Six Months of Logs: What 395.8(k) Makes You Keep

Your ELD provider is not who the rule asks. The carrier keeps six months of logs, and the driver carries seven days.

Ask an owner-operator where his logs from March are and the answer is almost always the same: they are in the app.

That answer is about a company you pay by the month. The rule is not written to that company.

Who the rule is actually talking to

49 CFR 395.8 paragraph (k) is titled retention of the driver's record of duty status and supporting documents, and it splits the job in two.

Paragraph (k)(1): a motor carrier shall retain records of duty status and supporting documents required under this part, for each of its drivers, for a period of not less than 6 months from the date of receipt.

Paragraph (k)(2): the driver shall retain a copy of each record of duty status for the previous 7 consecutive days, which shall be in the driver's possession and available for inspection while on duty.

Six months on the carrier. Seven days in the truck. If you run your own authority, both of those are you, and the rule never once mentions the company that sold you the tablet.

The part that says "supporting documents"

The six months does not stop at the grid. The sentence says records of duty status and supporting documents required under this part, and those are a separate category with their own section, 395.11 — the paperwork generated in the normal course of a trip that shows where the truck was and when.

That is the half that gets lost, because it never lived in the tablet in the first place. It lives in a glove box, a text message, an email from a broker, a photo of a scale ticket.

Where six months quietly becomes zero

The common way to lose the file is not a raid. It is a switch.

You change providers because the new one is cheaper. The old subscription lapses. The old account goes read-only, then goes away, and the history goes with it. Nothing failed, nobody was notified, and the carrier obligation under (k)(1) did not move an inch.

Same story when a truck is sold with the unit still paired, when a driver leaves and the seat is reassigned, or when a trial account was used for the first few weeks and nobody exported anything out of it.

Before you cancel anything, export. Pull the full range, both the logs and whatever the system holds as supporting documents, and put it somewhere you own.

The seven days is a different obligation

(k)(2) is not a smaller version of (k)(1). It is a different job with a different owner: the previous seven consecutive days, in the driver's possession, available for inspection while on duty.

On an electronic log the display satisfies it — until the screen does not come up. That is the reason experienced drivers keep a printed or downloaded copy of the last week in the truck, and it is not superstition: the obligation is stated in terms of possession, not in terms of a working device.

And paper is still legal, in four specific cases

The same section, at (a)(1)(ii)(A), lists when a carrier may require a driver to record duty status manually instead of using an ELD:

1. Operating in a manner requiring completion of a record of duty status on not more than 8 days within any 30-day period.

2. A driveaway-towaway operation where the vehicle being driven is part of the shipment.

3. A driveaway-towaway operation where the vehicle being transported is a motor home or a recreation vehicle trailer.

4. A vehicle manufactured before model year 2000, as reflected in the vehicle identification number shown on the registration.

Note what number four keys on: the VIN as shown on the registration, not the badge, not the year everyone calls it, and not the model year of the engine somebody swapped in.

And when logs are on paper, (a)(1)(ii)(B) says the record must be recorded in duplicate for each 24-hour period. Duplicate is the word in the rule.

A file you can actually produce

Export before every provider change, and keep the export where the subscription cannot reach it.

Keep the supporting documents with the logs, not in a different place and a different format.

Count six months back from receipt, which is what the rule says — not six months back from today's paperwork.

Carry the last seven days in a form that survives a screen that will not come up.

When a driver or a truck leaves, close the file the same week. The obligation stays with the carrier after the person is gone.

We keep trucks in the shop for the reasons you can see, and the file is the part nobody inspects until somebody does. If the unit needs brakes, suspension, alignment or tires while you sort the paperwork, we are in Houston, Dallas and Monterrey: thetrucksavers.com.

Original source: Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, 49 CFR 395.8, driver's record of duty status