Louisiana Intrastate ELD Rules and the 26,000-Pound Line

A state that pulls the federal safety rules into its own code has two dials it can turn. It can change what the rules say, or it can change who they reach. New Jersey turned the first dial and rewrote the driving clock. Louisiana turned the second. The Office of State Police adopted 49 CFR Part 395 word for word, changed nothing inside it, and then applied the whole package to intrastate operations only above 26,000 pounds.

That single number is the entire Louisiana story. The federal hours rule starts at 10,001 pounds. For a truck that never leaves Louisiana, the state's own rule starts sixteen thousand pounds higher, and the electronic logging device requirement rides along with it.

What Louisiana adopted, and the clause that keeps it current

The rules live at LAC Title 33, Part V, Subpart 2, Chapter 103, titled Motor Carrier Safety and Hazardous Materials. The title is odd for motor carrier rules, because Title 33 is Environmental Quality, but the chapter heading and its contents settle it. Section 10301 explains why the chapter exists: through contract between the Department of Public Safety and Corrections and the United States Department of Transportation, the state agreed to adopt and assume responsibility for enforcing certain federal regulations as required by 49 CFR 350.207. The authority is La. R.S. 32:1501 et seq., whose declaration of policy reaches the transportation of hazardous materials, freight, and passengers alike. Section 10301 also names one enforcer and only one: only the Office of State Police may enforce the regulations adopted or enacted under this Chapter.

Section 10303 is the adoption. It takes the federal motor carrier safety and hazardous materials regulations promulgated by the United States Department of Transportation, revised as of January 1, 2021, and contained in the listed parts of 49 CFR as now in effect or as hereafter amended. The motor carrier safety list runs Parts 355, 360, 365, 367, 373, 374, 375, 376, 379, 382, 383, 384, 385, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 391, 392, 393, 395, 396 and 397. Part 395 is on it, printed under its federal title, Hours of Service of Drivers.

The phrase doing the quiet work is "as now in effect or as hereafter amended." Federal amendments reach the Louisiana carriers this chapter governs on the federal schedule, with no separate state rulemaking in between. That clause is how subpart B of Part 395, the electronic logging device subpart, arrived here at all. Section 10303 was last amended at LR 47:489 in April 2021.

The line is 26,000 pounds, and Section 10305 is where it lives

Section 10305, Applicability of Regulations, decides who the adopted rules bind. It does the job in two subsections that work very differently.

Subsection A covers all carriers, drivers, persons or vehicles to which the federal regulations apply, engaged in the transportation of hazardous materials within this state, or designed or used to transport 16 or more people, including the driver. None of those three carries a weight qualifier.

Subsection B is the variance. The adopted federal motor carrier safety regulations "shall also govern all carriers, drivers, persons or vehicles not subject to the federal regulations, if the operated vehicle has a single or combined gross vehicle weight or gross vehicle weight rating, greater than 26,000 pounds and is used in commerce or industry."

Read those together with the federal definition and the result is clean. A commercial motor vehicle under 49 CFR 390.5 is a vehicle used on a highway in interstate commerce at 10,001 pounds or more, among other tests. The definition is scoped to interstate commerce, which is exactly why a state adoption is needed to reach purely local work. Subsection A.1 picks up the interstate operations that federal law already reaches, and A.2 and A.3 pick up hazardous materials and 16-passenger work whatever the weight. For a purely intrastate general freight operation, Subsection B is the only door into the chapter, and that door opens above 26,000 pounds.

So a 16,000-pound straight truck running Baton Rouge to Lafayette and back, hauling general freight for hire, sits outside the adopted Part 395. Section 395.8 is inside Part 395. No adopted Part 395 means no state-imposed record of duty status and no state-imposed device. The truck still needs whatever else Louisiana asks of it, and the Louisiana intrastate authority page covers the surprising answer there, which is close to nothing for general freight.

Where 26,000 pounds comes from, and the two exits Louisiana could not take

This is not a number Louisiana invented. It is the federal ceiling, taken to the inch.

49 CFR 350.305 lists the variances allowed for state laws applicable to intrastate commerce. Paragraph (a)(1) says a State may exempt a commercial motor vehicle from all or part of its intrastate laws or regulations if the gross vehicle weight rating, gross combination weight rating, gross vehicle weight, or gross combination weight does not equal or exceed 11,801 kilograms (26,001 pounds). Louisiana's "greater than 26,000 pounds" means the chapter starts at 26,001, which is precisely where the federal permission to exempt stops.

