Short Haul Exemption: Do You Qualify?

The short haul exemption, codified in 49 CFR 395.1(e), allows CMV drivers who operate within 150 air miles of their work reporting location and return within 14 consecutive hours to skip Records of Duty Status, ELD requirements, and the 30-minute break rule. The exemption applies on a per-day basis. Every qualifying condition must be met on every individual day it is claimed. A driver cannot carry a qualification from one day to the next.

FMCSA’s 2020 HOS Final Rule, effective September 29, 2020, expanded the CDL short-haul exemption from 100 air miles to 150 air miles and extended the maximum duty period from 12 hours to 14 hours. Carriers still using the pre-2020 100-air-mile and 12-hour limits for CDL drivers are applying outdated rules. The current standard under 49 CFR 395.1(e)(1) is 150 air miles and 14 hours for all covered CMV drivers.

What the Short-Haul Exemption Waives and What It Does Not

The short-haul exemption is narrower than many drivers and carriers assume. It eliminates three specific requirements, and only those three. Understanding the exact scope of the exemption is the difference between legitimate compliance and a roadside violation.

The exemption waives the following for qualifying drivers on qualifying days:

• Records of Duty Status (RODS): Drivers do not need to maintain a daily log recording each duty status change. A simplified time record replaces the full RODS requirement.

• Electronic Logging Device (ELD): Drivers exempt from RODS are also exempt from the ELD mandate. No registered ELD is required in the vehicle on qualifying days.

• 30-minute break rule: Qualifying short-haul drivers are not required to take a 30-minute off-duty break after 8 cumulative hours of driving without an interruption, per the FMCSA 2020 HOS Final Rule fact sheet.

The exemption does NOT waive the following, and violations of these rules apply in full regardless of short-haul status:

• The 11-hour driving limit: Short-haul drivers may not drive more than 11 hours after 10 consecutive hours off duty.

• The 14-hour on-duty window: The 14-hour limit still applies. The exemption overlaps with it; return within 14 hours is a qualifying condition of the exemption itself. It does not reset or extend the 14-hour clock beyond normal HOS rules.

• The 60/70-hour cumulative limit: Short-haul drivers are still subject to the 60-hour/7-day or 70-hour/8-day rolling cap. On-duty hours accumulate toward this total regardless of short-haul status.

• The 10-consecutive-hour off-duty requirement: A minimum of 10 consecutive hours off duty is required before each duty period. The exemption does not change this.

• DOT medical examination requirements, vehicle weight limits, and all other Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations outside of 49 CFR Part 395 RODS and ELD provisions.

A driver who qualifies for the short-haul exemption and also exceeds the 11-hour driving limit on the same day has committed an HOS violation. The exemption from logging does not create immunity from the underlying time limits.

The Two Provisions: 49 CFR 395.1(e)(1) and 395.1(e)(2)

The short-haul exemption exists in two versions under 49 CFR 395.1(e). Both apply to property-carrying CMV drivers, but they differ in which vehicles they cover and in the structure of the duty period allowance. Applying the wrong version to a driver or fleet is a common audit finding.

49 CFR 395.1(e)(1) is the primary short-haul provision. It applies to all CMV drivers, including those operating vehicles that require a Commercial Driver’s License. Under this provision:

• The driver must operate within a 150 air-mile radius (172.6 statute miles) of the normal work reporting location for the day.

• The driver must return to the work reporting location and be released from duty within 14 consecutive hours of coming on duty.

• The driver must have a minimum of 10 consecutive hours off duty before the next duty period.

• The carrier must maintain time records for the driver showing start time, end time, and total hours on duty. Those records must be retained for 6 months.

Driver-salespersons are explicitly excluded from the “must return to reporting location” requirement under e(1), meaning a driver-salesperson can claim the exemption without returning to their home terminal, provided all other conditions are met.

49 CFR 395.1(e)(2) applies specifically to operators of property-carrying CMVs that do not require a CDL to operate. These are typically medium-duty trucks in the 10,001 to 26,000-pound GVWR range that do not carry hazardous materials or passengers requiring a CDL endorsement. Under this provision:

• The driver must also operate within a 150 air-mile radius of the work reporting location.

• The duty period structure is slightly more flexible: the driver must return and be released within 14 hours on at least 5 of the most recent 7 days worked, and within 16 hours on the remaining days (up to 2 of 7).

