The agricultural exemption: 150 air-miles from the source

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Planting and harvest do not run on a dispatcher's clock. Crops come ready when they come ready, weather opens and closes the days, and the work bunches into short, intense seasons. The hours rules were written with that reality in view, and the result is one of the broadest exemptions in Part 395: for the farm work it names, inside the circle it draws, the provisions of Part 395 do not apply at all.

That breadth is exactly why this exemption needs careful reading. A driver can spend a morning fully outside the hours rules and an afternoon fully inside them, in the same truck, on the same day. The line between the two is a circle on a map — and for one kind of load, livestock, the circle sits in a different place than drivers expect. This guide goes through 49 CFR 395.1(k) and FMCSA's published guidance on the agricultural commodity exception, piece by piece.

First: the season, and the state decides it

The exemption lives inside planting and harvesting periods, and those periods are determined by each state. There is no single national season in the rule. The same load, hauled in two different states, is judged against each state's own call on whether its planting or harvesting period is running.

That makes the season a fact to check, not a feeling to trust. A carrier running farm work across state lines should know, for the work in front of it, which states' periods are open. Outside a planting or harvesting period, the exemption is simply not there, however farm-shaped the load looks.

The four kinds of work the exemption covers

Section 395.1(k) names the transportation it covers. Each kind has its own center point for the 150 air-mile circle, so read the centers as carefully as the loads.

1. Agricultural commodities, from the source

Transporting agricultural commodities from the source to a location within a 150 air-mile radius from the source. For commodities, the circle is centered on the source — the place the commodity is first loaded, as 49 CFR 395.2 defines source. That definition covers a farm, a ranch, or the first aggregation point, as the definition provides. The wording matters: say the place the commodity is first loaded, as 395.2 defines it, and you have the center of the circle right.

2. Farm supplies, out to a farm or place of use

Transporting farm supplies for agricultural purposes from a wholesale or retail distribution point to a farm or other place of use, within 150 air-miles of the distribution point. Here the circle is centered on the point the supplies started from — the wholesale or retail distribution point — and the trip runs outward, to where the supplies will be used.

3. Farm supplies, wholesale to retail

Transporting farm supplies from a wholesale distribution point to a retail distribution point, within 150 air-miles of the wholesale point. This leg is part of the same chain: supplies moving down from wholesale toward the farms they will serve, one link earlier than the trip out to the farm itself. Its circle is centered on the wholesale point.

4. Livestock — and note the difference

Transporting livestock, as defined in the Emergency Livestock Feed Assistance Act — including insects — within a 150 air-mile radius from the final destination of the livestock.

Stop on that center point, because it is the trap in this rule. For commodities, the circle is centered on the source, where the trip begins. For livestock, the circle is centered on where the livestock ends up — the final destination. A driver who measures a livestock move from the loading point, the way he measures every other load in this guide, has drawn the circle in the wrong place and may judge exempt miles that are not exempt, or the other way around. Same distance, different center. Livestock work must be measured from the destination end.

What "do not apply" really means

The rule's words are that the provisions of this part shall not apply. That means the whole of Part 395 steps aside for that work: no hour limits, no ELD, no logbook for the exempt portion. Not a longer window, not a relaxed limit — the part simply does not reach the work inside the circle during the season.

Compare that with the short-haul exception elsewhere on this site, where the limits remain in full and only the paperwork changes. The agricultural exemption is a different and larger thing. Inside its circle, for its work, in its season, there are no federal hours clocks running at all. Which leads directly to the next point: when the clocks do start, they start clean.

How the radius works on a real trip

FMCSA's published guidance on the agricultural commodity exception answers the questions drivers actually ask about trips that do not fit neatly inside the circle.

The exception covers all portions of a trip that occur inside the radius of the source — loaded or empty — even when the final destination is outside the radius. A trip is not judged all-or-nothing by where it ends. It is judged mile by mile: the miles inside the circle are exempt, and the miles outside it are not. The empty miles count the same way as the loaded ones, while the truck is inside the radius.

Multiple pickups are allowed. A driver gathering a commodity from more than one stop does not break the exemption by stopping more than once. And when there are multiple pickups, the radius is measured from the first place the commodity was loaded — the first source. The first loading sets the circle for the trip.

The mile you cross the line

Upon crossing the 150 air-mile point, the driver is subject to the hours rules for the remainder of the trip. From that mile on, the work is ordinary regulated work: the limits apply, and the driving and duty count.

Here is the part that surprises drivers, stated plainly by the guidance: the hours accumulated inside the radius do not count toward the driver's hours of service. The exempt work is invisible to the clocks. A driver can work a long morning inside the circle and, at the moment he crosses the line, the clocks read as if that work had not happened — because under Part 395, for those hours, it did not.

Coming back works in mirror image. Coming back empty, the rules apply until the driver is back inside the radius where the trip began. Then the exemption takes over again. The line is the line in both directions: outside it, the rules; inside it, the exemption, for the covered work.

Read that example twice if you plan farm work. It shows why a mixed day must be planned from the line outward. The question is never how much the driver has worked today in total. The question is how much of today's work happened outside the circle — because that, and only that, is what the clocks count, what the log shows, and what the limits judge.

The exemption belongs to the work, not the driver

Like several exemptions on this site, this one attaches to the work, not to the person or the truck. The same driver can be exempt in the morning — inside the radius, hauling a farm load, in season — and fully under the rules in the afternoon, hauling general freight. Nothing about the morning's exemption follows him into the afternoon's load.

That has a plain, practical meaning for carriers who mix farm and general work. Each load, each trip, each portion of a trip gets its own judgment: What is being carried? From where, measured how? In season, in this state? Inside the circle or across it? A driver who understands that he carries no personal exemption in his pocket — that the work carries it, load by load — will ask those questions on the days nobody in the office thought to ask them.

A short drill before the wheels move

1. Is the season open here?

   Confirm the state you are working in counts this as a planting or harvesting period, as that state determines it.

2. Which kind of work is it?

   Commodity, farm supplies out to a place of use, farm supplies wholesale to retail, or livestock — because the kind of work decides where the circle is centered.

3. Draw the circle on the right center

   From the source — the first place the commodity was loaded — for commodities. From the distribution point for supplies. From the final destination for livestock. Never from habit.

4. Plan the crossing, not just the trip

   If the trip leaves the circle, plan knowing the hours inside will not count, the hours outside will count in full, and the rules rejoin the driver on the empty trip back until he is inside the radius again.

The agricultural exemption is generous on purpose: it lets the seasons' urgent work get done inside a wide circle around the source, free of clocks and logs. Its generosity ends at a line on the map. Know where your circle sits, know which work it covers, and know the mile where the ordinary rules take over — and a mixed farm day stops being a puzzle and becomes a plan.

Rules checked October 2026. Rule sources: 49 CFR 395.1(k); 49 CFR 395.2; FMCSA regulatory guidance on the agricultural commodity exception.