Board-Certified Personal Injury Attorney
You prove a violation of hours-of-service rules by lining up the driver’s electronic log against everyday business records kept by the trucking company and others: engine and location data, dispatch messages, bills of lading, receipts, and payroll records. When those timestamps disagree with the log, they show how long the driver was really working and driving before the crash. A Galveston County truck accident attorney can demand the records and build the timeline that exposes a violation.
What Hours-of-Service Rules Apply to Truck Drivers?
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) sets federal limits on how long a truck driver can drive when hauling freight in interstate commerce, which includes a load that started or will end outside Texas even if this truck never leaves the state. The rule also bars any carrier from permitting or requiring a driver to exceed these limits.
For property-carrying commercial motor vehicles, such as tractor-trailers, the core federal limits are:
- Rest before driving: A driver may not start driving without first taking 10 consecutive hours off duty.
- The 14-hour window: A driver may not drive after the 14th consecutive hour since coming on duty. Qualifying split rest in the sleeper berth, the bunk area of the cab, pauses the count.
- The driving cap: Inside that window, the driver may drive a total of 11 hours.
- A 30-minute break: After eight hours of driving without a 30-minute interruption, the driver must take one before driving again. Off-duty, sleeper-berth, or on-duty time spent not driving all count, alone or combined.
- Weekly caps: A driver may not drive after 60 hours on duty in seven days, or 70 hours in eight days if the carrier runs trucks every day. An off-duty stretch of 34 or more hours in a row restarts the count.
The 14-hour window starts when the driver comes on duty, and the weekly caps count every on-duty hour, so investigators check work time as closely as driving time.
Texas Sets Different Limits for Purely In-State Freight
Texas adopts the federal safety rules for trucks over 26,000 pounds operating within the state, but it sets different hour limits for drivers in intrastate commerce. An intrastate driver may drive 12 hours after eight consecutive hours off duty, may not drive after 15 hours on duty, and may not drive after 70 hours on duty in seven days. Texas also requires intrastate carriers to use an electronic logging device unless an exemption applies.
The bill of lading shows where each trip started and ended, which helps investigators tell whether the load came from or was headed outside Texas.
Why On-Duty Time Matters
Under federal rules, on-duty time runs from the moment a driver starts work, or must be ready to work, until the carrier relieves the driver of all work. The definition covers:
- Waiting at a terminal or shipper to be dispatched, unless the carrier has relieved the driver
- Inspecting, servicing, or conditioning the truck
- Loading or unloading, or attending the truck while someone else loads it
- Repairing a broken-down truck or waiting with it for help
Suppose a driver starts the day with three hours at a loading dock, attending the truck while it is loaded, but logs that time as off duty. The false entry moves the start of the 14-hour window three hours later on paper, which makes up to three hours of driving past the real end of the window look legal. Dispatch messages and delivery paperwork can show when the truck actually arrived at the dock.
What Does the Electronic Logging Device Record?
Federal rules require carriers to have most drivers keep a record of duty status, a daily log of driving, on-duty, off-duty, and sleeper-berth time, on an electronic logging device, or ELD. Paper logs remain allowed only in narrow situations, such as a truck built before model year 2000. Short-haul drivers who stay within 150 air miles, return to their work reporting location, are released within 14 hours, and get 10 hours off between shifts need no log at all. Their carrier must keep time records instead.
The ELD records the same data every time a driver changes duty status or starts or shuts off the engine. It also makes an automatic entry after every hour the truck moves without one. Each entry captures:
- The date, time, and location
- Engine hours and vehicle miles
- Identification for the driver, the truck, and the carrier
If the truck covered 90 miles during a period the driver logged as rest, with no co-driver at the wheel and no personal use of the truck recorded, the log and the engine data cannot both be right.
Drivers can edit an ELD record, but the rules require an annotation for every change. When the carrier wants a change, the driver has to confirm or reject it, and the change takes effect only after the driver recertifies and resubmits the record. The carrier may not alter or erase the original data, and must keep a back-up copy on a separate device for six months.
What Records Can Reveal an Hours-of-Service Violation?
Carriers must also keep supporting documents, business records used to check a driver’s log, in these categories:
- Bills of lading, itineraries, and schedules showing where each trip started and ended
- Dispatch records and trip records
- Expense receipts from on-duty time when the driver was not driving
- Electronic messages sent through the carrier’s fleet management system
- Payroll records and settlement sheets
A carrier need not keep more than eight per driver per day, but the eight it keeps must include the earliest and latest times. The federal log rules require toll receipts only for paper-log periods, so for an ELD driver, the toll-road operator’s records can fill that gap. A truck stop’s receipts, a customer’s delivery logs, and the driver’s phone records also carry timestamps the carrier did not create.
What if the Driver’s Logbook Does Not Tell the Full Story?
Investigators place every record on an hour-by-hour timeline of the days before the crash. Mismatches that point to a violation include:
- A fuel receipt stamped during a logged sleeper-berth break
- A dispatch message the driver answered during logged off-duty hours
- A delivery time the driver could only have made by driving past the 11-hour limit
The carrier can argue that an exception applied. Federal rules allow up to two extra hours, beyond both the 11-hour driving limit and the 14-hour window, when snow, ice, fog, or unusual road or traffic conditions keep the driver from finishing the run safely. The exception covers only conditions the driver did not know about, or could not reasonably have known about, right before the duty day began or before driving again after a qualifying rest or sleeper-berth break. The same test applies to the carrier right before it dispatched the driver. The timeline shows whether the facts fit that exception.
How Can Hours-of-Service Violations Affect a Truck Accident Claim?
When a driver broke the hour limits, investigators look at the trucking company too. Federal rules make the carrier responsible for requiring its drivers to follow safety rules, and they bar the carrier from coercing a driver into a false log. Dispatch schedules and pay records can show whether the company set deadlines that only an over-hours driver could meet.
Federal rules also bar a driver from operating a truck while too fatigued to drive safely, even within the hour limits, and they bar the carrier from requiring or permitting it. Evidence of an hours violation could possibly support a claim that the driver, and sometimes the trucking company, failed to act with reasonable care, depending on the case’s facts.
The timeline, the crash reconstruction, and witness accounts then show whether driver fatigue helped cause the crash.
Act Before the Six-Month Retention Period Ends
Federal rules require carriers to keep logs, supporting documents, and ELD back-up copies for six months. A written demand to preserve the records, sent soon after the crash, puts the company on notice before those periods run out.
Texas separately sets a two-year deadline to file a personal injury lawsuit after a motor vehicle accident, counted from the day the claim legally arises.
How Bill T. Wells Can Help
Bill T. Wells has been Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law since 1990 and has handled serious personal injury and wrongful death cases for over 30 years. Bill is Of Counsel to The Payne Law Group and owns and leads its Galveston County office in League City. He has made more than 500 appearances in Galveston County courts. In truck accident cases, Bill investigates trucking logs, black box data, and safety records.
Your first call goes to our team in Bryan, and Bill then handles your case personally. The initial consultation is free and our phones are answered 24 hours a day. Se Habla Español. Contact our office to get started.