The HOS recap calculator is a fast, no-fuss planning tool that adds up the on-duty hours you have logged over your rolling window and shows how many hours you have left to work under the 60-hour/7-day or 70-hour/8-day limit. It also shows the hours that recap, meaning the hours that come back to you as older days age out of the window. If you have ever stared at your logbook wondering how much you can legally drive tomorrow, this is the tool that answers that question in a few seconds.
Trucking runs on hours, and the weekly cycle is one of the trickiest parts of the whole Hours of Service system to keep in your head. Daily limits like the 11-hour driving cap and the 14-hour window are easy enough because they reset every day after a proper break. The weekly recap is different. It never fully resets on its own. Instead it slides forward one day at a time, giving a little back here and taking a little there. Drivers who understand recap get more productive weeks and fewer surprises. Drivers who do not understand it end up parked with a load still on the trailer, waiting for hours they could have planned around.
What the HOS recap calculator does and who it is for
At its core the HOS recap calculator does one job well. You feed it the on-duty hours you logged on each of the last several days, tell it which cycle you run, the 60/7 or the 70/8, and it returns three answers: how many hours you have used, how many you have left today, and how many will recap onto your balance over the next several days. That third number is the one most other tools skip, and it is the number that lets you plan an entire week instead of just the next shift.
This tool is built for the people who live with these rules. Long-haul and regional company drivers use it to see whether they can accept another day of work before they need a restart. Owner-operators use it to protect their revenue by squeezing full, legal weeks out of the cycle. Dispatchers and fleet planners use it to check whether a driver actually has the hours for a load before they assign it. Student drivers and folks studying for a CDL use it to finally make the rolling window click. If your paycheck depends on hours behind the wheel, an HOS recap calculator belongs in your pocket.
Recap hours explained: the rolling window
The heart of the matter is the rolling window. Your weekly on-duty total is not measured from a fixed calendar date like the first of the month or the start of your workweek. It is measured across a moving block of the most recent days. Under the 70/8 cycle that block is the current day plus the previous seven days, for eight days total. Under the 60/7 cycle it is the current day plus the previous six days, for seven days total.
Because the block moves forward every single day, the oldest day inside it is always dropping off the back edge. When a day drops off, the on-duty hours you logged on that day no longer count against your total. They recap, which is just the trucking word for coming back to your available pool. So your available hours are constantly in motion. They go down when you work and they go up when an old heavy day finally rolls out of the window.
Think of it like a conveyor belt eight buckets long. Each day you pour your on-duty hours into the front bucket. Every bucket holds its water for eight days, then tips out the back and empties. Your total is the sum of water in all eight buckets right now, and your available hours are your cycle ceiling minus that sum. The recap is simply the water tipping out the back, refilling how much you are allowed to pour in tomorrow. The cycle meter at the top of the tool draws exactly that: one block per day, sitting against the ceiling, with the block that empties tonight lit up.
The 60-hour/7-day cycle in plain terms
The 60-hour/7-day cycle applies to drivers whose carrier does not run commercial vehicles every day of the week. Under this cycle you may not drive after you have logged 60 on-duty hours across any 7 consecutive days. The window looks back at today and the six days before it. Add up the on-duty hours in those seven days, and if the sum is at or above 60, you are done driving until hours recap or you restart.
The 60/7 cycle rewards steady, moderate weeks. Sixty hours across seven days averages out to a little over eight and a half hours a day, so a driver who spreads the work fairly evenly rarely bumps the ceiling. The recap under this cycle returns the hours you logged seven days back. If you worked 9 hours last Monday, then next Monday morning those 9 hours recap onto your balance, ready to be used again.
The 70-hour/8-day cycle in plain terms
The 70-hour/8-day cycle applies to drivers whose carrier does operate commercial vehicles every day of the week, which covers most of the long-haul world. Under this cycle you may not drive after you have logged 70 on-duty hours across any 8 consecutive days. The window is today plus the previous seven days.
Seventy hours across eight days works out to an average of 8.75 hours per day, but real weeks are lumpy. You might run three long 13 or 14 hour days back to back, then a couple of light ones, then a day off. The HOS recap calculator handles that lumpiness for you. It does not care whether your days are even. It just sums the on-duty hours inside the current window and tells you what is left, then projects the recap so you can see which future day gives you breathing room. The dashed line across the day-by-day bars is that 8.75 hour average pace, drawn so you can see at a glance which days ran hot and which ran cool.
How hours recap, or come back, each day
Here is the mechanism spelled out step by step, because this is the part drivers most often get wrong. Every day at the start of your logbook day, the window advances by one day. The day that was the oldest inside your window is now outside it. The on-duty hours you logged on that now-departed day are subtracted from your running total, which is the same as adding them back to your available hours.
So the recap you receive tomorrow is exactly equal to the on-duty hours you logged on the day that is about to leave your window. Under the 70/8 cycle, that is the day 8 days ago. Under the 60/7 cycle, it is the day 7 days ago. If you logged zero hours that day because it was a day off, you recap nothing. If you logged a heavy 13-hour day, you recap all 13 hours, and your available balance jumps by 13 the next morning.
This is why two drivers can both be at 68 of 70 hours today yet have wildly different tomorrows. If the driver's oldest day was a full 13-hour shift, tomorrow they recap 13 hours and are back in business. If the oldest day was a light 4-hour shift, they recap only 4 and stay tight against the ceiling. The raw number of hours used tells only half the story. The shape of the days behind you tells the rest, and the recap projection is how you read that shape.
How to use the Toolfiddle HOS recap calculator step by step
Using the tool takes less than a minute. Here is the flow.
- Pick your cycle. Choose 70 hours in 8 days or 60 hours in 7 days to match what your carrier assigns. If you are not sure, ask dispatch or safety before you rely on any number. Switching to 60/7 simply drops the oldest day out of the list, which is what the shorter window means.
