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Standard Hours explained: can you actually work 12 hours straight?

If you're a solo owner-operator running under Standard Hours (the

default fatigue rules that apply to every heavy vehicle driver unless

you've gone through BFM or AFM accreditation), the short answer is:

yes, but "12 hours" catches almost everyone out at least once, because

it's not 12 hours of driving. It's 12 hours of *work*, and work means

a lot more than most drivers assume.

Work isn't just driving

This is the single biggest misunderstanding we see. Under the Heavy

Vehicle National Law, work time includes anything to do with operating

the vehicle: driving, loading, unloading, refuelling, doing your

pre-start checks, waiting at a depot to be loaded, even filling out

paperwork. If you arrive at a depot at 6am and don't leave until 6pm,

that's potentially 12 hours of work even if you were only actually

driving for eight of them.

That's exactly why a habit of texting a quick pre-start message the

moment you start — not the moment you pull out of the gate — matters.

The clock starts on the first task, not the first kilometre.

The actual limits

Under Standard Hours, a solo driver:

• Can work a maximum of 12 hours in any 24-hour period
• Needs a minimum of 7 continuous hours of stationary rest — meaning

out of the vehicle entirely, or in an approved sleeper berth if the

truck isn't moving

• If that rest falls overnight, it needs to sit somewhere within the

10pm-8am window (in your base's time zone) — or alternatively, a full

24 continuous hours of rest satisfies it regardless of when it falls

• Over any 7-day period, a maximum of 72 hours work, with at least

24 continuous hours of rest somewhere in that week

No accreditation is required for any of this — it's the default that

applies the moment you're driving a fatigue-regulated heavy vehicle.

Basic Fatigue Management (BFM) exists if your work genuinely doesn't

fit these limits, but it requires accreditation and training for both

you and anyone who schedules your work — worth knowing about, not worth

assuming you're already covered by.

What actually happens if you go over

The NHVR uses a risk-based scale, not a single "breached or not"

outcome. Going over by up to 30 minutes is treated as a minor risk

breach; 30 to 60 minutes over is substantial; anything beyond an hour

over moves into severe territory, with penalties scaled accordingly.

The point isn't that 20 minutes over is nothing to worry about — it's

still a breach — but it explains why the exact minute you clock off

matters more than most drivers realise, and why a timestamped record

beats a rough guess written at the end of the week.

The 100km rule that trips people up

If you're travelling more than 100km from your base, you're required

to keep a work diary. Inside 100km, the record-keeping requirement is

lighter. This is a common source of confusion for owner-operators who

do a mix of local runs and longer hauls in the same week — the safest

approach is to just log every day the same way, rather than trying to

remember which rule applies to which trip.

Why this is where a fatigue nudge earns its keep

The honest reason most Standard Hours breaches happen isn't

recklessness — it's losing track of the clock during a long day,

especially on the tenth or eleventh hour when you're focused on getting

the job done. This is the exact gap CoRShield's fatigue tracking is

built to close: your work hours are counted automatically from your

own texts, and you get a heads-up as you approach the 12-hour mark

rather than finding out after the fact. It doesn't replace knowing the

rules — but it does mean the maths happens for you, in real time,

instead of at the end of a long day when you're the person least likely

to catch it.

For the full, authoritative rule set, the NHVR's own work and rest

requirements page is the source worth bookmarking — this article is

the practical version, not a replacement for it.