Personal Conveyance vs Yard Moves: ELD Rules Fleets Get Wrong

A driver finishes unloading at 22:40 with eleven minutes of driving left, taps "PC" on the tablet and rolls 74 miles east to a truck stop that happens to sit beside tomorrow's pickup. Another driver spends a Sunday shuttling trailers between a cross-dock and an overflow lot across a four-lane road, all logged as yard moves. Both logs look tidy until a roadside officer or a compliance review asks why the truck was moving and who benefited.

Personal conveyance and yard moves are the two special driving categories a carrier can switch on in an electronic logging device. Used correctly, they keep honest off-duty travel and yard shunting from eating the 11-hour driving limit. Used loosely, they turn into false duty-status records. This guide gives fleets a written test for each movement, an audit query that catches the common abuses, and a policy a safety manager can defend line by line.

• What the guide covers: the exact grant in 49 CFR 395.28, FMCSA's 2018 personal conveyance guidance, the yard-move guidance that is still only partly settled, and how an ELD records each status.
• What it adds: a movement-by-movement classification table, a timestamped misuse trace, an SQL audit filter, a worked cost example in US dollars with an Indian contrast in rupees, and a rollout checklist.

What 49 CFR 395.28 actually allows a carrier to switch on

The regulation grants a carrier an option, not a driver a right. Under 49 CFR 395.28(a)(1), a motor carrier may configure an ELD so that a driver can indicate two special driving categories: authorized personal use and yard moves. If the carrier never enables them, neither exists for that driver, and every movement above the in-motion threshold is recorded as driving.

The ELD technical specification backs this up. Section 4.3.3.1.1 of Appendix A to Subpart B of Part 395 says that, by default, none of the special categories is available to a new driver account until the carrier configures it, and that configuration changes must be recorded and shown to the driver at login. When a category is enabled, section 395.28(a)(2) puts two duties on the driver: select the category before the status starts and deselect it when it ends, and annotate the record when the device prompts.

The two categories also behave differently in the device. Section 4.4.1.1 of the specification says personal use keeps the duty status at off-duty while the truck moves, and a yard move keeps it at on-duty not driving. Section 4.3.2.2.2(e) adds a subtle rule: after an engine or ELD power cycle, a yard-move indication resets to none, while personal use asks the driver to confirm that the personal trip continues.

Personal conveyance is judged by purpose, not by miles or a full trailer

The single test that decides personal conveyance is whether the carrier has relieved the driver of all work and the trip serves the driver, not the business. FMCSA's revised guidance, published at 83 FR 26377 on 7 June 2018 as the answer to Question 26 under 49 CFR 395.8, says the truck may even be laden, because the load is not moving for the carrier's commercial benefit at that time.

The guidance sets no mileage cap. Commenters asked FMCSA for distance or time limits, and the agency said that was outside the scope of guidance. It did confirm that personal conveyance is off-duty time, so it does not touch the 11-hour or 14-hour limits or the 60/70-hour totals. A carrier may still set tighter rules: banning personal conveyance, imposing a distance limit, or prohibiting it while laden.

• Lodging to meals: travelling from en route lodging, such as a motel or truck stop, to restaurants and entertainment.
• Commuting home: between the terminal, a trailer-drop lot or a work site and the driver's residence, provided the commute still leaves time for restorative rest.
• Nearest safe rest: after loading or unloading, driving to a nearby, reasonable, safe place to rest, which must be the first such location reasonably available.
• Officer's request: moving the truck at the request of a safety official during off-duty time.
• Personal property: transporting personal belongings while off duty, and authorised travel home after working at an offsite location.

The guidance also lists uses that never qualify. The ones that matter most to a freight carrier are moving the truck to improve operational readiness, such as bypassing available rest spots to get closer to the next load; bobtailing or pulling an empty to retrieve another load; repositioning a tractor or trailer at the carrier's direction; driving to a maintenance appointment; and driving to the carrier's terminal after loading or unloading.

Personal conveyance under FMCSA's guidance to 49 CFR 395.8 Question 26 (83 FR 26377, June 2018) is off-duty time only when the carrier has released the driver from all work. A 74-mile drive that ends beside the next pickup fails the operational-readiness exclusion, whatever the trailer holds or the mileage policy allows.

One status question remains open for planners. The 2018 notice said the guidance would expire on 7 June 2023 unless reissued. FMCSA's notice of 20 June 2023 explained that guidance posted to its guidance portal was treated as reissued on 3 March 2020, and listed this item as FMCSA-HOS-395.8-Q26. Check the FMCSA guidance portal before citing it in a policy, and keep your own written rule tighter than the guidance either way.

Yard moves stay on duty and belong only inside a controlled yard

A yard move is not free time. The ELD records it as on-duty not driving, so every minute counts toward the 14-hour window and the 60/70-hour totals; it only avoids the 11-hour driving count. The place where the movement happens is what makes it a yard move, and that place must be private or access-controlled.

