Oklahoma Intrastate ELD Rules and Hours of Service

Most states that pull the federal safety rules into their own code for intrastate carriers change the driving hours and leave the recording device alone. Oklahoma wrote an exemption from the device itself. 47 O.S. Section 14-125 releases agricultural motor vehicles in intrastate commerce from the electronic logging device requirement by name, in statute, with no season and no mileage radius attached to it.

Everything else about Oklahoma intrastate hours sits in one statutory subsection and none of it is in the rule chapter a carrier would think to read. That gap is the whole point of this page.

What Oklahoma adopted, and where the exceptions live

The Department of Public Safety runs intrastate motor carrier safety here, not the Corporation Commission. OAC 595:35-1-4 says the Department adopts by reference the United States Department of Transportation regulations pertaining to motor carrier safety and hazardous materials transportation, as contained in Title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations, and makes each adopted part enforceable pursuant to 47 O.S. Section 230.4(2). The list runs Parts 40, 107, 171, 172, 173, 177, 178, 180, 382, 383 (in so much as it does not conflict with state law), 385, 386, 380, 390, 391, 392, 393, 395, 396 and 397. The chapter was codified December 30, 1991 and the adoption list's current text took effect September 11, 2022.

Part 395, Hours of Service of Drivers, is on the list. The list carries no carve-out for subpart B, which is where the electronic logging device specifications live. So the starting position for an Oklahoma intrastate carrier is the full federal hours rule on a mandatory device.

Now read the section that is supposed to hold the state's changes. OAC 595:35-1-6, titled Deletions, substitutions, and additions to federal rules adopted by reference, applies only to intrastate commerce and covers four things:

• terminology, so "Department" reads for "Department of Transportation" and "Commissioner" reads for "Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administrator";
• Unified Registration System filing for every intrastate motor carrier, plus the USDOT number display rule for each power unit;
• a minimum driving age of 18 in solely intrastate commerce, rising to 21 for placarded hazardous materials or for carrying more than 8 passengers for compensation;
• who may declare an emergency, and how the hours accumulated during one are counted afterwards.

There is no hours-of-service modification in it. No rest-break deletion. Nothing touching 49 CFR 395.8. Two separate republishers of the Oklahoma Administrative Code carry the same text, and the section was last amended September 11, 2017.

The numbers live in 47 O.S. Section 230.15 instead, and the bridge between the statute and the rule chapter is the opening clause of the current OAC 595:35-1-5(b), which applies the adopted federal parts "Except as provided by 47 O.S. Section 230.15". A carrier reading only Title 595 Chapter 35 will not find the Oklahoma clock. It reads the statute or it does not have it.

The agricultural ELD exemption is in the statute

Here is 47 O.S. Section 14-125 in full, under the catchline "Agricultural Motor Vehicles - Exemption from the Requirement for Electronic Logging Devices and Hours of Services":

A. Agricultural motor vehicles engaged in intrastate commerce shall be exempt from the requirement for electronic logging devices and hours of services as mandated by Section 32301(b) of the U.S. Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Enhancement Act.

B. For the purposes of this section, agricultural vehicles shall include, but are not limited to, single axel trucks with a gooseneck or bumper pull trailer for the purpose of hauling horses or livestock, and trailers with living quarters.

The spelling of "axel" is the statute's own. The enactment line reads Laws 2018, SB 912, c. 265, Section 1, emerg. eff. July 1, 2018. The federal mandate it names is section 32301 of Public Law 112-141, the surface transportation act known as MAP-21, titled "Hours of service study and electronic logging devices" and sitting in Subtitle C, Driver Safety. Subsection (b) of that section is the electronic logging device mandate the December 2015 final rule carried out.

Read what the exemption does not say. It sets no weight rating. It sets no air-mile radius. It names no planting or harvesting window. It defines agricultural motor vehicles only by an open-ended example list, and a gooseneck livestock trailer with living quarters is an example rather than a boundary.

One caution before anyone builds a policy on it. The Department of Public Safety's own Troop S agriculture page walks through the two federal MAP-21 agricultural exemptions, section 32101(d) for hours of service during planting and harvesting and section 32934 for covered farm vehicles, and never mentions 47 O.S. Section 14-125. The page closes with a notice in the agency's own words: "Oklahoma State Motor Vehicle Laws found in Title 47 will always apply unless specifically exempted." Get the enforcing agency's reading in writing before you take a truck off a device on the strength of the statute alone.

