One scoping note on the rows above. Every row that cites 395.3 is the property-carrying set: the section is titled "Maximum driving time for property-carrying vehicles". A passenger-carrying driver using the same exception runs under 395.5 instead: 10 hours of driving following 8 consecutive hours off duty, and no driving after the 15th hour on duty. The 30-minute break in 395.3(a)(3)(ii) never applied to passenger drivers in the first place, so it is not something the exception hands them.
The 30-minute break is the one real operational gift beyond the paperwork. 395.3(a)(3)(ii) opens with "Except for drivers who qualify for either of the short-haul exceptions in 395.1(e)(1) or (2)", so a qualifying short-haul driver can drive past 8 cumulative hours without a break. FMCSA's own Interstate Truck Driver's Guide to Hours of Service confirms the same thing.
This is where owner-operators and 3-truck fleets get hurt, so it is worth spelling out mechanically.
The regulation supplies the conversion itself: 150 air miles equals 172.6 statute miles. Air miles are nautical, measured as a straight line, so the boundary is a circle drawn on a map centered on your normal work reporting location. Two consequences owners miss:
An operation is still allowed to change its normal reporting location from time to time. FMCSA regulatory guidance to 395.1, Question 15 answers this directly: yes, but the trip from the old location to the new one must be recorded on a record of duty status, because on that trip the driver did not return to the normal work reporting location.
Two groups are shut out of 395.1(e)(1) by name, and one occupation is carved out of a single condition inside it. All three are one-line rules that decide whether your whole recordkeeping setup is legal.
| Driver | What the rule says | Section |
|---|---|---|
| A driver running under the non-CDL short-haul paragraph | Expressly "ineligible to use the provisions of 395.1(e)(1), (g), and (o)": no CDL short haul, no split sleeper berth, no 16-hour window | 395.1(e)(2) |
| Specially trained drivers of specially constructed oil well servicing vehicles | "Specially trained drivers of such commercial motor vehicles are not eligible to use the provisions of paragraph (e)(1)". They get their own waiting-time and sleeper rules instead | 395.1(d)(2) |
| Driver-salespersons | Carved out of the 14-hour return-and-release condition itself: the text reads "The driver, except a driver-salesperson, returns to the work reporting location and is released from work within 14 consecutive hours". Separately, 395.3(b) does not apply to a driver-salesperson whose total driving time stays under 40 hours in any 7 consecutive days | 395.1(e)(1)(ii), 395.1(c) |
Two neighbours often mistaken for short haul, and worth knowing so you do not claim the wrong one: 395.1(f) lets drivers making local deliveries from retail stores or retail catalog businesses to the final consumer ignore 395.3(a) and (b) inside a 100 air-mile radius, but only from December 10 to December 25 each year. And 395.1(p) gives motion picture production drivers a 100 air-mile radius with a 10-hour driving limit and a 15-hour on-duty limit. Neither is a logbook exception: they change hours, not paperwork.
There are two short-haul paragraphs and they are not variants of each other. (e)(1) is for any driver, including CDL holders. (e)(2) is only for property-carrying vehicles that do not require a CDL under Part 383, and it trades the 14-hour release rule for a weekly pattern.
| Parameter | Short haul, CDL: 395.1(e)(1) | Short haul, non-CDL: 395.1(e)(2) |
|---|---|---|
| Who it covers | Any driver, property or passenger, CDL included | Property-carrying CMV only, where no CDL is required under Part 383 |
| Radius | 150 air miles (172.6 statute miles) from the normal work reporting location | 150 air miles from the normal work reporting location |
| Return requirement | Return and be released within 14 consecutive hours | Return to the normal work reporting location at the end of each duty tour |
| Duty-period ceiling | 14 hours, every day | May not drive after the 14th hour on 5 days of any 7 consecutive days, and after the 16th hour on 2 days of any 7 |
| Exempt from | 395.8 and 395.11 | 395.3(a)(2), 395.8 and 395.11 |
| ELD or logbook | Not required | Not required |
| 11-hour driving limit | Applies | Applies |
| Off-duty between shifts | 10 consecutive hours property, 8 passenger | 10 consecutive hours under 395.3(a)(1) |
| 30-minute break | Not required | Not required |
| 60/70-hour limit | Applies | Applies |
| Time records | Carrier keeps 6 months: report time, total on-duty hours, release time, prior 7 days under 395.8(j)(2) | Identical 6-month requirement |
| 16-hour exception 395.1(o) | Available, once every 7 consecutive days | Not available. The rule makes these drivers ineligible |
| Split sleeper berth 395.1(g) | Available | Not available |
The last two rows are the part people never read. 395.1(e)(2) states outright that a driver using it is "ineligible to use the provisions of 395.1(e)(1), (g), and (o)". That is not a penalty, it is a package deal: the non-CDL paragraph already builds two 16-hour days into every week, so it does not also hand you the once-a-week (o) exception on top.
