The 70-hour 8-day rule
You may not drive once you have 70 hours on duty in any 8 consecutive days — or 60 in 7, if your carrier does not run every day. It is a rolling total. Nothing resets on Monday.
Rolling, not weekly
Every day you add what you worked and drop what you worked 8 days ago. That is the "recap", and it is why hours come back without doing anything special — the day falling off the back of the window returns exactly the hours it contained.
| Day | On duty | Cycle used | Left of 70 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | 11:00 | 11:00 | 59:00 |
| Day 2 | 9:00 | 20:00 | 50:00 |
| Day 3 | 12:00 | 32:00 | 38:00 |
| Day 4 | 8:00 | 40:00 | 30:00 |
| Day 5 | 10:00 | 50:00 | 20:00 |
| Day 6 | 11:00 | 61:00 | 9:00 |
| Day 7 | 9:00 | 70:00 | 0:00 |
By day 7 this driver has 70 hours used and cannot drive on day 8 — until day 1's hours drop off, which returns 11 hours and gives them a short day. That pattern, a week of full days followed by a crawl, is what the 34-hour restart exists to break.
The 34-hour restart
Thirty-four consecutive hours off duty sets the cycle back to zero. It is optional, and it is a tool rather than a routine:
- Worth taking when you are near the limit and the recap would only hand back a few hours a day — 34 hours off buys a full fresh week.
- Not worth taking when the recap is already returning big days. Sitting 34 hours to recover hours that were coming back anyway is two days of revenue for nothing.
- Time it against the freight. A restart that finishes on a Sunday evening when nothing loads until Monday afternoon has cost you more than the hours are worth.
On duty means on duty
Every hour of on-duty not driving counts against this clock: pre-trip, fuelling, scaling, paperwork, and every hour spent waiting at a dock where you are not relieved of duty. A week with ten hours of detention in it has lost ten hours of cycle as well as ten hours of window.
That is also the strongest argument for logging genuinely off-duty time correctly when you really are free — see the sleeper split for the version that also protects your window.
Questions
What is the 70-hour 8-day rule?
You may not drive after accumulating 70 hours on duty in any 8 consecutive days. It is a rolling total, not a weekly reset: every day you add today's hours and drop the hours from 8 days ago.
What's the difference between 60/7 and 70/8?
Which one applies depends on whether your carrier operates commercial vehicles every day of the week. Carriers that do not use 60 hours in 7 consecutive days; carriers that run every day use 70 in 8.
How does the 34-hour restart work?
Thirty-four consecutive hours off duty resets the cycle to zero. It is optional — the rolling recap gives hours back without it — and it is worth taking when you are heavily used up and would otherwise crawl through a week on four hours a day.
Do off-duty days give hours back?
Yes, automatically. On the 8th day the hours you worked on day 1 drop off the total. A full day off simply adds nothing while an old day falls away, which is why the recap recovers hours even without a restart.
Does on-duty not driving count against the cycle?
All of it. Inspections, fuelling, paperwork, waiting at a dock — if it is on-duty time it goes against the 60 or the 70. This is what makes detention expensive twice over.