Washington Intrastate ELD Rules and Hours of Service

Most states that pull the federal safety rules into their own code for intrastate carriers draw the exceptions with a weight line. Washington drew one with a commodity. WAC 446-65-010 adopts twenty-three parts of Title 49 CFR into Washington law, then writes a proviso into the hours-of-service entry that lifts one class of driver out of Part 395: a commercial motor vehicle of any size hauling logs from the point of production, or driving in dump truck operations, in intrastate commerce.

Any size. No weight floor and no weight ceiling. A 105,500 pound log truck and a 14,000 pound dump body sit on the same state clock, while every other Washington intrastate carrier sits on the full federal rule with a mandatory electronic logging device.

The proviso is conditional, and that is the part that costs people money. It is not a status a truck carries around. It is a list of conditions a duty tour either meets or does not, and a tour that misses one of them is back under Part 395 in full.

What Washington adopted, and the date it stopped at

The Washington State Patrol runs intrastate motor carrier safety here, not the Utilities and Transportation Commission that licenses intrastate freight and is the agency a new Washington carrier meets first. WAC 446-65-005 says the state patrol adopts this chapter by authority of RCW 46.32.020, which lets the chief adopt reasonable rules on drivers' qualifications, hours of service and inspections, and RCW 46.32.080 puts commercial motor vehicle safety enforcement in the same hands. What the commission issues is on the Washington intrastate authority page.

WAC 446-65-010(1) then adopts, in their entirety, Parts 40, 325, 350, 355, 365, 367, 372, 373, 376, 379, 380, 381, 382, 383, 385, 387, 390, 391, 392, 393, 395, 396 and 397, "as they exist on April 25, 2025, for motor carriers used in intrastate or interstate commerce."

Two things in that clause are worth a second read.

The first is that the adoption reaches interstate carriers as well as intrastate ones. Most state adoptions of the federal safety rules are written for intrastate operation, because interstate operation is already federal. Washington's is written for both, so the state patrol enforces the same parts against everybody and the two provisos are the only place the section treats the two differently.

The second is that the incorporation is fixed-date. A state can write its adoption to pull in federal amendments automatically, the way New Jersey's chapter does. Washington's names a day instead. A federal rule published after April 25, 2025 reaches a Washington intrastate carrier when the state patrol files a new version of the section, and the filing history shows that happening on a schedule: WSR 26-12-032, filed May 27, 2026 and effective June 27, 2026, and before it WSR 25-19-049, WSR 23-17-158, WSR 21-22-087, WSR 21-08-002 and WSR 18-06-029. Six filings since 2018 to keep one date current. When the next federal hours rule lands, check the WAC before you assume the federal effective date is the Washington one.

The proviso, in the rule's own words

Here is entry (u) of the adoption list, which is where Part 395 sits:

Part 395 Hours of service of drivers: Except if a company has drivers of commercial motor vehicle of any size, hauling logs from the point of production or driving in dump truck operations in intrastate commerce provided that:

(i) The driver must:

(A) Operate within a 100 air-mile radius of the location where the driver reports to work and the driver must return to the work reporting location at the end of each duty tour;

(B) Have at least 10 consecutive hours off duty separating each on-duty period;

(C) Not drive: More than 12 hours following at least 10 hours off duty; or After the 14th hour after coming on duty on at least five days of any period of seven consecutive days; and After the 16th hour after coming on duty on no more than two days of any period of seven consecutive days; and After having been on duty for 80 hours in seven consecutive days if the employing motor carrier does not operate commercial motor vehicle every day of the week; or After having been on duty for 90 hours in eight consecutive days if the employing motor carrier operates commercial motor vehicle every day of the week; in any period of seven or eight consecutive days may end with the beginning of any off-duty period of 24 or more consecutive hours.

(ii) The motor carrier that employs the driver must maintain and retain for a period of 12 months accurate and true time recordings showing:

(A) The time the driver reports for duty each day; (B) The total number of hours the driver is on duty each day; (C) The total number of hours the driver drives each day; (D) The time the driver is released from duty each day; and (E) The total time the driver is driving and on duty for the preceding seven days.