While you are on that page, the federal agricultural exception in 49 CFR 395.1(k) switches off all of Part 395 during planting and harvesting periods as determined by each state, inside a 150 air-mile radius. Troop S publishes Oklahoma's determination as January 1 to December 31. The federal agricultural relief runs the whole year here, which is a wider door than most carriers expect and one that does not depend on the state statute at all.

The clock, side by side

47 O.S. Section 230.15(D) tells the Department to set intrastate driving limits consistent with the federal hours of service rule, then writes three departures into the same subsection.

The 12-hour line is conditional and worth quoting: the maximum driving time within a work period is twelve hours if the vehicle is engaged solely in intrastate commerce and is not transporting hazardous materials as defined by the federal regulations. Put a placard on the trailer and the Oklahoma driving limit goes back to 11.

The federal compatibility rule at 49 CFR 350.305(d) is the list of intrastate hours variances a state is allowed to take, and it names 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. Oklahoma's 12-hour driving limit is squarely inside that list.

The 8-hour sentence is not. "Driving hours and on-duty status shall not begin following less than eight (8) consecutive hours off duty" appears in the statute, no Oklahoma rule restates it, and 49 CFR 350.305(d) does not list a shortened intrastate reset among the allowable variances. The federal 10-hour requirement in 49 CFR 395.3(a)(1) is adopted by reference and unmodified in the rule chapter. Treat the 8-hour line as statutory text to ask Troop S about, not as a reset to schedule against. The federal baseline it is measured against is on the hours of service page.

Same caution on the window. The statute changes the driving limit and says nothing about the 14-hour period in 49 CFR 395.3(a)(2), which OAC 595:35-1-4 adopts as written. A 12-hour driving day that starts late can run into the end of a 14-hour window that nothing in Oklahoma law extended.

The break is off, the device is not

47 O.S. Section 230.15(D)(2) is one sentence: no rule shall be adopted that enforces the provisions of 49 CFR Section 395.3(a)(3)(ii) relating to rest breaks, if the driver or motor carrier is engaged solely in intrastate commerce. That is a bar on the Department writing the rule at all, and the deletions section at OAC 595:35-1-6 duly carries no rest-break entry.

49 CFR 395.8 got no such treatment. It is adopted whole, so paragraph (a)(1)(i) reaches an Oklahoma intrastate carrier exactly as written: install and require each driver to use an electronic logging device to record duty status in accordance with subpart B of part 395, no later than December 18, 2017. The four manual record-of-duty-status cases in paragraph (a)(1)(ii) are federal, and the national ELD mandate page walks through each of them. Confirm any device against the FMCSA registered device list before you buy it.

Put the two halves together and the job is configuration. A non-agricultural Oklahoma intrastate driver runs a mandatory device set to a 12-hour driving limit with the 30-minute break rule off. A device left on the federal interstate ruleset will stop the driver at 11 hours and alarm on a break Oklahoma bars its own agency from enforcing. Ask the vendor for the Oklahoma intrastate ruleset by name before the first load.

Emergency hours are narrower than the summaries suggest

You will see Oklahoma described as having no hour restrictions during a declared emergency. The statute is tighter than that. On notification of the nearest Oklahoma Highway Patrol troop headquarters, the Commissioner or a designated agent declares the emergency, and the relief runs to rural electric cooperatives, public utilities, public service corporations and municipal employees, for service restoring heat, light, power, water, telephone or other emergency restoration facilities necessary to the health, welfare and safety of the public. A general freight carrier hauling through a storm is not on that list.

OAC 595:35-1-6(f) fills in the rest. The decision to declare an emergency and grant relief sits with the Commissioner of Public Safety or a designee, the Governor, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Field Administrator, or the President. Once restoration work ends, the on-duty hours accumulated during the emergency count against the driver's allowable on-duty hours, and any period of 8 consecutive days may end with an off-duty period of 34 or more successive hours taken at the end of the restoration service.

Which trucks this reaches

OAC 595:35-1-5(b) is the applicability switch, and the published versions of it disagree, so this page carries no single number.

The Legal Information Institute publishes a version labelled effective until September 14, 2025 that reaches intrastate vehicles in excess of 26,000 pounds gross vehicle weight or gross combination weight, and a version labelled effective September 14, 2025 that opens "Except as provided by 47 O.S. Section 230.15" and reaches intrastate vehicles with a weight rating or weight of ten thousand one (10,001) pounds or more, whichever is greater. Both reach vehicles built to carry more than 8 passengers for compensation, more than 15 passengers not for compensation, and placarded hazardous materials regardless of weight.

