Personal conveyance: the off-duty move

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You are parked for the night. You are done working. But you are hungry, or you need a store, or home is close and you would rather sleep in your own bed than in the cab. Can you move the truck without starting your driving clock?

Sometimes, yes. That move has a name: personal conveyance. It is one of the most used ideas in the hours rules, and one of the most misused. Drivers get in trouble with it not because the idea is hard, but because they use it for moves that help the company, help the load, or help the next trip. Those moves are work, no matter what the log calls them.

This guide works through the test in plain words, then walks through the examples FMCSA itself gives — the moves the agency says count, and the moves it says never count.

Start with the one test that matters

Before you move, ask one question: who is this move for?

If the move is for you — your meal, your rest, your trip home, your own errand — it may be personal conveyance. If the move is for the carrier, the load, the customer, or the next job, it is not. The reason for the move is the whole test. The time of day does not decide it. The distance does not decide it by itself. Whether the trailer is loaded does not decide it by itself. The reason decides it.

The second part of the test is just as important. You must be off duty in real life, not just on the screen. The carrier must have relieved you from work and from all responsibility for performing work. If dispatch can still call the move back, if you are still watching the load as part of your job, or if you are moving because the company told you to move, you have not been relieved. A status you tap on a device does not make a work move personal.

A load on board does not kill it by itself

Many drivers believe personal conveyance is only for an empty truck. That is not what the guidance says. The truck may be laden. A load on board does not by itself kill personal conveyance, because at that moment the load is not being moved for the carrier's benefit.

Read that carefully. It does not mean every move with a load is personal. It means the load alone is not the reason a move fails. A driver parked for the night with freight still on the trailer can drive to get food and come back, because that trip is about the driver's meal, not about moving the freight closer to where it has to go. The moment the same drive is really about getting the freight nearer to its delivery, the reason has changed — and so has the answer.

Your carrier can also be stricter than the guidance on this point, and many are. That is covered below. The federal guidance sets the outer edge. Your company's policy sets the rule for its trucks, and it can set it tighter.

Moves FMCSA says count

These examples come from FMCSA's published guidance. Notice what they share: every one of them serves the driver, not the job.

From your night's lodging to food and back

Driving from en-route lodging — a motel, a truck stop, the place you are spending the night — to restaurants and entertainment, and back, is a proper use. You are off duty. The trip is for your meal or your evening. When you come back, you are back where you started, and the load is no closer to its next stop than it was before you left. That round trip is the clearest, safest picture of what personal conveyance is for.

The drive home, and the drive back

Commuting between the terminal and home counts. So does commuting between trailer-drop lots and home, and between work sites and home. The guidance puts one condition on these trips in plain terms: there must be enough time left for the driver to get real rest. A commute that eats the rest it was supposed to protect is not the point of the rule. The trip home is personal. But it still has to leave room for sleep, because the off-duty hours still have to be real rest before the next duty period.

To the nearest safe place to rest after loading or unloading

This is the use drivers ask about most, so read the limits closely. After loading or unloading, a driver may drive to the nearest reasonable, safe place to get required rest. Three limits ride with that permission. First, it must be the nearest reasonable, safe place — not a better place, not a place closer to tomorrow's work. Second, it must be the first one reasonably available. Third, the driver must still get his full rest there before driving on duty again. If you pass a safe place that was open to you so you can park somewhere that helps the next trip, you have left this example behind. The move has to end at the first good rest place, and the rest has to actually happen.

When a safety official tells you to move

Moving the truck at the request of a safety official during off-duty time counts. You did not choose the move for work reasons. An official at the scene asked you to move, and you moved. Keep that fact clear in your own mind: who asked, and when. This same idea shows up again later in this guide, in the one exception to the out-of-service rule below.

Carrying your own things, and driving home from an offsite job

Carrying personal property while off duty is a proper use. So is driving home after working at an offsite location. Both moves serve the driver. Your own belongings are your own business, and the trip home at the end of work done somewhere away from the yard is a commute, the same kind of personal trip as the drive home from the terminal.

Moves FMCSA says never count

Now the other list. These are also FMCSA's own examples, and they are the ones that get records in trouble. Notice what they share, too: every one of them helps the carrier's business.

Moving to get closer to the next pickup or delivery

Moving the truck to enhance the carrier's operational readiness is not personal conveyance. The guidance gives the plain picture: skipping available rest places to get closer to the next pickup or delivery. If there was a safe place to stop and you drove past it so the morning would start nearer the freight, that extra driving was done for the company. It is driving time. Calling it personal does not change what it was for, and an inspector reading the record can see the shape of the trip — where you stopped loading, which rest places you passed, and where you ended up.

Bobtailing or dragging an empty trailer to fetch the next load

Running bobtail, or running with an empty trailer, to fetch another load or to reposition at the carrier's direction is not personal conveyance. An empty truck can still be a working truck. If the company needs the truck somewhere and you take it there, that is the company's move, even with nothing on the back. Emptiness is not the test. The reason is the test, and repositioning for the next job fails it.

