Indiana Intrastate ELD Rules and Hours of Service

Most states that write their own intrastate hours rule change the numbers. They allow a 12 hour driving limit, or a 16 hour day, or an 80 hour week, and a carrier's job is to get the device configured to the right ruleset. Indiana changed nothing about the numbers. An Indiana intrastate driver runs 11 and 14 and 60 or 70, with the 30 minute break, exactly as an interstate driver does.

What Indiana changed is who the rule reaches. IC 8-2.1-24-18(a) pulls 49 CFR Part 395 into Indiana law for interstate and intrastate carriers alike, and then, in the same subsection, takes the hours and the logs off three whole classes of operation: farm trucks registered as farm trucks, vehicles operated in intrastate construction or construction related service, and the restoration of public utility services interrupted by an emergency. The electronic logging device mandate lives inside Part 395. Remove the part and the device goes with it.

That is a bigger carve-out than it first looks, and it is the fact competitors get wrong in both directions. Some pages tell an Indiana dump truck operator there is no intrastate ELD rule at all, which is wrong for the hauls that are not construction. Others tell the same operator the federal rule applies to everything, which is wrong for the hauls that are. This page walks the statute.

What Indiana adopted, and where the adoption lives

There is no Indiana rule chapter to read here. The adoption is in the statute itself, and it is self-executing. IC 8-2.1-24-18(a) provides that 49 CFR Parts 40, 375, 380, 382 through 387, 390 through 393, and 395 through 398 are incorporated into Indiana law by reference and, except as provided in subsections (d), (e), (f), (g), and (j), must be complied with by an interstate and intrastate motor carrier of persons or property throughout Indiana.

Subsection (b) does the same for hazardous materials, incorporating 49 CFR 107 subparts F and G, 171 through 173, 177 through 178, and 180, and binding private carriers, common carriers, contract carriers, intrastate motor carriers of property, hazardous material shippers, and carriers otherwise exempt under section 3 of the chapter, whether the work is interstate or intrastate.

Two things about that incorporation matter more than the list. The first is that it names no edition and no as-in-effect date. There is no "as in effect on January 1" clause anywhere in the section, so the adopted text is the current federal text, and a change FMCSA makes to Part 395 reaches Indiana intrastate operation without any state action at all. The second is that subsection (k) says the superintendent of state police may adopt rules under IC 4-22-2 governing the parts and subparts incorporated by reference. May, not shall. The statute works without them.

The Department of Revenue republishes the same part list in its Commercial Motor Vehicle Guide, under Safety Requirements, and states that these regulations apply to commercial motor vehicle trucks and combination vehicles with a manufacturer's gross vehicle weight rating or combined rating of 10,001 pounds (4,536 kilograms) or more, to vehicles hauling hazardous materials in a quantity that requires placards, and to vehicles designed to transport more than eight passengers including the driver. That is the federal commercial motor vehicle definition, not an Indiana one, and it is the floor that brings a vehicle into all of this.

The sentence that takes construction off the device

Here is the second sentence of IC 8-2.1-24-18(a), which is the whole page in one line:

However, the provisions of 49 CFR 395 that regulate the hours of service of drivers, including requirements for the maintenance of logs, do not apply to a driver of a truck that is registered by the bureau of motor vehicles and used as a farm truck under IC 9-18 (before its expiration) or IC 9-18.1-7 or a vehicle operated in intrastate construction or construction related service, or the restoration of public utility services interrupted by an emergency.

Read what it removes. Not a paragraph, not a driving limit, not a log format. The provisions of 49 CFR 395 that regulate the hours of service of drivers, including requirements for the maintenance of logs. The record of duty status requirement at 49 CFR 395.8 is a log requirement, and 395.8(a)(1)(i) is the paragraph that requires a motor carrier operating commercial motor vehicles to install and require each of its drivers to use an electronic logging device to record the driver's duty status in accordance with subpart B of the part. Subpart B is the device specification. All of it is inside Part 395.

So an Indiana intrastate construction hauler is not exempt from the ELD rule by way of a device exemption. It is outside the part the device requirement lives in. The distinction matters when a vendor or a broker asks which exemption is being claimed: the answer is the state's Part 395 carve-out at IC 8-2.1-24-18(a), not any of the four federal manual-log cases. The national ELD mandate page walks through those four, and the FMCSA registered device list is where a device is confirmed as still registered for everyone who is still inside the part.

The three carve-outs, against their federal counterparts

Each of the three has a federal cousin, and in every case the federal cousin is narrower. That gap is the variance.