Two ways to lose it mid-shift: you cross the 150 air-mile line, or the clock passes hour 14 before you are released. FMCSA regulatory guidance to 395.1, Question 21 is unusually specific about what happens next, and it is milder than most owners fear:
Yes to both, with conditions, and FMCSA answered all three variants in its regulatory guidance to 395.1. The guidance was issued April 4, 1997, so it prints the old numbers: read 100 air miles as 150, 12 hours as 14, and 10 hours of driving as 11 for a property-carrying driver. The mechanics did not change.
Yes, and this is the setup most small regional fleets should be running. 395.8(a)(1)(ii)(A) lets a carrier keep a driver on paper instead of an ELD when the driver operates in a manner requiring completion of a record of duty status on not more than 8 days within any 30-day period. The same paragraph lists three more paper allowances, each on its own: a driveaway-towaway operation in which the vehicle being driven is itself part of the shipment; a driveaway-towaway operation in which the vehicle being transported is a motor home or recreation vehicle trailer; and a vehicle manufactured before model year 2000, as reflected in the VIN shown on the registration.
| Days per 30 that need a record of duty status | What the driver may use | What the carrier must have ready |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Nothing, pure short haul | Time records, 6 months |
| 1 to 8 | Paper grid log on those days | Time records plus blank log books in the trucks and drivers trained to fill them |
| 9 or more | ELD required | An ELD from the FMCSA registered list (395.22(a)), driver accounts, and the in-vehicle packet under 395.22(h): data-transfer instruction sheet, malfunction instruction sheet, and blank grid-graphs for at least 8 days |
The counting is rolling, not calendar. Nine long days in any 30-day window puts you over, even if they straddle two months. In practice a dispatcher should be tracking this number the same way they track the 70-hour clock. Where those long days go wrong on the CSA side is covered in HOS violations and what they cost in CSA, and the difference between a corrected log and a falsified one is the subject of log edits versus falsification.
395.1(o) is titled simply "Property-carrying driver". It exempts you from 395.3(a)(2) and nothing else, which means the 14-hour driving window becomes a 16-hour driving window for one shift. Three conditions, all of which must be true:
| Question | Short haul 395.1(e)(1) | 16-hour window 395.1(o) |
|---|---|---|
| What it removes | 395.8 and 395.11, plus the 30-minute break | 395.3(a)(2) only |
| ELD or log needed that day | No | Yes |
| Extra driving hours | None | None, the 11-hour limit is untouched |
| Extra on-duty hours | None | 2, hour 15 and hour 16 |
| How often | Every day, if you qualify | Once every 7 consecutive days, or after a 34-hour restart |
| 30-minute break | Not required | Required |
| Radius limit | 150 air miles | None, only the return requirement |
| Available to non-CDL drivers under (e)(2) | Not applicable, they use (e)(2) | No |
Notice the row that surprises everyone: 395.1(o) has no mileage radius at all. A driver can run 300 miles out and back and still use the 16-hour window, as long as the five previous tours ended at the normal location and today's shift ends there within 16 hours. It is not a short-haul rule in the geographic sense. It is a "you go home every night" rule.
Until September 29, 2020 the CDL short-haul exception was 100 air miles and 12 hours. FMCSA's hours-of-service final rule, published at 85 FR 33396 on June 1, 2020 and effective September 29, 2020, extended the maximum duty period from 12 to 14 hours and the radius from 100 to 150 air miles, aligning (e)(1) with the non-CDL paragraph (e)(2) and with the 150 air-mile agricultural radius in 395.1(k). FMCSA's own answer to the carriers who wanted the radius kept at 100 was that "the frequent delivery stops generally made by short-haul drivers mean they rarely approach the 11-hour driving limit". The same rule moved the 30-minute break trigger to 8 hours of driving time and expanded the adverse driving window.
The practical fallout: forum posts, older provider blogs and even some FMCSA regulatory guidance documents from 1997 still say "100 air-mile radius exemption". The guidance itself is still valid, but read the numbers in it as historical. Today the figure is 150, and the duty period is 14. If a source tells you 100 and 12, it has not been updated in six years and you should not trust its other numbers either.