Just continuing the business trip

Continuing a business trip is not personal conveyance. This is the catch-all that catches the creative readings. If the trip would have happened anyway as part of the work — same road, same direction, same purpose — then a break in the middle of it does not turn the next stretch into personal time. Ask whether the move advances the work trip at all. If it does, it is part of the work trip.

Driving the truck to the shop

Driving the truck to a shop for maintenance is not personal conveyance. The truck going for repair is the carrier's business, even if the shop happens to be on your way somewhere. The same plain test applies: the move serves the company's equipment, not your personal life, so it is work time.

Driving to the carrier's terminal after loading or unloading

After loading or unloading, driving to the carrier's terminal is not personal conveyance. Compare it with the rest-place example above. Driving to the nearest safe place to rest can count, because rest is the driver's need. Driving on to the terminal serves the company — the truck ends up where the company wants it. Same end of a workday, two different reasons, two different answers. This pair of examples is the best lesson in the whole guidance: the destination matters because it shows the reason.

Driving anywhere after being placed out of service

After a driver has been placed out of service for an hours violation, driving anywhere to rest is not personal conveyance — with one narrow exception. If an officer at the scene directs the move, that directed move is different. Without that direction, there is no driving at all, to any rest place, under any label. An out-of-service order means stop. Personal conveyance does not reopen the road.

Your carrier can say no, or say less

The federal guidance is permission, not a promise your company must give you. Carriers may set their own limits inside the guidance, or stricter. A carrier may ban personal conveyance outright. It may cap the distance its drivers may use. It may forbid it while the truck is laden, even though the federal guidance allows a laden truck.

There is no distance limit in the federal guidance itself. If you have a distance limit, it came from your carrier. That matters for a practical reason: two drivers in the same truck stop can be under different rules, and both can be right, because they work for different companies. The carrier's policy rules the truck. Before you use personal conveyance at a new company, learn that company's policy — whether it is allowed at all, how far, and whether a load changes the answer. Guessing from your last job is how careful drivers make careless records.

What it does to your clocks

Personal conveyance is off-duty time, and it behaves like off-duty time everywhere off-duty time matters. It counts toward the 10 hours off, like any other off-duty time. It counts toward the 30-minute break, like any other off-duty time. That is the good news, and it is real: a proper personal trip in the middle of a break does not break the break.

But the rest rule still stands in full. A driver who uses personal conveyance to reach a rest place must actually get the required rest there before driving on duty again. The drive to the rest place being off duty does not shorten the rest owed at the end of it. Drivers get this backwards when they treat the move itself as part of the recovery. It is not recovery. It is travel, off duty, to the place where recovery happens. Sleep is what counts, and the full amount of it is still owed.

How it shows on the ELD

On an ELD, personal conveyance is a special status the driver selects before moving. Order matters here: select it first, then move. A driver who moves first and explains later has a record that shows driving, and the story has to fight the record.

The device records the move in a way that protects the driver's privacy during personal time. Location is recorded with reduced precision — position within about a 10-mile radius, rather than the usual precision. That detail, set out in Appendix A, section 4.3.2.2, tells you something about how the rule makers saw this time: it is the driver's own time, and the record treats it that way. Reduced precision is not a hiding place for work driving, though. The move still shows, its time still shows, and the pattern of a trip can still be read.

A short drill before you move

1. Am I relieved?

   Has the carrier relieved you from work and from all responsibility for performing work? If not, stop here. There is no personal conveyance inside a duty period.

2. Who is this move for?

   Your meal, your rest, your home, your errand — or the load, the customer, the next job? If any part of the honest answer is the company, do not use it.

3. Does my carrier allow this move?

   Check the policy you actually work under: allowed at all, distance capped, laden allowed or not. The strictest rule that applies to you is your rule.

4. Select the status, then drive

   Pick the personal conveyance status before the wheels move, and make sure the rest you are travelling to still gets fully taken when you arrive.

The cost of getting it wrong

Time that is not truly personal conveyance is driving time. That is the whole consequence, and it is enough. If the time was really driving, then logging it as off duty falsifies the record. The hours you thought you had saved come back as hours you actually drove, the rest you thought you took may no longer cover the rule, and the record itself now says something that was not true.

That is why this guide keeps returning to the reason for the move. Personal conveyance is a fair, useful rule. It lets an off-duty driver live a normal evening — eat, shop, go home — without the truck punishing him for it. It fails only when it is asked to carry work. Keep it for your own moves, select it before you roll, follow your carrier's tighter limits where they exist, and the record will say what really happened.

Rules checked October 2026. Rule sources: FMCSA regulatory guidance on personal conveyance (49 CFR 395.8, Question 26); 49 CFR Part 395, Subpart B, Appendix A, sec. 4.3.2.2.