The four driving prohibitions inside (C) are printed as bullets in the published section and are run together above. The mix of numerals and number words is the section's own.

Note what the class is drawn on. Not weight, not gross combination weight rating, not passenger count. Commodity and operation: logs moving from the point of production, and dump truck operations. That is a narrower and stranger cut than any other live state's intrastate variance, and it lines up with a second piece of Washington log-hauling exceptionalism already on the Washington trucking permits page, where the log tolerance permit carries a fixed March 31 expiry instead of a rolling year.

The clock, side by side

The federal column is the rule described on the hours of service page, and it is what a Washington intrastate driver outside the two named operations runs on, unchanged.

The state column is not a loosening in every row. The reset is the same 10 hours. The radius is tighter than any federal figure. The 14-hour ceiling is the federal one on five days out of seven. What genuinely moves is the driving hour, the weekly total, the restart, and the record.

Where the state clock came from

The conditions are not invented from nothing. Read them against 49 CFR 395.1(e)(2), the federal short-haul exception for drivers of property-carrying commercial motor vehicles that do not require a commercial driver's license, and the shape is the same: a radius, a return to the reporting location at the end of each duty tour, a 14-hour ceiling on five days and 16 on two, and a carrier time record in place of a log.

Then count the departures. The federal paragraph is limited to non-CDL vehicles and Washington's reaches a vehicle of any size. The federal radius is 150 air miles and Washington's is 100. Washington writes in a 12-hour driving limit where the federal paragraph leaves 49 CFR 395.3(a)(3)(i) at 11. The federal weekly limits stay at 60 in seven and 70 in eight; Washington's are 80 and 90. The federal restart is 34 consecutive hours and Washington's is 24. The federal record is kept for 6 months and Washington's for 12, and the Washington record has to show the hours driven each day, which neither federal short-haul paragraph asks for.

So the carve-out is a state-built variant of a federal exception, stretched to cover full-size trucks in two industries and then loosened at the weekly end. Configure a device or a paper system against the federal short-haul template and four of those six numbers will be wrong.

What it does to the device

Nothing in WAC 446-65-010 uses the words electronic logging device. It does not have to. The exception works by not adopting Part 395 for the named class and putting a carrier time record in its place, which is the same mechanism 49 CFR 395.1(e) uses to release a short-haul driver from 49 CFR 395.8 and 395.11. On that reading a qualifying Washington intrastate log or dump truck driver records duty time on the carrier's time record rather than on a device.

The section does not say so in those words, and a wrong call here is a roadside out-of-service order rather than a paperwork fix. Get the reading in writing from the Washington State Patrol Commercial Vehicle Division, on (360) 596-3800, before you take a truck off a device.

For everyone else, 49 CFR 395.8 is adopted whole and applies exactly as the federal government wrote it. 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 part 395, no later than December 18, 2017. The four manual record-of-duty-status cases in paragraph (a)(1)(ii) are federal, Washington adds none of its own, and the national ELD mandate page walks through each of them. Confirm any device against the FMCSA registered device list before you buy it.

The 100 air-mile line is a condition, not a shelter

This is the trap, and it is the mirror image of the one New Jersey sets with its extra two hours.

WAC 446-65-010(1)(u)(i)(A) is a condition of the exception, not a boundary the driver may cross with a penalty. A log truck that runs 130 air miles from the yard on a Tuesday has not met (i)(A) for that duty tour, so the exception does not apply to it, so Part 395 applies to that operation in its entirety. That means 11 driving hours, a 14-hour window, the 30-minute break, 60 or 70 hours on the weekly cycle, and a record of duty status under 49 CFR 395.8.