The utility row is worth a second look because the two rules point opposite ways. Federal 395.2 defines a utility service vehicle by what it normally does: a commercial motor vehicle used in furtherance of repairing, maintaining or operating structures or facilities necessary for the delivery of public utility services, engaged in activity necessarily related to that delivery, and operated primarily within the utility's service area except for occasional emergency use. Indiana's carve-out is written around the emergency itself. A vehicle can qualify under one and not the other.

The farm truck row at least has a paper trail. IC 9-18.1-7 is the Farm Vehicles chapter of Indiana's motor vehicle registration article, so the carve-out turns on a registration the bureau of motor vehicles either issued or did not. The construction row has no such anchor, and it is the row with the most trucks behind it.

What the statute leaves undefined

IC 8-2.1-24-18 defines neither construction nor construction related service, and the chapter carries no general definitions section that does. The section defines exactly three things of its own: the planting and harvesting season in subsection (h), the 5,400 gallon cargo tank ceiling in the same subsection, and the type of motor vehicles that release a private carrier in subsection (j), which it hands to IC 8-2.1-24-3(6).

That leaves a real question with no published answer. Is a gravel haul from a quarry to a job site construction, or construction related service, or freight? Is the return leg? Is a load of rebar delivered to a yard rather than a site? The statute does not say, and neither the Department of Revenue's Commercial Motor Vehicle Guide nor its Electronic Logging Device page addresses it.

Enforcement of the section is the Indiana State Police's job, not the Department of Revenue's. Subsection (d) provides that only a state police officer or state police motor carrier inspector who has completed a course of instruction approved by the United States Department of Transportation and maintains an acceptable competency level established by the state police department, or a law enforcement employee who completed such a course before January 1, 1991 and maintains that competency level, may on demand inspect the books, accounts, papers, records, memoranda, equipment and premises of any carrier. Get the state police reading in writing before a truck comes off a device on the strength of the construction clause. A carve-out you cannot document at roadside is a carve-out you do not have.

The clock does not move

This is the part most Indiana pages get backwards. There is no Indiana intrastate hours ruleset to select in a device menu, because Indiana wrote none.

Every cell matches because IC 8-2.1-24-18(a) adopts 49 CFR 395.3 without touching it. The federal compatibility rule at 49 CFR 350.305(d) is the menu of intrastate hours variances a state is allowed to take, and it lists three: a 12 hour driving limit provided the driver may not drive after more than 16 hours on duty, driving prohibitions at 70 hours in 7 consecutive days or 80 hours in 8 consecutive days, and a 150 air mile radius. Indiana takes none of them. The federal baseline the table is measured against is on the hours of service page.

Set that against Wisconsin. It uses two of the three, and an intrastate driver there gets 12 hours of driving inside a 16 hour ceiling with 70-in-7 and 80-in-8 weeks, which the Wisconsin intrastate ELD page walks through. A fleet running Indiana and Wisconsin intrastate work cannot carry one hours policy across the line, and the difference is not in the exemptions. It is in the clock.

Because the clock is federal, everything attached to it is federal too. 49 CFR 395.1(e)(1), the 150 air mile short-haul release from 395.8 and 395.11, applies in Indiana at its federal text: the driver operates within a 150 air mile radius of the normal work reporting location, returns and is released from work within 14 consecutive hours, has at least 10 consecutive hours off duty separating each 14 hours on duty, and the carrier keeps time records for 6 months. Indiana adds nothing to it and takes nothing away.

Who is outside the section entirely

There is one more escape, and it is wider than the three carve-outs because it removes the whole section rather than one part. Subsection (j) provides that IC 8-2.1-24-18 does not apply to private carriers that operate using only the type of motor vehicles specified in IC 8-2.1-24-3(6).

IC 8-2.1-24-3(6) describes motor vehicles operating exclusively in intrastate commerce with a gross vehicle weight, gross vehicle weight rating, gross combination weight or gross combination weight rating equal to or less than twenty-six thousand (26,000) pounds. The vehicle may not be used to provide for-hire transport, may not be designed or used to transport sixteen (16) or more passengers including the driver, and may not be used to transport hazardous material in amounts requiring a placard.

IC 8-2.1-24-1(b) closes the loop on who the section reaches at all: a motor carrier providing intrastate transportation by motor vehicle of property or passengers for compensation, and, except as provided in section 18(j), a private carrier of persons or property. So the escape is real, and it is only for private carriers.

Two weights, two questions, and they are not interchangeable:

• 10,001 pounds is the federal commercial motor vehicle floor the Department of Revenue's guide republishes. Below it, the adopted federal rules do not describe the vehicle in the first place.
• 26,000 pounds is the IC 8-2.1-24-3(6) ceiling, and it releases private intrastate carriers only. A for-hire intrastate carrier at 15,000 pounds is squarely inside the section. A private intrastate fleet at 24,000 pounds is outside it.