Paragraph (a)(2) then forbids two exemptions. A state may not exempt a vehicle that transports hazardous materials requiring a placard, or one designed or used to transport 16 or more people including the driver. Look back at Subsection A. Those are its second and third categories, kept outside the weight test on purpose. Louisiana's hazardous materials category is written wider than the federal one, covering transportation of hazardous materials within the state rather than only placarded loads.

The practical version: the 26,000-pound line is a general freight line. Haul hazardous materials inside Louisiana, or run a vehicle built for 16 or more people, and weight stops mattering.

Above the line, the clock is federal

Here is where Louisiana parts company with the states people usually compare it to. Paragraph (d) of 350.305 offers a real hours-of-service variance: a 12-hour driving limit inside a 16-hour on-duty ceiling, weekly prohibitions at 70 hours in 7 consecutive days or 80 hours in 8 consecutive days, and a 150 air-mile radius. Louisiana takes none of it.

The complete Louisiana modification list at Section 10305.C is five items: the numeric substitution, the minimum-age paragraph in 391.11(b)(1), two driver-qualification grandfathers, and substitutions of state agency names and state forms. Nothing on that list reaches Part 395. Sections 395.1, 395.3 and 395.8 do not contain a weight figure for the numeric substitution to touch either.

Every figure in the Louisiana column is the federal figure, because the state adopted the section and left it alone. The national hours of service page is the canonical version of that right-hand column, and it is also the left-hand column.

There is a configuration lesson buried in the sameness. An intrastate Louisiana carrier does not need a special state ruleset from its device vendor, and should be suspicious of one. Ask for the federal property-carrying ruleset. If a vendor offers you a Louisiana intrastate profile with a 12-hour driving limit, that profile is describing a variance the state never enacted.

The device rule is adopted word for word

Section 395.8 comes in with Part 395 and is not on the modification list, so it applies exactly as the federal government wrote it to every operation the chapter governs.

Paragraph (a)(1)(i) requires a motor carrier operating commercial motor vehicles to install and require each of its drivers to use an ELD to record the driver's duty status in accordance with subpart B of the part, no later than December 18, 2017. The routes to paper inside the section are the four cases at paragraph (a)(1)(ii)(A): a driver who completes a record of duty status on not more than 8 days within any 30-day period, two driveaway-towaway situations, and a vehicle manufactured before model year 2000. Louisiana adds none of its own and removes none. The national ELD mandate page walks through each of them, and the FMCSA registered device list is where you confirm a device is still registered rather than revoked.

Section 395.1 is unmodified as well, so the 150 air-mile short-haul exception at 395.1(e)(1) runs at its federal text. It releases a driver from 395.8 and 395.11 when the driver operates within 150 air miles (172.6 statute miles) of the normal work reporting location, returns and is released from work within 14 consecutive hours, keeps at least 10 consecutive hours off duty between each 14 hours on duty in a property-carrying vehicle, and the carrier retains six months of time records.

Two independent releases, then, and they stack in a useful order. Ask first whether the chapter reaches the truck at all. Only if it does should you start testing short-haul.

Which commerce your run is actually in

Everything above is written for intrastate commerce, and 49 CFR 390.5 decides what that means. Interstate commerce includes transportation 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 whatever that definition does not describe.

Louisiana is a bad state to get this wrong in, and the trucks it bites are exactly the ones the 26,000-pound line was supposed to release. Take a 16,000-pound box truck. On Monday it collects imported freight from a consolidator at the Port of New Orleans and delivers it in Kenner. Both addresses are in Louisiana, but the freight originated outside the state, so that is very likely an interstate move: Subsection A.1 and federal law reach it directly at 10,001 pounds, with the record-of-duty-status rule attached. On Tuesday the same box truck carries goods made in Baton Rouge to a store in Kenner. That run is intrastate, the truck is under 26,000 pounds, and the chapter does not reach it at all.

A fleet in the 10,001 to 26,000 pound band that mixes port and import work with local work therefore crosses the compliance line by load rather than by vehicle. The safe posture there is to equip to the federal standard and treat the state exemption as a line you happen to sit under, not as a fleet policy. A carrier doing only local work can rely on the exemption, and should write down which category each truck falls in and why.

The Louisiana DOT number page covers the registration side of the same question, and the state-by-state intrastate authority comparison is where the rest of the country's lines sit.

The substitution clause you will see quoted back at you

Search this topic and you will find LAC 33:V.10305.C.1 quoted as though it were the rule: for the adopted regulations governing all carriers, drivers or vehicles as specified in Subsection B, substitute 26,000 pounds for all references made to 10,000 pounds.

