A reset is one unbroken block of off-duty time, not a weekend. Here is how the cycles count, and the small on-duty task that quietly destroys a reset.
Key takeaways
Thirty-six consecutive hours off duty ends a cycle 1 week and starts a new one. Seventy-two consecutive hours off does the same for cycle 2. Both are in section 28 of the Commercial Vehicle Drivers Hours of Service Regulations: once the driver has taken the required off-duty time, the new cycle begins, accumulated hours are set back to zero, and the count starts again.
The reset is not automatic and it is not a weekend. It is a single unbroken block of off-duty time, and a driver who takes 34 hours off has reset nothing in Canada.
Section 24 requires the carrier to make the driver follow, and the driver to follow, either cycle 1 or cycle 2. Cycle 1 accumulates on-duty time over 7 days; cycle 2 over 14 days. Section 1 defines a day as a 24-hour period beginning at the hour the carrier designates for the duration of that driver’s cycle, which is why the designated start hour matters and should be written down rather than assumed.
The 24-consecutive-hour rule in section 25 is the one small fleets miss, because it is not a cycle limit and it is not a reset. It is a standing requirement that applies subject only to section 28.
Section 28(1) allows a driver to end the current cycle and begin a new one after taking at least 36 consecutive hours off on cycle 1, or at least 72 consecutive hours off on cycle 2. Section 28(2) then does the arithmetic: after the off-duty time, the driver begins a new cycle, the accumulated hours are set back to zero, and hours begin to accumulate again.
Two words in that provision do the work. Consecutive means uninterrupted — a two-hour on-duty inspection in the middle of a 36-hour break restarts the clock on the break, not on the cycle. Off-duty means off-duty as section 1 defines it, which excludes time waiting before or while the vehicle is serviced, loaded, unloaded, dispatched or inspected, and excludes any work performed for any motor carrier.
Getting this arithmetic wrong is not just a paperwork problem. Section 91(3)(e) of the Commercial Vehicle Drivers Hours of Service Regulations lets a director or inspector place a driver out of service — “for the number of hours needed to correct the failure” — for non-compliance with the off-duty time requirements of sections 14 to 29, exactly the group of sections that sets out the 24-hour, 36-hour and 72-hour rules above.
Section 29 covers a change of cycle rather than a reset of the current one, and the numbers are counter-intuitive: to switch from cycle 1 to cycle 2 the driver first takes at least 36 consecutive hours off; to switch from cycle 2 to cycle 1, at least 72. As with a reset, the accumulated hours then go to zero and start again. A carrier that moves drivers between cycles to suit seasonal work needs this written into its scheduling rules, because the 72-hour direction is the expensive one.
Sections 49 to 54 run a parallel set of rules for driving north of latitude 60°N. Cycle 1 there is 80 hours of on-duty time in any period of 7 days (s.51), and cycle 2 is 120 hours in any 14 days with a stop at 80 hours without 24 consecutive hours off (s.52). The 24-consecutive-hour requirement in the preceding 14 days still applies (s.50). The reset itself is unchanged: 36 consecutive hours for cycle 1, 72 for cycle 2 (s.53), and the switching rule in section 54 mirrors section 29.
Worked example: a cycle 1 driver who runs out of hours on a Thursday
A driver on cycle 1 with a designated day start of 00:00 has accumulated 66 on-duty hours by Thursday evening. Friday’s planned run is 9 hours on duty. Under section 26 he cannot do it: 66 plus 9 is 75, and the ceiling is 70 in any period of 7 days.
Option one is to work Friday to 70 and stop — four hours of on-duty time, which may not cover the round trip, and the recovery is slow because the cycle rolls a day at a time.
Option two is a reset. He goes off duty at 18:00 Thursday and stays off duty until 06:00 Saturday: 36 consecutive hours. Saturday at 06:00 his accumulated hours are zero and he has a full 70 available. The cost is Friday. The benefit is that Saturday through the following week is unconstrained rather than dribbling back a few hours a day.
What breaks this plan in practice is a Friday morning shop appointment nobody told dispatch about. Ninety minutes on duty at 09:00 Friday does not shorten the break by 90 minutes; it ends it, and the 36 hours restarts from the moment he goes off duty again.
A reset lives or dies on the record. On an ELD, the off-duty block is captured automatically once the driver selects the status, and the driver certifies each day’s record immediately after the last entry (s.78.2). On a paper grid, the off-duty line has to be drawn across the full period and the day totalled to 24 hours (s.82(2)). Where a driver was not required to keep a record of duty status immediately before the day begins, sections 77(5)(f) and 82(1)(f) require the preceding 14 days’ off-duty and on-duty hours to be entered manually — which is exactly the situation of a driver returning from a reset spent outside the regulated work.
British Columbia’s intra-provincial rules are drafted in the same terms: section 37.37 of Division 37 of B.C.’s Motor Vehicle Act Regulations allows a driver to end a cycle and begin a new one after 36 consecutive hours on cycle 1 or 72 on cycle 2, with the same zeroing of accumulated hours.
Under 49 CFR 395.3 a driver in the United States is limited to 60 hours on duty in 7 consecutive days, or 70 in 8 if the carrier operates every day of the week, and either period may end with the beginning of an off-duty period of 34 or more consecutive hours. So a cross-border driver has two reset numbers to remember, and the shorter one does not work at home. Plan the reset to the Canadian figure and it is valid in both countries; plan it to 34 and it is valid in one.
A 36 or 72-hour reset necessarily contains 24 consecutive hours off, so a driver who resets has satisfied section 25 in the same block. The reverse is not true: taking 24 consecutive hours off satisfies section 25 but resets nothing.
Nothing in section 28 requires the reset to happen at the terminal. What matters is that the time is genuinely off duty, which means no work for any motor carrier and no waiting time that section 1 counts as on duty.
Section 16 lets a driver defer up to 2 hours of daily off-duty time to the next day, on conditions including a declaration in the record of duty status. Deferral is a daily mechanism and does not extend a cycle; only 36 or 72 consecutive hours off ends one.
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