Indiana is using a federal permission here, not inventing one. 49 CFR 350.305(a)(1) lets a state exempt a commercial motor vehicle from all or part of its intrastate safety rules where the weight or rating does not equal or exceed 11,801 kilograms (26,001 pounds), and (a)(2) bars that exemption for a placarded hazmat vehicle or one designed or used to carry 16 or more people including the driver. IC 8-2.1-24-3(6) mirrors both limits.

One caution on the agency summary. The Commercial Motor Vehicle Guide compresses this escape to a single line: effective March 2010, Indiana exempts intrastate, not-for-hire, non-CDL required vehicles from the FMCSRs entirely (8-2.1-24-3(6)). The statute's test is the 26,000 pound one, not a CDL test, and for a combination the two do not line up cleanly. Read the guide as shorthand and the statute as the operative text.

None of this touches registration. Indiana sets no weight floor on the intrastate filing itself, which the Indiana DOT number page covers with its own sources, so a private fleet can sit outside IC 8-2.1-24-18 and still owe the state a filing. The licensing side of the same vehicle is on the Indiana CDL page.

The agricultural exception, narrowed

Subsection (h) is the only place Indiana touches the federal exception list rather than removing an industry. It does two things at once.

First, it defines the season. For purposes of 49 CFR 395.1(k)(2), planting and harvesting season refers to the period between January 1 and December 31 of each year. The federal exception applies during planting and harvesting periods "as determined by each State", so Indiana's determination is the whole calendar year. There is no closed season.

Second, it puts a size limit on a federal exception that has none. The intrastate commerce exception set forth in 49 CFR 395.1(k), as it applies to the transportation of agricultural commodities and farm supplies, is restricted to single vehicles and cargo tank motor vehicles with a capacity of not more than five thousand four hundred (5,400) gallons. Federal 395.1(k) sets no vehicle-count and no tank-capacity limit anywhere in its four subdivisions. A tanker over 5,400 gallons hauling farm supplies in Indiana intrastate commerce does not get the exception, and would get it in a state that adopted 395.1(k) as written.

One footnote for anyone reading the two documents side by side. Indiana cites 49 CFR 395.1(k)(2) for the planting and harvesting season. The current federal 395.1(k) puts that determination in its opening sentence, "as determined by each State", and uses (k)(1) through (k)(4) for the four categories of transportation, so (k)(2) is farm supplies moving from a wholesale or retail distribution point to a farm, not a season definition. Indiana's determination of January 1 to December 31 stands either way, because the federal opening sentence is what invites it. Expect the paragraph mismatch rather than assuming a bad copy.

Marking, the IN number, and the farm vehicle release

49 CFR 390.21 is the marking rule, and Indiana rewrites how an intrastate carrier satisfies it and then exempts one class from it entirely.

Subsection (a)(1) provides that intrastate motor carriers not operating under authority issued by the United States Department of Transportation comply with 49 CFR 390.21(b)(3) by registering with the department of state revenue as an intrastate motor carrier and displaying the certification number issued by the department preceded by the letters IN. Subsection (a)(2) then provides that all other requirements of 49 CFR 390.21 apply equally to interstate and intrastate motor carriers, so the size, legibility and durability rules do not change. The Indiana ID Number itself, and who gets one instead of a USDOT number, sits on the Indiana intrastate authority page.

Subsection (i) is the exemption. The requirements of 49 CFR 390.21 do not apply to an intrastate motor carrier or a guest operator not engaged in interstate commerce and operating a motor vehicle as a farm vehicle in connection with agricultural pursuits usual and normal to the user's farming operation or for personal purposes, unless the vehicle is operated either part time or incidentally in the conduct of a commercial enterprise. Note the condition on the end. Occasional commercial use switches the marking requirement back on.

Passengers are inside the part, not outside it

Nothing in IC 8-2.1-24-18 is written for property alone, and 49 CFR 395.5 is inside the adopted Part 395. An Indiana intrastate passenger carrier therefore runs the federal passenger clock as written: not more than 10 hours driving following 8 consecutive hours off duty, and no driving for any period after having been on duty 15 hours following 8 consecutive hours off duty.

The three carve-outs are written around farm trucks, construction and utility restoration, so none of them reaches a passenger operation. IC 8-2.1-24-1(b) confirms the reach: section 18 regulates a motor carrier providing intrastate transportation of property or passengers for compensation, and, except as provided in section 18(j), a private carrier of persons or property.

