The 34-Hour Restart, Step by Step

2026-09-047 min

A 7-day or 8-day period may end with the beginning of an off-duty period of 34 or more consecutive hours. That is the whole rule — no overnight-period condition and no once-a-week limit survive in the current text.

Low-poly render of a sleeper cab parked at a rest area — Thirty-four hours is a day and a half of parking. It should buy something.

What a restart resets

Exactly one thing: the weekly clock. Your 60-hour or 70-hour total goes back to zero, and the days behind you stop counting. It does not touch the 11-hour driving clock or the 14-hour window — those were already reset by the first 10 hours of the restart, and the remaining 24 hours buy nothing except the weekly reset.

That last sentence is the whole economics of the restart. Hours 11 to 34 are only worth taking if the weekly clock is what is actually stopping you.

Counting the 34 hours

01Mark the minute you go off duty. Not the minute you park, not the minute the ELD logs the last mile — the minute the duty status changes.
02Add 34 hours. Off duty at 18:20 Friday means the restart completes at 04:20 Sunday. Sleeper-berth time counts; any on-duty minute in between breaks the run and starts it over.
03The weekly clock is clear from that minute. It is not clear at midnight, and it is not clear because two calendar days have a line through them.

The restart calculator does this arithmetic and also shows what the recap would have given you over the same period, which is the comparison that actually matters.

The recap alternative

The weekly period rolls. On day 9 the hours you worked on day 1 drop off and return to you. A driver who works steadily gets a few hours back every single morning without parking at all.

Day	On duty	Rolling 8-day total	Left of 70	Status
Mon	11.5	11.5	58.5	Compliant
Tue	13.0	24.5	45.5	Compliant
Wed	9.0	33.5	36.5	Compliant
Thu	12.5	46.0	24.0	Compliant
Fri	10.0	56.0	14.0	Compliant
Sat	8.0	64.0	6.0	Compliant
Sun	0.0	64.0	6.0	Compliant
Mon	11.0	75.0	-5.0	Attention

In that ledger the driver never dropped below five hours available and never took a restart. The Sunday off was worth a normal weekend — one day, not one and a half — because Monday's recap was already arriving.

Low-poly render of an empty truck-stop parking row — The recap gives hours back without giving up the night and a half.

Is it worth it?

Take the restart when the weekly clock, not the daily one, is what stops you tomorrow, and when the hours it returns are hours you can actually sell. A restart taken on a Friday night you would have parked anyway is close to free. A restart taken mid-week to recover four recap hours costs more than it returns.

Restarting under a load with an appointment on the other side is where the plan usually breaks. Check the appointment against the completion minute before you shut down, not after.