Trucking
Federal rules.
The trucking floor.
US commercial trucking runs on the regulations the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration writes under 49 CFR Subchapter B — how long a driver can drive, when the day's clock has to stop, what gets recorded, and how the recording gets enforced. I cover the rules cleanly and cite primary sources.
Hours of service
The substantive driving-time rules under 49 CFR Part 395 Subpart A — the 11-hour driving limit, the 14-hour on-duty window, the 30-minute break, the 60/70-hour weekly cap, the split sleeper berth, short-haul and agricultural exceptions, and adverse driving conditions. Walks the September 2020 reform and cites the eCFR, the Federal Register preambles, and the FMCSA's own guidance.
Open →Electronic logging devices
The federal ELD mandate under 49 CFR Part 395 Subpart B — what an ELD is, who has to use one, what it must record, how the FMCSA's self-certification list and revocations work, what personal conveyance and yard moves mean in practice, and the vendor landscape (Samsara, Motive, Geotab, Omnitracs/Solera, Garmin eLog) that grew up around the rule.
Open →What I haven't covered yet
The trucking section is young. Hours of service and the ELD mandate are the two halves of Part 395 that ride together in every roadside inspection; the regulatory regime extends further, and the sibling pages it naturally grows into:
- Commercial Driver's License — the CDL regime under 49 CFR Part 383: classes, endorsements, restrictions, and the Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse interaction.
- Drug and alcohol testing — 49 CFR Part 382 testing requirements and the FMCSA Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse query workflow.
- Hazardous materials — the HMR at 49 CFR Parts 100–185, hazmat endorsements, placarding, and the HM-181 / HM-215 amendments cycle.
- Broker transparency — the broker-rulemaking docket under 49 CFR Part 371 and the chargeback / records-disclosure rules.
- Safety ratings — the FMCSA's Safety Measurement System, the BASIC categories, and the carrier-safety-rating workflow.
- Carrier registry — DOT-number and MC-number lookup against the FMCSA SAFER and L&I systems, parallel to the aviation tail-number lookup.