FMCSA's current portal guidance, item FMCSA-HOS-395.2-Q09 updated in February 2020, answers a narrow question: a driver who jockeys trucks in a yard on private property records that time as on-duty not driving. In January 2021 FMCSA proposed broader guidance at 86 FR 179 listing examples of qualifying yards: an intermodal yard or port facility, a carrier's place of business, a shipper's privately owned lot, and a public road only while traffic control such as gates, lights or flaggers restricts public access.

When we searched the Federal Register for FMCSA documents mentioning yard moves in November 2026, the 2021 notice was still listed as proposed guidance, with no final version. Treat its examples as FMCSA's stated thinking, not settled law, and keep your policy conservative: the 2021 notice also listed public rest areas and public roads without traffic control as places that do not qualify.

Two details catch fleets out. Because yard-move time is on-duty not driving, a continuous 30-minute stretch of it satisfies the 30-minute interruption in driving under 49 CFR 395.3(a)(3)(ii), which permits on-duty not driving time to count. And because the specification resets the yard-move indication after a power cycle, a driver who shuts down between shunts must reselect yard move, or the next movement records as driving.

Yard-move time recorded through an ELD under 49 CFR 395.28(a)(1)(ii) is on-duty not driving, so a hostler's 3.5 hours of shunting consumes 3.5 hours of the 14-hour window. Only movement inside a confined private or access-controlled property qualifies; open public-road segments between sites are driving time.

Eleven common movements sorted into driving, yard move or off duty

Drivers decide in seconds, so the carrier's policy should answer the common cases before the driver has to. The table below is the version we recommend publishing in the driver handbook and in the dispatch playbook, with the evidence an auditor expects to find for each one. Where the guidance is silent, the table takes the conservative reading.

The table deliberately does not mention speed or distance thresholds as rules. Those belong in the audit layer, where they trigger a review rather than decide the answer. A 9-mile personal conveyance can be wrong if it ends at the next shipper's gate, and a 40-mile one can be right in a region where every truck stop for 35 miles is full at midnight.

Incident trace: a late unload, a convenient truck stop and an edit

The trace below follows one load through the night, using illustrative times and numbers. It shows how a single dispatch message turns a defensible personal conveyance into a reposition, and how the carrier's weekly log audit caught it before an investigator did.

1. Tuesday 22:40, unload complete: Load 48817 is signed off at a receiver in Joplin, Missouri. The driver's ELD shows 10 hours 49 minutes of driving and 13 hours 55 minutes since coming on duty. The TMS already holds load 48902, picking up at 06:00 in Springfield, 74 miles east.
2. Tuesday 22:46, dispatch message: The planner sends "PC to the Springfield stop, you'll be first in line." The driver selects personal conveyance and annotates "rest at truck stop". Two truck stops within 8 miles of the receiver show open parking.
3. Tuesday 22:47 to 00:12, the move: The ELD records off-duty with personal use, latitude and longitude rounded to one decimal place, and blank vehicle miles. Engine power-up and shut-down events keep their odometer readings: 412,306 at start and 412,380 at stop, so 74 miles.
4. Wednesday 09:15, weekly audit flag: The audit query matches three signals: PC distance above 25 miles, PC end point within 5 miles of the next pickup, and a dispatch message containing "PC" sent within 15 minutes of the selection. The safety analyst opens case PC-1107.
5. Thursday 14:30, correction and coaching: The analyst proposes an edit through the ELD under 395.30(d), changing the segment to driving with the annotation "repositioning per dispatch 22:46". The driver accepts and recertifies. The corrected log shows 12 hours 14 minutes of driving, so the planner, not only the driver, is coached on the 11-hour breach.

Reading the ELD trail when the device deliberately blurs location

An auditor can still measure a personal conveyance trip even though the ELD hides detail. Section 4.7.3 of the specification requires the device, during personal use, to round latitude and longitude to one decimal place and to leave vehicle miles and engine hours blank, except on engine power-up and shut-down events. One tenth of a degree of latitude is roughly 11 kilometres, or about 7 miles.

That privacy rule shapes the audit. Distance comes from the odometer on the power-up event that starts the trip and the shut-down event that ends it, not from intermediate records. The end point is only known to about 7 miles, so "near the next pickup" needs a radius wider than the rounding error. Outside personal use, section 4.3.1.6 requires positions to two decimal places, which is enough to test a yard geofence.