Which clock a run is actually on

Every carve-out on this page is written for intrastate operation, and the adopted Part 390 supplies the test. 49 CFR 390.5 provides that interstate commerce means trade, traffic or transportation in the United States between a place in a State and a place outside of such State, between two places in a State through another State or a place outside of the United States, or between two places in a State as part of trade, traffic or transportation originating or terminating outside the State or the United States. Intrastate commerce is any trade, traffic or transportation in any State that the interstate definition does not describe.

So a load of aggregate moving from a Lafayette quarry to a Kokomo job site can be an interstate run, with Indiana addresses at both ends, if the freight came from outside the state or is headed out of it. An interstate run gets no part of the construction relief, the farm truck relief, or the utility relief. It sits on the full federal Part 395 with the device. Carriers mixing both kinds of work in a week are the ones who get this wrong, and the mix is what the driver's device has to be told about. The state-by-state intrastate authority comparison is where the rest of that picture sits.

What a violation costs

Enforcement runs through the chapter rather than through a separate safety code. IC 8-2.1-24-24 provides that a person who violates the chapter commits a Class B infraction. IC 8-2.1-24-26 adds a civil penalty of one hundred dollars ($100) for the first violation and one thousand dollars ($1,000) for each subsequent violation, assessable only after an administrative hearing under IC 6-8.1-5-1 at which the person has an opportunity to present information as to why a penalty should not be assessed, with collections deposited in the motor carrier regulation fund established under IC 8-2.1-23.

Subsection (a) also sets the audit trigger. Intrastate motor carriers subject to compliance reviews under 49 CFR 385 are selected according to criteria determined by the superintendent, which must include but are not limited to factors such as previous history of violations found in roadside compliance checks and other recorded violations. Roadside history is the input to the office visit.

The device is not a fuel-tax record

One Indiana warning that has nothing to do with Part 395 and catches carriers anyway. The Department of Revenue's own Electronic Logging Device page states that most ELDs were designed specifically to meet only the federal requirement to document hours of service, do not satisfy recordkeeping requirements for IFTA and IRP, and mostly do not archive data beyond the six month federal mandate for driver records. It reports that nationwide almost 30 percent of IFTA and IRP audits end in an inadequate records assessment, many of them from relying on ELDs for recordkeeping, and instructs carriers to use other sources of data where the device cannot supply what is needed for the required period.

That lands hardest on the operators this page is about. A construction hauler outside Part 395 has no device at all, and still owes complete distance and fuel records. The Indiana IFTA page covers what those records are and which fuel-tax licence an Indiana-only fleet holds.

FAQ

Does Indiana require ELDs for intrastate drivers?

Yes, for most of them, and on the federal date. IC 8-2.1-24-18(a) incorporates 49 CFR Parts 40, 375, 380, 382 through 387, 390 through 393, and 395 through 398 into Indiana law by reference for interstate and intrastate motor carriers alike, with no edition qualifier and no delayed start. The electronic logging device requirement lives inside the adopted Part 395, at 49 CFR 395.8(a)(1)(i), which set its own deadline of December 18, 2017. Indiana neither postponed that date for intrastate operation nor set an earlier one, so the only ways to a paper log are the four federal cases in 49 CFR 395.8(a)(1)(ii)(A).

Is an Indiana construction hauler exempt from the ELD rule?

An intrastate one is. The second sentence of IC 8-2.1-24-18(a) provides that the provisions of 49 CFR 395 that regulate the hours of service of drivers, including requirements for the maintenance of logs, do not apply to a driver of a truck registered by the bureau of motor vehicles and used as a farm truck under IC 9-18 (before its expiration) or IC 9-18.1-7 or a vehicle operated in intrastate construction or construction related service, or the restoration of public utility services interrupted by an emergency. The device mandate sits inside Part 395, so removing the part removes the device with it. The statute defines neither construction nor construction related service, and the carve-out reaches intrastate operation only.

Does Indiana change the intrastate driving limits?

No. 49 CFR 350.305(d) lets a state allow a 12 hour driving limit inside a 16 hour on-duty ceiling, a 70-in-7 or 80-in-8 weekly cycle, and a 150 air mile radius. IC 8-2.1-24-18 takes none of them. An Indiana intrastate property-carrying driver runs the federal numbers in 49 CFR 395.3 unchanged: 10 consecutive hours off duty before driving, 11 hours of driving inside a 14 consecutive hour window, a consecutive 30 minute interruption after 8 cumulative driving hours, and 60 hours in 7 days or 70 hours in 8 days. Indiana's variance is in who the rule reaches, not in the arithmetic.