Yard Moves ELD Explained 2026: On-Duty Special Driving Category

What a Yard Move Is

Yard move exists so drivers can spot trailers and reposition trucks inside a yard while remaining on-duty without the movement counting as ordinary interstate driving line-haul. Exact ELD behavior depends on your device and carrier configuration — but the compliance idea is consistent: yard only, on-duty, authorized.

Yard Move vs Personal Conveyance vs Driving

Deep dive on PC: personal conveyance ELD. Daily clocks: 14-hour rule.

Practical Rules Drivers Should Follow

What Looks Bad in an Audit

Long yard-move segments that match highway speeds and distances, yard move selected between two cities, or yard move used to avoid drive time after the 11-hour cap. Adverse conditions and PC misuse often appear in the same messy logs — keep categories clean.

The Gate Is the Line Between a Yard Move and Driving

A yard move is a special driving category under the electronic logging rule, 49 CFR 395.28. When the motor carrier has enabled it, and the truck is moving on private property to load, unload, or reposition, the driver may record that time as on-duty not driving instead of as driving. The location test is the whole rule. Private property is the yard. A public road is driving, even if the road is only the street between two gates of the same customer, and even if the move takes four minutes. The ELD does not care that you think of it as one facility. If the tires are on a highway or a public street, the status is driving, and the 11-hour limit applies.

The carrier has to allow the category. A driver does not get to invent a yard-move button the fleet turned off. If the ELD will not offer the status, you drive it as driving or you do not move the truck. When you do use it, the device will make you confirm or annotate the yard move. Do that annotation while you still remember which gate you were inside. A week later, an auditor will not accept that you meant the yard. Misuse is easy to see. A yard move that shows a mile of road, a change of address, or a path down a public street between warehouses is driving that was labeled something else. That is a false log. It is not a paperwork style.

Yard move is not personal conveyance. Personal conveyance is off-duty, it is personal use, and it is not how you advance a load or position the truck for the next shipper. The comparison is on personal conveyance. A yard move stays on duty. You are working. It does not extend the 14-hour window, it does not add driving hours, and it does not hide time. It only keeps a short reposition on private property from being counted as driving time. If you are out of driving hours, a yard move on private property may still be available because it is not driving, and only if the carrier allows it and you never touch a public road. The moment you need a public road to reach the dock, you are driving, and if you have no driving hours left you do not make that move.

A yard move also interrupts a 34-hour restart. The restart in 49 CFR 395.3 requires consecutive hours off duty. On-duty time, including a yard move, breaks that streak. Off-duty time and sleeper-berth time do not. If you are in the middle of a restart you actually need, do not move the truck under an on-duty status to do someone a favor. Fuel you log on duty, a trailer you slide on duty, and a yard move all restart the 34-hour count at zero. Drivers lose the restart this way more often than they lose it by misunderstanding the number 34. The restart itself is explained on 34-hour reset.

Use the status for the move you are actually making, then turn it off. Leaving yard move on while you go to the highway is the error that shows up as a long on-duty not driving line with road speed under it. Road speed during a yard move is the graph an officer does not have to argue about. End the special category at the gate, confirm the prompt, and start driving status before the steer tires hit the public road. If the yard is so large that you are unsure where the private property ends, ask the shipper where the property line is before you move, not after a state trooper has asked you. The button is a narrow tool. It is for the yard. It is not a way to find hours you have already used.

Carriers should turn the yard-move option on only for drivers and locations where it is real. A button available on every truck, with no training, is how public-road moves get labeled as yard moves. Tell the driver the property line in words, not as a feeling. If two buildings are separated by a public street, the street is driving, both ways, every time. During an audit or a roadside check, the officer will compare GPS or the trace to the status. You want those two to match. If you discover a yard move was used on a public road, correct the log the way your ELD and your carrier require you to correct it. Do not wait to see whether anyone notices. A correction you make is a different fact from a false status you defend. The category is useful inside a yard. It is a violation the minute it is used as a substitute for hours you do not have.

Shippers create the bad yard move when they ask you to shuttle across a public road between two of their buildings and call the whole thing the yard. It is not. Log the public road as driving, even if the shipper is annoyed, and even if the distance is short. If that driving will put you over the 11-hour limit, do not make the shuttle. Tell them the clock before you start, while another driver or a hostler on their property can do it. A hostler who never leaves private property is the person the yard-move category actually fits. A road driver using it to stretch a trip is the person the audit is built to find. The category is narrow on purpose. Keep it narrow and it will never be the violation that costs the fleet the inspection.

Write the yard rule into the trip sheet in one sentence: yard move only inside this gate, driving on every public road, annotation before you roll. A driver who can repeat that sentence will not invent a third status. A fleet that prints it will not have to explain a trace that shows highway speed under a yard-move line. The regulation is short. The violations are long. Keep the status as short as the rule.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related: 14-hour rule, 11-hour driving limit, 34-hour reset, personal conveyance ELD, adverse driving conditions.

How Our Team Helps

At O Trucking LLC, we treat compliance, equipment fit, and dispatch paperwork as load-winning fundamentals — not afterthoughts.