You ask your drayage carrier for a 4:00 PM delivery. They tell you it has to be morning, or it has to be tomorrow. It can feel like the carrier is being difficult. Usually it’s federal law doing the talking.
Hours of Service rules govern how long a commercial driver can work and drive. In long-haul trucking they mostly affect route planning. In drayage — where a driver might touch three gates, a warehouse and an empty return in one shift — they shape almost everything about what can be scheduled.
The rules in plain terms
For property-carrying drivers, the core FMCSA limits are:
- 11-hour driving limit. A driver may drive up to 11 hours after 10 consecutive hours off duty.
- 14-hour window. Driving is not permitted beyond the 14th consecutive hour after coming on duty. This clock does not stop for breaks, fuel, lunch or waiting at a terminal.
- 30-minute break. Required after 8 cumulative hours of driving without at least a 30-minute interruption.
- 60/70-hour limit. A driver may not drive after 60 on-duty hours in 7 days or 70 in 8 days, depending on the carrier’s operation.
The 14-hour window is the one that matters most in drayage, and it’s worth sitting with. It is a wall clock, not a work clock. Time spent queued at a gate burns it exactly as fast as time spent driving.
The short-haul exception
Drivers operating within a 150 air-mile radius of their reporting location and returning within 14 hours may qualify for an exception that removes the electronic logging requirement. Much of South Florida drayage fits this profile, which is part of why local port work is structured the way it is. It does not, however, create extra hours — it changes the record-keeping, not the limits.
Why this hits drayage harder than long-haul
A long-haul driver spends most of the 14-hour window driving. A drayage driver spends a large share of it waiting — and waiting is on-duty time.
Consider a realistic PortMiami day:
- Pre-trip inspection and dispatch
- Drive to the terminal
- Queue at the gate, ingate, find the box, get the chassis, exit
- Drive to Medley or Hialeah
- Wait for a dock door, then live unload
- Drive to the empty return location
- Queue again, return the empty
- Return to the yard, post-trip
The driving portion might be three hours. The window consumed can easily be ten or twelve. One bad gate queue or one slow dock and the day ends before the last move.
What this means for your schedule
Late-afternoon delivery windows are genuinely hard
If a driver started at 6:00 AM, the 14-hour window closes at 8:00 PM — but the terminal pickup, the drive and the return all have to fit inside it. A 4:00 PM live unload that runs two hours leaves no room for the empty return, which then becomes tomorrow’s problem and possibly tomorrow’s per diem.
Your dock time is on the clock
Every minute a driver waits at your facility is a minute unavailable for the rest of the move. This is the mechanism behind detention charges — they aren’t arbitrary, they reflect a consumed and unrecoverable resource. We break the economics down in how your receiving dock drives your drayage bill.
Same-day round trips have a ceiling
A long delivery to Orlando or Tampa plus a return leg may simply not fit in one window, which is why long-haul drayage is priced and planned differently from a local move.
Appointment times you can’t hit are worse than none
Booking a terminal appointment a driver can’t legally reach results in a missed appointment, a possible fee and a wasted slot.
How to work with the clock instead of against it
Give morning delivery windows where you can
An early slot leaves room for the empty return the same day. That single change removes a common source of per diem, as covered in empty container returns.
Use drop-and-hook for anything slow to unload
If unloading takes more than an hour or two, live unload is the wrong tool. Dropping the container frees the driver immediately. See drop-and-hook vs. live unload.
Pre-pull when the delivery date is fixed but the arrival isn’t
Pulling the container to a yard decouples the terminal move from the delivery move, so neither has to fit in the same window. See what is a pre-pull.
Staff your dock for the appointment you gave
A confirmed 9:00 AM slot with no forklift operator until 10:30 burns 90 minutes of a legally finite resource.
Be honest about unload time when you request a rate
A carrier who knows a container takes three hours to strip can plan the day properly. A carrier told “it’s quick” will plan a second move and then have to cancel it.
What this doesn’t mean
None of this makes after-hours or weekend work impossible — it means it has to be planned rather than improvised, often with a different driver on a different shift. Our guide to after-hours and weekend drayage covers what’s realistically available in South Florida.
Go Drayage dispatches its own drivers and equipment daily into PortMiami and Port Everglades, and will tell you upfront what fits in a day and what doesn’t. Request a quote with your real delivery window and we’ll plan around it.
Frequently asked questions
Does waiting at my warehouse count against the driver’s hours?
Yes. Time spent waiting to be unloaded is on-duty time and runs the 14-hour window, even though the truck isn’t moving. That’s why long dock waits cause detention charges and can force the rest of the day’s moves to be cancelled.
Can a drayage driver do more than one container in a day?
Often yes, particularly on short local moves with drop-and-hook at both ends. Whether it happens depends on gate queues, appointment times and dock speed — all of which consume the same 14-hour window. Live unloads with long dwell times usually make a second turn impossible.
Why won’t my carrier accept a late-afternoon appointment?
Usually because the driver’s window won’t stretch far enough to cover the pickup, the delivery and the empty return. Accepting it would either put the driver out of compliance or leave the empty on the chassis overnight, which creates per diem exposure for you.