-- Weekly audit filter for special driving categories (PostgreSQL)
-- pc_miles  = odometer at engine shut-down minus odometer at power-up within the PC span
-- next_pick = planned pickup of the driver's next load in the TMS
-- ym_mph    = yard-move miles / yard-move hours, from events at 0.01-degree precision
SELECT s.driver_id, s.segment_id, s.category,
       s.end_odometer - s.start_odometer                      AS seg_miles,
       ST_Distance(s.end_point_geog, n.pickup_geog) / 1609.34 AS miles_to_next_pick,
       EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM (s.end_ts - s.start_ts)) / 3600.0   AS seg_hours
FROM eld_special_segments s
LEFT JOIN tms_next_pickup n ON n.driver_id = s.driver_id AND n.after_ts = s.end_ts
WHERE (s.category = 'PC'
       AND (s.end_odometer - s.start_odometer > 25
            OR ST_Distance(s.end_point_geog, n.pickup_geog) < 8 * 1609.34))
   OR (s.category = 'YM'
       AND (NOT ST_Within(s.path_geom, s.yard_polygon)
            OR (s.end_odometer - s.start_odometer)
               / NULLIF(EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM (s.end_ts - s.start_ts)) / 3600.0, 0) > 15));
-- A hit opens a review case; it never edits the log by itself.

The 25-mile and 15 mph figures in the filter are carrier-chosen review triggers, not regulatory limits, and the 8-mile radius allows for the one-decimal rounding. Tune them against a month of history: if more than about a third of hits turn out to be legitimate, the trigger is too tight and analysts will start skimming.

Personal conveyance audits against an ELD must take distance from the engine power-up and shut-down odometer events, because Appendix A section 4.7.3 to 49 CFR Part 395 blanks vehicle miles and rounds coordinates to 0.1 degree, roughly 7 miles, while personal use is selected.

Pricing one misclassified segment in dollars, with an India contrast

The financial case for auditing is not the time saved by the driver; it is the exposure created when a corrected log shows a breach. The example below prices the Joplin trace with illustrative figures, and sets beside it what the same shunting and rest decisions cost an Indian fleet, where no ELD category exists.

India has no electronic logging rule and no personal-conveyance or yard-move category, so there is no Indian counterpart to 395.28. Indian fleets still record yard shunts in plant gate registers and still decide where a driver rests, so the rupee column shows the operating cost of the equivalent choices, not a compliance consequence. Driver working hours in India now fall under the labour codes in force since 21 November 2025, which our 14-hour rule guide compares with the US window.

The honest choice costs about $200 at most, while the misused segment produces a record with an 11-hour violation and a dispatch message that shows the carrier directed it. Under 49 CFR 395.8(e)(1), no driver or carrier may make a false report in connection with a duty status, so the exposure sits with the company as much as the driver. That asymmetry is the argument to put in front of operations leaders.

Checks an ELD rule can enforce and calls a safety analyst still owns

The device and the audit software can enforce configuration and catch patterns, but deciding whether a trip served the business needs a person who reads the dispatch history. The table below splits the work along that line, task by task, so that automated flags never become automatic edits.

Writing a carrier policy drivers can follow at 23:00

A good policy is short enough to remember at the end of a 14-hour day and specific enough that an auditor can test it. The guidance lets carriers be stricter than FMCSA, and most fleets should be, because a narrow written rule is easier to defend than a case-by-case argument after a crash.

• Eligibility list: name the driver groups allowed personal conveyance and yard moves; exclude trainees and any driver with an open hours violation case.
• Distance trigger: set a review threshold, such as 25 miles per off-duty period, and require a phone call to the safety desk before a longer trip.
• Laden rule: decide whether loaded trucks may be used for personal conveyance; high-value, hazmat and temperature-controlled loads usually should not.
• Named yards: list each property where yard moves are allowed, with its geofence and any controlled public-road crossing.
• Dispatcher conduct: forbid planners from suggesting personal conveyance; any message that does is itself a coaching event.
• Annotation standard: require the destination and reason in plain words, such as "Pilot stop exit 70, rest", not "PC".

Our HOS dispatch lock article covers blocking load assignments that would breach the 11-hour and 14-hour clocks; this one deals with the two categories that sit outside those clocks. Segments that nobody claims belong to a separate process, described in our guide to unassigned driving time on ELDs, and a device that stops recording falls under the ELD malfunction rules.

Carrier personal conveyance policy may be stricter than FMCSA guidance under 49 CFR 395.28, including a ban, a distance limit or a no-laden rule. A written 25-mile review trigger, a named-yard list and a dispatcher prohibition give auditors three testable controls instead of judgement calls.

Launching the audit: configuration, triggers, coaching and evidence

Start with configuration, run the audit in shadow for a month, then coach before you discipline. Fleets that begin with discipline get annotations that say less, not logs that are more accurate. The checklist below is the order we use, with the evidence each step should leave behind for a compliance review.

For more on driver hours and fleet rules, see the Logistics and Supply Chain hub. If you want help wiring ELD exports, TMS dispatch data and geofences into one review queue, you can send us a request for proposal describing your fleet size, ELD provider and current audit process.