The federal 150 air-mile short-haul release in 49 CFR 395.1(e)(1) is still available for that day, because Part 395 is adopted with no Washington proviso attached to 395.1. But it comes with its own conditions, and one of them bites: the driver has to return to the work reporting location and be released from work within 14 consecutive hours. The state clock lets a driver run to 16 hours on two days of any seven. Use the 16th hour on a day that also leaves the 100 air-mile radius and you have lost both releases at once.

A dispatcher running mixed radii out of one yard needs to know which tours are inside 100 air miles before the trucks leave, not after. That is a routing decision, not a compliance decision, and it is the single most useful thing to take off this page. Rates and permit costs for the same trucks are on the Washington trucking permits page, and the operating side of a dump fleet is covered on the dump truck business page.

The second variance: no road test and no DOT physical from 10,001 to 26,000 pounds

Entry (r) of the same adoption list carries a proviso that has nothing to do with hours and everything to do with who may drive. Part 391 is adopted, then:

Provided that 49 C.F.R. 391 subpart D (Tests), and E (Physical Qualifications and Examinations) do not apply to motor carriers operating vehicles with gross vehicle weight rating between 10,001 lbs. and 26,000 lbs. operating intrastate, and not used to transport hazardous materials in a quantity requiring placarding, and that 49 C.F.R. Sec. 391.11 (b)(1) (minimum age requirement) does not apply to drivers 18 through 20 years of age operating solely in intrastate commerce under these same conditions.

Subpart D of Part 391 is titled Tests and carries the road test. Subpart E is titled Physical Qualifications and Examinations and carries the medical certificate. So a Washington intrastate carrier running a 16,000 pound straight truck with no placards is outside the road-test rule and outside the DOT physical for that vehicle, and may put an 18-year-old in it.

The enforcing agency reads it the same way. The state patrol's own required-documents chart for commercial vehicles travelling in Washington prints No in the medical certificate column for a 10,000 to 26,000 pound GVWR vehicle operating intrastate, and LLD, its abbreviation for legally licensed driver, in the age column. That chart is form 3000-150-032, revised 8/09, so it predates the current adoption date in the WAC by a long way. Where the two disagree, the rule text governs.

Three lines to keep straight. Above 26,000 pounds, or with a placard at any weight, the medical certificate is back. The exemption is written for intrastate operation only, so the same truck on an interstate load needs the physical. And where the physical qualification standards do apply, WAC 446-65-020 adds a Washington step: if the examiner finds a condition listed in 49 CFR 391.41(b)(1) through (13) that is likely to interfere with the driver's ability to operate or control a motor vehicle safely, the driver must forward the examination to the Department of Licensing, Responsibility Division, Medical Section, which reviews it and issues a notice of determination. A clearance notification is sufficient cause for the examiner to issue the medical examiner's certificate, and a driver who never sends the examination in gets no clearance action at all.

Which trucks the chapter reaches

WAC 446-65-005 adopts the chapter's rules for commercial motor vehicles as defined by chapter 46.32 RCW, and RCW 46.32.005 draws that line at a gross vehicle weight rating, gross combination weight rating, gross weight or gross combination weight of 4,536 kilograms or more, which the statute itself glosses as 10,001 pounds or more. It also reaches a vehicle designed or used to carry more than eight passengers including the driver for compensation, more than fifteen passengers including the driver not for compensation, and any vehicle carrying hazardous materials in a placardable quantity.

Washington had an easier option and did not take it. 49 CFR 350.305(a)(1) lets a state exempt an intrastate commercial motor vehicle from all or part of its safety rules below 26,001 pounds, unless the vehicle is placarded or is designed or used to carry 16 or more people including the driver. That permission is where a 26,001 pound intrastate threshold comes from in the states that have one. Washington kept its floor at 10,001 pounds and used the permission narrowly instead, to switch off two subparts of Part 391 in the band between.

One more line in the definition is worth knowing, because it is the Washington answer to a question other states handle in statute. A recreational vehicle used for noncommercial purposes is not a commercial motor vehicle, and RCW 46.32.005 says that includes a vehicle towing a horse trailer for a noncommercial purpose.