• On any day the driver does not meet the 14-hour or 16-hour return conditions, or exceeds the radius, a full RODS must be completed for that day.

Per JJ Keller Compliance Network (November 2025), both e(1) and e(2) use the 150 air-mile radius following the 2020 rule change. Compliance programs referencing different radius thresholds for CDL and non-CDL drivers are working from outdated pre-2020 guidance.

Condition	49 CFR 395.1(e)(1)	49 CFR 395.1(e)(2)
Who it applies to	All CMV drivers, including CDL holders	Operators of property-carrying CMVs NOT requiring a CDL
Radius limit	150 air miles (172.6 statute miles)	150 air miles (172.6 statute miles)
Duty window	14 consecutive hours per day	14 hrs on 5 of last 7 days; 16 hrs on remaining 2 days
Return to reporting location	Required (except driver-salesperson)	Required
Minimum off-duty before next shift	10 consecutive hours	10 consecutive hours
RODS/ELD required	No, on qualifying days	No, on qualifying days
30-minute break required	No	No
60/70-hour limit applies	Yes	Yes
11-hour driving limit applies	Yes	Yes
Time record retention	6 months	6 months

How Air Miles Work and Why Road Distance Gets Drivers Violated

The single most common source of short-haul exemption violations is distance miscalculation. Drivers and dispatchers who calculate whether a route stays within 150 miles using road distance instead of air-mile (straight-line) distance frequently find themselves in unintentional violation during a roadside inspection or audit.

Air miles are the straight-line distance. One air mile equals approximately 1.15 statute miles. The eCFR text for 49 CFR 395.1(e)(1) specifies the radius as “150 air-mile radius (172.6 statute miles). That parenthetical is the straight-line equivalent, not a road-miles conversion. A delivery route that covers 145 road miles may still exceed the 150 air-mile radius if the routing goes in multiple directions away from the reporting location.

The radius is measured from the work reporting location, not from the driver’s home or the truck’s overnight parking location. The work reporting location is wherever the driver formally clocks in and takes dispatch. For drivers with a fixed terminal, this is straightforward. For drivers who report to different yards on different days, the radius is calculated fresh from each specific reporting location on each day.

The radius applies to every point on the route during that duty period, not just the final delivery. If a driver’s route takes them 130 air miles out, then loops north to a second stop at 155 air miles from the terminal, the exemption is lost for the entire day the moment the 150-air-mile boundary is crossed. Distance tracking must account for the farthest point reached during the duty period, not just the start and end points.

Carriers can calculate their air-mile radius by plotting a circle on a coordinate-based mapping tool using the terminal’s GPS coordinates as the centre point. Road-mapping software that returns route-based mileage does not provide the correct measurement for this purpose. An enforcement officer determining whether the exemption applies will calculate straight-line distance from the reporting location to the driver’s logged position, not the odometer reading.

The distinction matters operationally. A local delivery driver whose daily routes stay within a 100-mile service area is almost certainly within 150 air miles and qualifies without difficulty. A regional LTL driver running multi-stop routes across a wider service area needs to verify each route specifically, because a route that travels 130 road miles northeast and 50 road miles south can easily exceed 150 air miles from the origin point even though the total road distance is far less. Carriers that have not mapped their actual delivery zones against the 150-air-mile radius from each terminal are operating on assumptions rather than verified compliance.

A practical calculation method: convert the 150-air-mile radius to GPS coordinates by noting that 1 degree of latitude equals approximately 69 statute miles, and that 150 air miles equals approximately 172.6 statute miles. Dividing 172.6 by 69 gives a latitudinal radius of approximately 2.5 degrees from the reporting location. Longitudinal degrees vary by latitude but a similar calculation applies.

Any routing tool that plots a radius circle in statute miles around a GPS coordinate will provide a workable visualisation. The key is to calculate from the terminal coordinates, not from the driver’s home address or from an approximate city centre.

Time Records Required Under Both Exemptions

Qualifying for the short-haul exemption does not eliminate the documentation requirement entirely. It replaces the full Records of Duty Status with a simpler time record. Drivers and carriers who believe the exemption means no paperwork at all are wrong, and that misunderstanding creates clean audit violations.