A second republisher of the Oklahoma Administrative Code still carries only the 26,000-pound text. The Department's own Troop S page on USDOT numbers ties the intrastate USDOT number to the commercial driver license classes, which start at 26,001 pounds. The official code at rules.ok.gov refuses automated requests, so the change could not be read at the promulgating source for this page. The gap between the two thresholds is every straight truck between 10,001 and 26,000 pounds, which is a large share of the intrastate fleet, so confirm the number with Troop S before you size a policy around it. What a carrier holds at either weight is on the Oklahoma intrastate authority page, and the registration side is on the Oklahoma DOT number page.

The short-haul release still ends at 14 hours

49 CFR 395.1(e)(1) is adopted unmodified, so the 150 air-mile short-haul exception releases an Oklahoma intrastate driver from 49 CFR 395.8 and 395.11 on the federal terms. The driver stays within 150 air miles of the normal work reporting location, returns to it and is released from work within 14 consecutive hours, gets at least 10 consecutive hours off separating each 14 hours on duty, and the carrier keeps accurate time records for 6 months.

Read the numbers in that paragraph against the state ones. The release depends on a 10-hour break and a 14-hour release, both of which are federal text the statute never replaced. A local fleet running short-haul for its paperwork relief gains nothing from the 8-hour sentence and can lose the exception the day it leans on it.

Which clock your run is actually on

All of this is written for intrastate commerce, and the Department of Public Safety applies the federal definitions in 49 CFR 390.5 with the interpretations at 49 CFR 390.3 to decide which side a load falls on. Troop S publishes seven Oklahoma worked examples on its Intrastate/Interstate page, and the sharpest one is a local delivery truck that never leaves Norman running interstate because one appliance on the load shipped from a Texas distribution center to that customer's address.

A carrier that mixes both kinds of work has two rulesets running in the same week, and the driver's device has to be told which one applies to the day. The state-by-state intrastate authority comparison covers how the rest of the country handles the same split.

One lever nobody quotes

47 O.S. Section 230.15(F)(2) lets the Department of Public Safety promulgate rules suspending the effective date of any new federal motor carrier safety regulation for up to three years as applied to vehicles engaged solely in intrastate commerce, provided the suspension does not cost Oklahoma its federal Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program funding. Nothing turns on it today. It is the reason to check the statute and the rule chapter together when the next federal rule lands, rather than assuming a federal effective date is the Oklahoma one. What else an Oklahoma carrier files and buys is on the Oklahoma trucking permits page.

FAQ

Does Oklahoma exempt intrastate drivers from the ELD rule?

Only agricultural ones. 47 O.S. Section 14-125 says agricultural motor vehicles engaged in intrastate commerce are exempt from the requirement for electronic logging devices and hours of services. Every other intrastate carrier sits under 49 CFR 395.8, because OAC 595:35-1-4 adopts 49 CFR Part 395 by reference and the chapter's deletions section at 595:35-1-6 never touches the record-of-duty-status rule. The only other routes to paper are federal: the four manual-record cases in 395.8(a)(1)(ii) and the 150 air-mile short-haul release in 395.1(e)(1).

Can an Oklahoma intrastate driver drive 12 hours?

That is what 47 O.S. Section 230.15(D)(1) directs. The maximum driving time within a work period is twelve hours if the vehicle is engaged solely in intrastate commerce and is not transporting hazardous materials, against the federal 11 hours in 49 CFR 395.3(a)(3)(i). The federal compatibility rule at 49 CFR 350.305(d)(1) allows a state to go to 12 provided the driver may not drive after more than 16 hours on duty. Nothing in the Oklahoma statute or in OAC Title 595 Chapter 35 replaces the 14-hour period in 49 CFR 395.3(a)(2), which the chapter adopts as written, so ask Troop S how it enforces the two together before you run hour 12.

Is the 30-minute break required in Oklahoma intrastate commerce?

47 O.S. Section 230.15(D)(2) says no rule shall be adopted that enforces the provisions of 49 CFR Section 395.3(a)(3)(ii) relating to rest breaks if the driver or motor carrier is engaged solely in intrastate commerce. That is a bar on the Department of Public Safety writing the rule, and the deletions section at OAC 595:35-1-6 carries no rest-break entry to go with it. The break still applies the moment a load is interstate under 49 CFR 390.5, and mixed-fleet drivers are the ones who get this wrong.