Three Washington thresholds sit close together and none of them is the same number. The safety chapter starts at 10,001 pounds. The state DOT number requirement starts at 16,001 pounds gross vehicle weight, which the Utilities and Transportation Commission publishes against RCW 46.32.080 and which the state DOT number requirements page compares across the country. The intrastate freight permit has no weight line at all.

Which clock your run is actually on

Both provisos are written for intrastate commerce, and 49 CFR 390.5, which this chapter adopts, supplies the test. Interstate commerce includes trade, traffic, or 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 anything that definition does not describe.

Two Washington addresses are not enough on their own. A log load moving from a Washington landing to a Washington mill is intrastate; the same truck on a load that started or ends outside the state is not, and neither Washington proviso reaches it. A dump fleet that hauls aggregate for a state highway job in the morning and moves a load off a barge in the afternoon has two rulesets running in one week, and the driver's day has to be told which one applies. The state-by-state intrastate authority comparison covers how the rest of the country splits the same question.

Where the weekly numbers stop matching the federal list

One thing on this page is a genuine open question, and it is better said plainly than left out.

49 CFR 350.305(d) is the federal list of hours-of-service variances a state may apply to intrastate transportation. It allows three: a 12-hour driving limit provided the driver is not permitted to drive after having been on duty more than 16 hours, driving prohibitions at 70 hours in 7 consecutive days or 80 hours in 8 consecutive days, and a 150 air-mile radius or the radius under 49 CFR 395.1(e)(1)(i), whichever is greater.

Washington's 12-hour driving limit sits inside that list, and the 16-hour ceiling is the one the list names. Its 100 air-mile radius is tighter than the federal figure, so it narrows the class rather than widening it. Its weekly figures, 80 hours in seven consecutive days and 90 in eight, are not the figures paragraph (d)(2) enumerates.

FMCSA publishes a compatibility determination for each state, which is where that difference would be resolved. Its site refuses automated requests, so the Washington determination could not be read for this page. What is recorded here is a difference between two published texts and nothing more. If your operation depends on hour 80 of a seven-day week, ask the state patrol how it enforces the weekly limits before you schedule against them.

FAQ

Does Washington exempt intrastate drivers from the ELD rule?

Only two operations, and only on conditions. WAC 446-65-010(1) adopts 49 CFR Part 395 in its entirety except for a company with drivers of a commercial motor vehicle of any size hauling logs from the point of production or driving in dump truck operations in intrastate commerce. Those drivers run on a state clock inside a 100 air-mile radius and the carrier keeps 12 months of time records instead. Every other Washington intrastate carrier sits under 49 CFR 395.8, so the device is mandatory and the only ways out are the four federal manual-record cases in 395.8(a)(1)(ii) and the 150 air-mile short-haul release in 395.1(e)(1).

How many hours can a Washington intrastate log truck driver drive?

Twelve, following at least 10 hours off duty, under WAC 446-65-010(1)(u)(i)(C), against the federal 11 hours in 49 CFR 395.3(a)(3)(i). The same paragraph then caps the day: no driving after the 14th hour after coming on duty on at least five days of any period of seven consecutive days, and no driving after the 16th hour on no more than two days of any seven. The weekly figures are 80 hours in seven consecutive days, or 90 hours in eight when the carrier operates every day of the week, and a period of seven or eight consecutive days may end with an off-duty period of 24 or more consecutive hours.

Does a Washington intrastate driver need a DOT physical?

Not between 10,001 and 26,000 pounds. WAC 446-65-010(1)(r) adopts 49 CFR Part 391 with a proviso that subpart D (Tests) and subpart E (Physical Qualifications and Examinations) do not apply to motor carriers operating vehicles rated between 10,001 lbs. and 26,000 lbs. operating intrastate and not carrying hazardous materials in a quantity requiring placarding, and that the 49 CFR 391.11(b)(1) minimum age does not apply to drivers 18 through 20 years of age operating solely in intrastate commerce under the same conditions. Above 26,000 pounds, or with a placard at any weight, the medical certificate is back.