That sentence is real, and it is a conforming edit rather than the applicability gate. Two things about it are worth knowing before you build a fleet policy on it. It is scoped by its own terms to the Subsection B population, so it does not describe who is covered, only how the adopted text reads for those already covered. And the current federal definition of commercial motor vehicle at 390.5 says 10,001 pounds, not 10,000, while 395.1, 395.3 and 395.8 say no pounds at all.

Subsection B is the operative line. Quote that one.

What Louisiana did change: who may drive

The modifications that do bite are in Part 391, and they are worth knowing because they run the other direction from the weight rule. They let more people drive, not fewer.

Section 10305.C.2 rewrites 391.11(b)(1) so that it reads: is at least 21 years old, or is at least 18 years old and lawfully possesses an appropriately classified driver's license secured from the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections. Federal 350.305(e) sets the intrastate floor at 18, and Louisiana sits on it.

Section 10305.C.3 carries two grandfathers, both now decades old. A driver regularly employed by a motor carrier for a continuous period of no less than three years immediately prior to January 20, 1988 is exempt from Parts 391.21, 391.23 and 391.33. A driver employed as a commercial motor vehicle operator for a minimum of 24 months prior to March 31, 1992 is exempt from 391.41(b)(1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (10) and (11). The second one comes with a condition and a marking: the driver stays qualified only while an examining physician confirms at the biennial 391.45 examination that the condition has not significantly worsened and no other disqualifying condition has appeared, and the medical examiner's certificate must display upon its face the inscription "medically unqualified outside louisiana."

If you hire in Louisiana and a driver hands you a medical card with that phrase printed on it, it is not a defect. It is a state grandfather clause, it is valid inside Louisiana only, and that driver cannot run interstate on it. What counts as an appropriately classified license, and where the commercial classes start, is on the Louisiana CDL page and the national CDL versus non-CDL comparison.

The date nobody quotes

One last thing to file away. Chapter 103 was originally promulgated at LR 14:31 in January 1988. The adoption section, 10303, was last amended at LR 47:489 in April 2021. The applicability section, 10305, was last amended at LR 38:1417 in June 2012.

June 2012 is three and a half years before the federal electronic logging device final rule published. Louisiana's rolling adoption clause pulled the device requirement into the chapter automatically, but the state has not revisited the 26,000-pound line that decides who the requirement lands on since before the rule existed. The line is current law and it is enforceable as written. It is also the part of this chapter most likely to move, so re-read Section 10305 before you make a multi-year equipment decision on the strength of it.

FAQ

Does an intrastate Louisiana truck under 26,000 pounds need an ELD?

Generally no. LAC 33:V.10305.B extends the adopted federal motor carrier safety regulations to carriers and vehicles not subject to the federal regulations only when the operated vehicle has a single or combined gross vehicle weight or gross vehicle weight rating greater than 26,000 pounds and is used in commerce or industry. Below that, the adopted 49 CFR Part 395 does not reach the operation, and the electronic logging device requirement lives inside Part 395 at Section 395.8. Two things override the weight test: Subsection A still covers anyone transporting hazardous materials within the state and any vehicle designed or used to transport 16 or more people including the driver, and any run that is interstate commerce under 49 CFR 390.5 is covered federally at 10,001 pounds no matter what the state rule says.

Does Louisiana give intrastate drivers longer hours than the federal rule?

No. 49 CFR 350.305(d) would let Louisiana allow a 12-hour driving limit inside a 16-hour on-duty ceiling and 70-hour or 80-hour weekly cycles, and Louisiana takes none of it. The complete modification list at LAC 33:V.10305.C covers a numeric substitution, the minimum-age paragraph in 391.11(b)(1), two driver-qualification grandfathers, and substitutions of state agency names and forms. Nothing on that list touches Part 395. An intrastate Louisiana driver the chapter governs runs the federal 11-hour driving limit, 14-hour window, and 60-hour or 70-hour weekly cycle.

Why does the Louisiana rule say to substitute 26,000 for 10,000 pounds?

LAC 33:V.10305.C.1 is a conforming edit, not the applicability gate. It applies only to the adopted regulations governing the Subsection B population, and the current federal definition of commercial motor vehicle at 49 CFR 390.5 reads 10,001 pounds rather than 10,000. Sections 395.1, 395.3 and 395.8 carry no weight figure at all. Subsection B is the line that decides who the adopted Part 395 binds, so read that one.