On a compliance review the findings are scored against Appendix B to Part 385, which sorts regulations into acute and critical. Critical means the violation "relates to management and/or operational controls" and is "indicative of breakdowns in a carrier's management controls". A pattern is quantitative: "the number of violations required to meet a pattern is equal to at least 10 percent of those examined". Each rating factor then scores satisfactory at 0 acute or critical points, conditional at 1 point, unsatisfactory at 2 or more.
| What goes wrong on a short-haul fleet | Cited as | Appendix B |
|---|---|---|
| No record at all for days claimed as short haul, because the exception was lost or never qualified | Failing to require a driver to prepare a record of duty status using the appropriate method, 395.8(a)(1) | Critical |
| Time cards or logs thrown out after a few weeks | Failing to preserve a driver's record of duty status or supporting documents for 6 months, 395.8(k)(1) | Critical |
| Time card written up after the fact to hide a long day | Making, or permitting a driver to make, a false report regarding duty status, 395.8(e)(1) | Critical |
| Driver drove 12 hours because "we are short haul" | Driving more than 11 hours, 395.3(a)(3)(i) | Critical |
| Released at hour 15 without qualifying for the 16-hour exception | Driving after the end of the 14th hour after coming on duty, 395.3(a)(2) | Critical |
| Called back after 7 hours off | Driving without taking an off-duty period of at least 10 consecutive hours, 395.3(a)(1) | Critical |
| 16-hour exception used without the five prior tours, or twice inside 6 days | Requiring or permitting a property-carrying driver to drive after having been on duty 16 consecutive hours, 395.1(o) | Critical |
Read that table as a checklist of what your time records have to be able to disprove. Every row is decided from documents you produce yourself: the time card, the payroll file, the dispatch record, the fuel receipts. Federal civil penalties for hours-of-service violations are set by statute and adjusted for inflation every year, so no fixed dollar figure is worth quoting; what is stable is the rating consequence. If you want to see how the same records read to an investigator before one shows up, that is exactly what a Mock DOT Audit is for, and the wider picture is in what actually happens during a DOT audit.
TruckerNavi runs the safety side for Russian-speaking carriers across NY, NJ and FL: short-haul eligibility review, time-record templates that survive an audit, HOS training for drivers, DQ files, Drug & Alcohol program and DOT audit prep. Safety Compliance: БАЗОВЫЙ $99/mo, СТАРТ $189/mo, ПРЕМИУМ $499/mo. Want to see what an investigator would find in your time records before he does? Mock DOT Audit, $399. Opening a company from scratch? Authority Bundle, $499. Russian, English and Ukrainian.
See Safety Compliance plans →Or just call: (315) 871-0833 · WhatsApp
No, as long as you qualify every single day. The ELD mandate sits in 395.8(a)(1)(i), and 395.1(e)(1) exempts a short-haul driver from all of 395.8, so there is nothing left to record electronically. The exception is conditional: return to the normal work reporting location and be released within 14 consecutive hours, stay inside the 150 air-mile radius, and have your carrier keep a time record for 6 months. Miss one condition and that day needs a record of duty status.
Yes. 395.1(e)(1) is written for any driver, CDL or not, property-carrying or passenger-carrying. The separate non-CDL paragraph, 395.1(e)(2), covers only property-carrying vehicles for which a CDL is not required under Part 383, and it swaps the daily 14-hour release rule for a weekly pattern: no driving after the 14th hour on 5 days of any 7 consecutive days, and after the 16th hour on 2 days of any 7. Those drivers are barred from (e)(1), (g) and (o).
A time record, retained 6 months, showing four things for each driver each day: the time the driver reported for duty, the total hours on duty, the time released from duty, and, for drivers used for the first time or intermittently, the total time for the preceding 7 days under 395.8(j)(2). FMCSA guidance adds the driver's name or other identification and the date worked. Nothing has to be electronic: a payroll time card qualifies.
Up to 8 days in any 30-day period. 395.8(a)(1)(ii)(A)(1) lets a carrier keep a driver on a paper grid instead of an ELD when the driver operates in a manner requiring completion of a record of duty status on not more than 8 days within any 30 days. The window is rolling, not calendar, so a ninth long day inside any 30 puts that driver on an ELD. Paper is also allowed in driveaway-towaway operations and in vehicles manufactured before model year 2000.
No, not without a restart. 395.1(o)(3) bars the exemption if you have taken it within the previous 6 consecutive days, with one way out: a new 7 or 8 consecutive day period that began with an off-duty period of 34 or more consecutive hours under 395.3(c). You also need the previous five duty tours to have ended with release at the normal work reporting location, and today's shift to end there within 16 hours of coming on duty.
No. 395.3(a)(3)(ii) opens with "Except for drivers who qualify for either of the short-haul exceptions in 395.1(e)(1) or (2)", so a qualifying short-haul driver may pass 8 cumulative hours of driving time without a 30-minute interruption. It is the only driving limit the exception actually removes. The moment the driver falls out of the exception, the break applies again for that day, along with the record of duty status.
