Split Sleeper Berth Calculator

Part of Hours of Service & Logs

The sleeper berth provision lets a driver earn the 10-hour reset in two pieces instead of one. Get the pair right and neither piece counts against the 14-hour window. Get one figure wrong and both rests are simply time on the clock. Enter the two periods and this tells you which it is.

Does this pair of rests count as a split?

Pre-filled with a 3-hour off-duty stop mid-shift and a 7-hour night in the berth. Change any field; the verdict and the clocks update as you type.

First rest period
Second rest period

Verdict

Qualifying pair

In order, no overlapShift, rest, work, rest.
Met
Each period at least 2 hShorter period: 3.0 h.
Met
One period 7 h+ in the berthThe long period is sleeper-berth time.
Met
Together at least 10 h3.0 + 7.0 = 10.0 h.
Met
Driving around the first rest 11 h or less7.0 before + 4.0 between = 11.0 h.
Met
Duty time around the first rest 14 h or less8.0 + 6.0 = 14.0 h, rest excluded.
Met
Excluded from the 14-hour window
Both, 10.0 h
Clocks recalculated from
Mon 16:00
Driving left when the second rest ends
7.0 h
Window left, closes
8.0 h, Tue 13:00
Low-poly render of a sleeper cab parked at a rest area
Seven hours of the split happen here, behind the curtain.

What it checks

Five tests from §395.1(g)(1)(ii), plus a check that the times you typed run in order. The first three decide whether the two rests are a pair at all: neither shorter than 2 hours, one of them at least 7 consecutive hours logged in the sleeper berth, and the two adding to 10. The last two are the ones drivers forget. The driving on either side of the first rest has to fit inside 11 hours, and the duty time on either side has to fit inside 14, with the rest itself left out.

When a pair qualifies, the calculator restarts the clocks from the end of the first rest, as §395.1(g)(1)(iii)(A) requires, and tells you what is left once the second rest ends. The driving between the two rests comes off your 11; the elapsed time between them comes off your 14. The full day-to-day picture lives in the hours of service calculator; this tool only answers the pairing question.

3 h, excluded7 h, excludedFirst windowRecalculated05:0009:0013:0017:0021:0001:0005:0009:0013:00
  • Driving
  • On duty
  • Sleeper
  • Off duty
Each dashed row adds to exactly 14 hours. The two rests sit outside both windows, which is the whole value of the split.

Worked example

Five pairs drivers actually try. Each adds to roughly 10 hours, and three still fail.

PairLongShortTotalVerdict
7 h berth + 3 h off duty7.0 berth3.010.0The textbook 7/3
8 h berth + 2 h berth8.0 berth2.010.0The old 8/2 still works
7 h off duty + 3 h berth7.0 off3.010.0The long period must be in the berth
6 h berth + 4 h berth6.0 berth4.010.0Long period under 7 hours
7 h berth + 1.5 h off duty7.0 berth1.58.5Short period under 2 hours

The third row is the one that catches people. Seven hours in a motel bed is off-duty time, and off-duty time cannot be the long half of a split. The short half can be either. Before the 2020 rule the long half had to be eight hours in the berth; the 7-hour figure and the exclusion of both rests from the window came in with that rule, so a pre-2020 trucking-school answer will be wrong on both.

A split changes when your shift can end. It never touches the weekly limit: every on-duty hour still counts toward 60 or 70. See which weekly limit you run under and the 34-hour restart calculator for that clock.

After the pair: the next split

The section speaks of "not more than two periods" per pair and sets no order, so the long rest can come first or second. If you run splits back to back, test each pair on its own: every time, the clocks restart from the end of the earlier rest in that pair. Run the calculator once per pair. If the log is on an ELD, the device does this arithmetic too, but it only sees what you logged: berth time logged as off duty cannot be the long half.

There is one more option in §395.1(g)(1)(i)(D), for team operations: a berth period of at least 7 hours plus up to 3 hours riding in the passenger seat while the truck moves, immediately before or after it, totalling 10 consecutive hours. That is a different route to the reset, and this calculator does not model it.

The rule it comes from

49 CFR §395.1(g)(1)(ii)–(iii) — two periods of sleeper berth time, or off-duty and sleeper berth time, if neither is shorter than 2 consecutive hours, one is at least 7 consecutive hours in the berth, and together they total at least 10. The driving and duty limits are recalculated from the end of the first period, and qualifying rest periods are not included in the 14-hour window.

The provision applies only to property-carrying vehicles equipped with a berth that meets §393.76. Passenger carriers have their own version in §395.1(g)(3), and drivers on the non-CDL short-haul exemption are barred from using the split at all while they claim it. The broader rules the split sits inside are in hours of service rules, in plain English.

Sources

Keep reading