Under both 49 CFR 395.1(e)(1) and (e)(2), the carrier must maintain time records for each qualifying driver showing at a minimum:

• The time the driver reports for duty each day
• The time the driver is released from duty each day
• Total hours on duty for the day
• Total on-duty hours for the preceding 7 days (to support 60/70-hour limit verification)

These records must be retained for a minimum of 6 months and made available to FMCSA enforcement personnel on request. A carrier whose drivers qualify for the exemption but who has no time records in place violates 49 CFR 395.1(e)(1)(iii) or (e)(2)(vi). During a compliance review, missing time records for short-haul drivers are treated as equivalent to missing RODS and can affect the carrier’s Hours-of-Service Compliance BASIC score in the CSA Safety Measurement System.

At a roadside Level I inspection, an officer who asks a short-haul driver for their records will expect to see either a qualifying time card for that day or a full RODS if the driver exceeded conditions. A driver who cannot produce either document will be cited for failing to maintain records of duty status under 49 CFR 395.8, regardless of whether they genuinely qualified for the exemption that day.

Carrying a completed time card on the vehicle each day is the minimum compliance action. Some carriers pre-print time cards with the driver’s terminal location and the carrier’s DOT number to streamline the process and reduce the risk of incomplete records at a scale or inspection stop.

The 60/70-hour verification requirement embedded in the time records is frequently overlooked. The carrier must retain the total on-duty hours for the preceding 7 days, not just the current day.

For a driver who has worked the same local route for weeks, this means the carrier’s time record system must be able to produce a rolling 7-day on-duty summary on demand. Carriers that track only daily start and end times without accumulating rolling totals are not fully compliant with the record-keeping requirement, even if each individual day record is otherwise complete.

On any day a driver exceeds the qualifying conditions, whether by distance, time, or failure to return, a full RODS must be completed for that day. The driver must produce either a paper log or an ELD record covering the exceeding day. If the driver does not have paper logs available and the vehicle does not have an ELD, the violation is both an HOS violation and an ELD violation, compounding the enforcement exposure.

When the Exemption Breaks: the 8-in-30 ELD Rule

The exemption breaks the moment any single qualifying condition is not met on a given day. A driver who returns to the terminal after 15 hours on duty, or whose route takes them to a delivery point 160 air miles from the terminal, loses the exemption for that specific day and must complete a full RODS. There is no grace period, no partial credit, and no ability to retroactively invoke the exemption after the condition has already been exceeded.

The 8-in-30 ELD rule adds a cumulative consequence on top of the per-day breakage. Under FMCSA ELD and short-haul guidance, if a driver is required to complete a full RODS because they exceeded short-haul conditions on more than 8 days in any rolling 30-day period, they must use an ELD on every day they exceed short-haul conditions from that point. A driver exceeding conditions 9 or more days in 30 is no longer treated as an exempt driver for ELD purposes on those days and must have an ELD-equipped vehicle or use paper logs.

The 8-in-30 rule does not convert the driver permanently to non-exempt status. It applies only to the exceeding days within the 30-day window. If the driver returns to qualifying within the next 30-day period and exceeds conditions on fewer than 9 days, the ELD requirement reverts to the normal short-haul treatment. Carriers with drivers who regularly operate near the boundaries of the exemption should track exceeding days actively rather than discovering compliance issues during an audit or inspection.

Carriers who discover their drivers have been exceeding the 8-in-30 threshold without ELD records should consult with a DOT compliance attorney before a formal compliance review surfaces the pattern.

Retroactive paper logs are not an acceptable substitute for contemporaneous records, and FMCSA auditors specifically look for short-haul operations with inconsistent records as an indicator of systematic non-compliance. For a full breakdown of the penalties that apply when HOS exemptions are misused or violated, see HOS Violations: Fines, Penalties & CSA Impact.

Losing the exemption mid-duty-day also restores all the HOS rules that the exemption suspended. A driver who starts the day planning to qualify for the short-haul exemption, exceeds the 150-air-mile radius at 11:00 a.m., and has not taken a 30-minute break after 8 cumulative hours of driving, is now subject to the 30-minute break rule for the rest of the day. The exemption cannot be selectively applied to one part of a duty period. It applies in full or not at all.

By TruckerWiki Editorial Team | Regulatory sources: 49 CFR 395.1(e) via eCFR, FMCSA 2020 HOS Final Rule, FMCSA HOS Final Rule Fact Sheet, FMCSA ELD and HOS Exemptions page. As of May 2026, the 150-air-mile radius and 14-hour duty window under 49 CFR 395.1(e)(1) remain current and unchanged from the September 29, 2020 effective date.