No, only that one day. FMCSA regulatory guidance to 395.1, Question 21: "The driver must only have in his/her possession a record of duty status for the day he/she does not qualify for the exemption." You start it "immediately after he/she becomes aware that the terms of the exemption cannot be met", and it must cover the entire day, recorded retroactively back to the time you came on duty. The previous seven days and the following seven days are unaffected.
Yes, and the number of crossings does not matter. FMCSA's ELD FAQ states that drivers qualify for the short-haul exception "regardless of the number of times they enter the U.S., provided they meet all requirements of the short-haul exception under 49 CFR 395.1(e)". The 8-days-in-30 rule is a separate test: if the driver operates in the US more than 8 days in a 30-day period and does not qualify for short haul after the eighth day, the ELD rule applies.
It is 49 CFR 395.1(e)(1). A driver is exempt from the record of duty status rules in 395.8 and the supporting document rules in 395.11 if the driver stays within a 150 air-mile radius (172.6 statute miles) of the normal work reporting location, returns to that same location and is released from work within 14 consecutive hours, and has at least 10 consecutive hours off duty separating each 14 hours on duty (8 hours for a passenger-carrying driver). The carrier must keep time records for 6 months. That is the entire exception. It removes the paperwork, not the hours.
No, as long as you actually qualify every day. The ELD mandate lives in 395.8(a)(1)(i), and a short-haul driver under 395.1(e)(1) or (e)(2) is exempt from all of 395.8, so there is nothing to record electronically. Separately, 395.8(a)(1)(ii)(A) lets a carrier use paper instead of an ELD when a driver needs a record of duty status on not more than 8 days within any 30-day period, in a driveaway-towaway operation, or in a vehicle manufactured before model year 2000. Many small fleets run short haul most days and keep a paper log book in the cab for the occasional long day.
No, and this is the single most expensive misunderstanding in the rule. Short haul exempts you from 395.8 and 395.11 only. The 11-hour driving limit, the 14-hour driving window, the 10 consecutive hours off before driving, and the 60-hours-in-7-days or 70-hours-in-8-days limits all still apply. The only driving limit the exception actually removes is the 30-minute break, because 395.3(a)(3)(ii) excludes drivers who qualify for either short-haul exception. The carrier must still record report time, total on-duty hours and release time for every driver every day and keep those records 6 months.
The regulation itself states the conversion: 150 air miles equals 172.6 statute miles. Air miles are measured as a straight line, so the radius is a circle drawn on a map from the normal work reporting location, not a distance driven. Your odometer can read far more than 172.6 miles in a day and you remain inside the exception, as long as no point of the run leaves that circle.
You lose the exception for that day and you owe a full record of duty status for the entire day. FMCSA regulatory guidance under 395.1 is explicit: the driver must begin to prepare the record of duty status immediately after becoming aware that the terms of the exception cannot be met, and the record must cover the entire day, recording retroactively the status changes that happened before the exception was lost. You do not need to produce the previous seven days, and you do not have to keep logging for the following seven days. It is that one day.
It is a separate exception that extends the 14-hour driving window in 395.3(a)(2) to 16 hours for a property-carrying driver. Three conditions: the driver returned to the normal work reporting location and was released there for the previous five duty tours; the driver returns and is released within 16 hours after coming on duty following 10 consecutive hours off duty; and the driver has not used the exception within the previous 6 consecutive days, unless a new 7 or 8 day period began with an off-duty period of 34 or more consecutive hours. In practice it is once every 7 consecutive days.
No. 395.1(o) exempts you from 395.3(a)(2) and from nothing else. The 11-hour driving limit under 395.3(a)(3)(i) is untouched, so the extra two hours are working hours, not driving hours: loading, unloading, waiting at a dock, a second delivery cycle. The 30-minute break still applies and the 60/70-hour limit still applies. You also still need an ELD or a log for that day, because 395.1(o) says nothing about 395.8.
A driver of a property-carrying CMV that does not require a CDL uses a different paragraph, 395.1(e)(2), which exempts from 395.3(a)(2), 395.8 and 395.11. That driver must stay within 150 air miles, return to the normal work reporting location at the end of every duty tour, and may not drive past the 14th hour on 5 days of any 7 consecutive days or past the 16th hour on 2 days of any 7. The regulation then states plainly that such a driver is ineligible to use 395.1(e)(1), the sleeper berth split in 395.1(g), and the 16-hour exception in 395.1(o). Two 16-hour days a week are built in, so the (o) exception is not needed.