The short-haul exception: 150 air-miles

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A local driver leaves the same yard every morning, delivers inside the county and the counties around it, and is home every night. Does that driver need an ELD and a full logbook for work that never goes far?

The rule says no — if the work fits a tight shape. That shape is the short-haul exception in 49 CFR 395.1(e)(1). It is one of the most useful exceptions in the hours rules, and one of the easiest to lose without noticing, because it is not a status a driver holds. It is a set of conditions a day either meets or does not meet. Meet all of them and there is no log to keep. Miss one of them and a log is owed for that day.

This guide goes through the four conditions one at a time, then the part drivers most often get wrong: the exception removes paperwork, never the hour limits themselves.

Condition one: inside 150 air-miles

The driver must operate within a 150 air-mile radius of the normal work reporting location. Air-miles are not road miles. A 150 air-mile radius works out to 172.6 statute miles, measured as a straight line on the map — a circle drawn around the yard, not a count of the miles the odometer rolls up getting there.

That difference cuts both ways. A delivery that takes 190 road miles of winding roads may sit well inside the circle, because the straight-line distance is shorter than the road. And a fast, straight highway run can leave the circle sooner than its road miles feel like they should. When you judge a run, draw the circle first. The road you take inside it is your business; crossing the circle is what matters.

The center of the circle matters as much as its size. The radius is measured from the normal work reporting location — the yard the driver reports to. It is not measured from the carrier's headquarters if the driver reports somewhere else. It is not measured from the driver's house. A company with its office in one city and a yard in another measures its drivers' circles from the yard those drivers actually report to. Get the center wrong and every judgment built on it is wrong too.

Condition two: back and released within 14 hours

The driver must return to the work reporting location and be released from work within 14 consecutive hours. Both halves count. Returning to the yard is not enough if the driver then stays on duty there. Being released is what closes the day, and the release has to happen inside those 14 hours from coming on duty.

Notice how this condition mirrors the normal 14-hour window. That is not a coincidence. The exception is built for the driver whose day already fits inside a normal duty day and ends where it began. A driver whose work regularly runs past 14 hours, or whose day ends somewhere other than the yard he started from, is not doing the kind of work this exception was written for — that driver belongs on a log, and on an ELD where the rule requires one.

Condition three: 10 hours off between duty days

A property-carrying driver must have at least 10 consecutive hours off duty separating each 14 hours on duty. This is the same rest figure that runs through the property-carrying rules: a full 10 off before the next duty period begins. Short-haul work is daily work, repeated day after day, and this condition is what keeps that rhythm honest — no shortening the night to stretch the day and still calling the work short-haul.

There is a passenger-carrying version of short-haul in the rules with 8 hours off. This site is about freight, so this guide stays with the property-carrying figure: 10 hours off.

Condition four: the carrier keeps time records

The exception removes the driver's logbook. It does not remove records. Instead, the carrier must keep accurate and true time records for 6 months, and the rule names what those records must show:

• the time the driver reports for duty each day;
• the total number of hours the driver is on duty each day;
• the time the driver is released from duty each day;
• and, for a driver used for the first time or intermittently, the total time on duty for the preceding 7 days.

Read that list as the trade the rule is making. The government gives up the full day-by-day record — the grid, the status changes, the locations — and in return it wants the outline of the day kept honestly: when the driver started, how long the day was, when it ended. A carrier that treats short-haul as meaning no records at all has misunderstood the exception just as badly as a driver who treats it as meaning no limits. Start time, total hours, release time. If the office cannot show those three things for a day six months back, the exception was claimed without its price being paid.

The limits still apply in full

This is the most important section of this guide, so it gets its own space.

The hour limits still apply to short-haul drivers in full. The 11-hour driving limit applies. The 14-hour condition mirrors the window. The 60- and 70-hour weekly limits apply. The exception removes the paperwork — the ELD and the logbook. It does not remove a single limit. A short-haul driver who drives a twelfth hour has broken the same rule as a long-haul driver who drives a twelfth hour. He just broke it without a logbook recording it, which is worse, not better: the violation is real and the record that would have shown it honestly does not exist.

There is one genuine relief in the package, and it is worth naming exactly. Short-haul drivers are also excepted from the 30-minute break rule. Section 395.3(a)(3)(ii) says so expressly. So the short-haul driver's day is simpler in two ways: no logbook, and no 30-minute break requirement. Everything else about the hours — how long he may drive, how long he may be on duty, how much he may work in the week, how long he must rest — is the same as it is for everyone else carrying property.

The day one condition breaks

Exceptions like this one are judged day by day. The day a driver goes outside the radius, the exemption fails for that day. The day a driver is not released within 14 hours, the exemption fails for that day. The failure does not poison the days before it or the days after it, provided those days meet the conditions on their own. What it does is create a debt: the driver owes a record of duty status for that day.

That is why the office's time records matter so much in practice. The time record is what shows whether a day stayed inside the conditions. When a day breaks them, the driver and the carrier need to know it that day, while the day can still be written down accurately — not at the end of the month, from memory.

When a paper day becomes an ELD question: the 8-in-30 line

One broken day calls for a paper record. A pattern of broken days changes the device question entirely.

If a driver's work needs a log on more than 8 days in any 30-day period, the driver falls into the category described in 49 CFR 395.8(a)(1)(ii) — past that line, an ELD is required for the days logs are owed. Count it plainly: in any rolling 30 days, how many days owed a log? Eight or fewer, and paper can cover those days. The day the count passes eight, the driver is no longer an occasional-log driver, and the ELD requirement attaches to the log days.

For a short-haul operation, that count is an early warning light. A driver who breaks the conditions once in a while — a long day here, a far run there — owes paper logs for those days and nothing more. A driver who breaks them every week is telling the company something: his work is not really short-haul work anymore. The right answer then is not better paperwork. It is putting the driver on the device his actual work requires.

A short drill for the office and the driver

1. Draw the circle on the yard, not the office

   Mark 150 air-miles around the normal work reporting location each driver actually reports to, and judge every run against that circle.

2. Watch the release time, not just the return

   The day closes when the driver is released, and that has to happen within 14 hours of coming on duty.

3. Keep the three numbers every day

   Report time, total hours on duty, release time — kept truly, and kept for 6 months, with the preceding 7 days shown for first-time or intermittent drivers.

4. Count the log days every 30 days

   When a driver owes a log for a day, write it down that day — and keep a running count. Passing 8 in any 30 changes what device the work needs.

The short-haul exception rewards work that is genuinely local: same yard, same day, inside the circle, with real rest at night. Keep the time records honestly, respect the limits the exception never lifted, and it does exactly what it promises — it takes the logbook off a driver who never needed one, without taking the safety rules off anyone.

Rules checked October 2026. Rule sources: 49 CFR 395.1(e)(1); 49 CFR 395.3(a)(3)(ii); 49 CFR 395.8(a)(1)(ii).