The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is moving closer to launching a pilot program that could results in amending split sleeper berth requirements, with an eye on allowing more flexibility in how a driver spends the required daily minimum of 10 hours off-duty. 

In a Federal Register notice released Wednesday, FMCSA opened the “information collection activities” that would provide it with data on whether a change in the 10 hours split, which now allows only 10 consecutive hours, or an 8-2 split or a 7-3 split, would meet safety goals if it was 5-5 or 6-4. Those new splits would become possible if the minimum length of the required sleeper berth period drops to five hours from seven.

The program needs as many as 256 volunteers to participate. It can be a team of drivers. Drivers will receive $1,600 for their participation, according to a press release published by the Department of Transportation in late August.

As FMCSA said in a September 2025 Federal Register notice that first called for comments on the proposal, the current law says the 10 hours of off duty time “may either be accumulated consecutively, or alternatively, split into 1 consecutive period of at least 7 hours in the sleeper berth and a second period of at least 2 consecutive hours of time in the sleeper berth, off duty time, or any combination thereof, provided that the total of the periods is at least 10 hours. In practice, this allows drivers to utilize any split of sleeper berth time including and between a 7/3 split and an 8/2 split.”

The September 2025 notice was more detailed on the issue, and was described as a “notification of proposed pilot program; request for comments.” The notice Wednesday was just described as a “notice and request for comments.”

Following up on the April 2025 EO

The April 2025 executive order on trucking from the Trump administration that was notable mostly for its English language proficiency requirements and restrictions on non-domiciled CDLs also had in it a general goal for the Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy to “identify and begin carrying out additional administrative, regulatory, or enforcement actions to improve the working conditions of America’s truck drivers.”

In the Federal Register recap of the steps that have led to the pilot program, FMCSA said the experiment would be part of that call to action.

The pilot program involves taking those 256 commercial motor vehicle drivers and giving them flexibility over 16 weeks to spend their 10 off duty hours in the sleeper berth as they choose. Participants in the study are volunteers.

Chris Eckhart, a partner with the trucking-focused Scopelitis law firm, said the Federal Register notice this week is the follow to the September 2025 notice which sought comment on the split sleeper berth proposal with the goal of seeking flexibility for drivers. 

“The notice published Wednesday requests comments on the information collection the FMCSA will seek through the pilot,” Eckhart said in an email to FreightWaves. “I don’t think it breaks any new ground on the FMCSA’s plans for the pilot or other potential changes to the split-sleeper berth rule.”

The comment period is open until December 7. 

Not a quick process

Even though the actual testing of drivers and their daily submissions on their activities is scheduled to go on for 16 weeks, the September 2025 announcement of the program said the entire pilot program would take 34 to 36 months.

The Federal Register notice recaps the long tortuous road to the launch of the study. 

It cites a joint submission by the American Trucking Associations and the Minnesota Trucking Association to FMCSA in 2013 for what the two groups called a “flexible sleeper berth pilot program.” That came after three FMCSA listening sessions on the issue in 2010. 

When the Hours of Service rule was implemented in 2011, according to the Federal Register notice, the split sleeper berth beyond 7-3 was not included. “FMCSA determined that the issue should be explored in greater depth to determine whether additional flexibility would achieve an equivalent or improved level of safety relative to compliance with the current regulations,” the Federal Register notice this week said.

In the September 2025 Federal Register notice, FMCSA said a review of the issue conducted in 2015 “suggested that sleep split into multiple segments is restorative, and when implemented strategically, does not negatively impact performance. Further, split sleep does not negatively affect daytime ‘‘neurobehavioral performance’’ when compared to a consolidated sleep period of the same total duration.”

OOIDA checks in

Lewie Pugh, executive vice president of the Owner Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA), said his group is “always in favor of more hours of service flexibility for the driver.”

Pugh discussed the length of time that the issue of a split sleeper berth HOS flexibility has been discussed.

He said OOIDA “was pushing for the three hours back in 2018,” he said. But a key feature needs to be that the use of those hours are at the driver’s discretion. 

What OOIDA doesn’t want, he said, is “either the carrier or the shipper saying, hey, you got an extra three hours? Just go off near whatever, and use that extra three hours while we jack you around to load you.”

Pugh’s discussion of control and driver discretion is one that his organization has been sounding since soon after the September 2025 Federal Register notice. 

Eligibility to participate as a driver in the study will not be available to drivers with a list of several disqualifying marks, including having an “unsatisfactory” rating from FMCSA, having an Out of Service (OOS) rate more than the national average. Eligible drivers also can not have had any  FMCSA enforcement actions in the last three years. 

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