- Enter your on-duty hours for each day in the window. The rows run from the oldest day at the top down to today at the bottom. Use your logbook or ELD as the source of truth. On-duty means driving plus on-duty not driving, so include fueling, inspections, loading, unloading, and paperwork time that you logged on duty. The plus and minus buttons step in quarter hours, the same precision your log carries.
- Read your results. The headline number is the hours you can still work today. Below it you get the total used against your ceiling, the hours that recap tomorrow, and what your balance looks like when tomorrow starts.
- Plan the week. The forecast table reads your oldest days back in the order they will roll off, one row per day. Look for the day your balance climbs. If you see that you would hit zero on Thursday but a big day rolls off Friday morning, you can plan a lighter Thursday and let the recap carry you into the weekend.
- Test a plan before you commit to it. Type the hours you expect to work into the plan column and the table carries them forward, so you can see whether a three-day run actually fits. Rows that ask for more than the cycle allows are flagged, which is your signal to lighten a day or schedule a restart.
- Adjust and repeat. Change a day's hours to test a what-if. The math updates instantly, so you can compare scenarios before you commit to a load or a route.
Worked example: a 70/8 driver planning the week
Let me walk through real numbers, the same ones the tool loads with. Say you run the 70-hour/8-day cycle. Your last eight days of on-duty time, from oldest to newest, look like this: 12, 11, 0, 10, 9, 8, 11, and today so far 6. Add those up: 12 plus 11 plus 0 plus 10 plus 9 plus 8 plus 11 plus 6 equals 67 hours used. Your cycle limit is 70, so you have 3 hours left to work today.
Three hours is tight. Now look at the recap. Tomorrow, the oldest day, the 12-hour day, rolls out of your window. That means 12 hours recap onto your balance overnight. Tomorrow morning your used total drops to 55 and, before you log anything new, you have 15 hours of room. The day after that, the 11-hour day rolls off, adding another 11 to your pool.
So the picture is clear. Today is nearly maxed with only 3 hours left, but you are not stuck. A big recap arrives tomorrow. If your load can wait a few hours or start early tomorrow, you avoid a restart entirely and keep rolling. Without the recap projection you might have burned a day and a half on a 34-hour restart you did not need. That is the difference an HOS recap calculator makes on a real week.
Worked example: a 60/7 driver near the ceiling
Now a 60/7 example. Your last seven days of on-duty time, oldest to newest, are 10, 9, 9, 8, 10, 9, and today 4. The sum is 10 plus 9 plus 9 plus 8 plus 10 plus 9 plus 4, which equals 59 hours used against a 60-hour ceiling. You have exactly 1 hour left to drive today. That is barely enough to finish a short leg or reposition.
Check the recap. Tomorrow the oldest 10-hour day leaves the window, so 10 hours recap. Tomorrow you start with 49 used and 11 hours available before logging anything. If you had assigned yourself a long shift today without checking, you would have blown past 60 and put yourself out of service. Because you ran the numbers, you know to keep today short and let the recap open the door tomorrow.
Real-world use cases
The most common use is the nightly check. Before you shut down for your 10-hour break, you punch in the day you just finished and see where your cycle stands and what recaps tomorrow. It takes ten seconds and it removes the guesswork from the morning.
A second use is load acceptance. A dispatcher offers a run that needs, say, 25 on-duty hours over the next three days. You test it in the HOS recap calculator by entering those hours in the plan column and watching whether your balance ever dips below what the run needs. If it stays positive with recap included, you can commit. If it goes negative on day two, you know the run does not fit without a restart.
A third use is deciding between recap and a restart. Sometimes hobbling along on recap keeps you productive; other times the recap is so thin that a 34-hour restart pays for itself by giving you a full 60 or 70 back at once. Seeing both futures side by side is how you make that call with numbers instead of gut feel.
A fourth use is training and study. New drivers, dispatchers in training, and safety staff use the tool to build intuition for the rolling window. Playing with the inputs and watching the recap move teaches the concept faster than any diagram.
Tips and common mistakes
- Do not confuse the weekly recap with the daily reset. Your 11-hour driving limit and your 14-hour window reset after a proper 10-hour break, but your 60 or 70 hour cycle does not. A good night's sleep does not give back your weekly hours. Only recap and a 34-hour restart move the weekly total.
- Remember that on-duty not driving counts. Loading, unloading, fueling, inspections, and paperwork logged on duty all eat into your cycle just like driving does. Drivers who track only their driving hours consistently underestimate their totals and get caught short.
- Read the shape of the days behind you, not just the total. Two drivers at the same used total can have very different tomorrows depending on whether a big day or a small day is about to recap. Always look at the recap column, not just the remaining number.
- Keep your inputs current. Update the tool at the same time every day, ideally right after you go off duty, so the window always reflects your true logbook. A stale entry throws off both your remaining hours and your recap projection.
- Never treat any calculator as the final word. Your ELD is the record that matters. Use the HOS recap calculator to plan and to double-check, then confirm against your device and your logs before you drive.
A deeper look at the recap math
For the number-minded, here is the arithmetic laid bare. Let C be your cycle limit, either 60 or 70. Let the window length be W days, either 7 or 8. Let d1 be today's on-duty hours, d2 be yesterday's, and so on back to dW, the oldest day in the window.
Your used total is U equals d1 plus d2 plus the rest, all the way to dW. Your hours remaining right now are R equals C minus U. That is the whole ceiling calculation.
The recap for tomorrow equals dW, the on-duty hours of the day that is about to leave the window. After tomorrow arrives, the window shifts: today's hours become d2, yesterday's become d3, and the day that was dW disappears. Your new oldest day is what was d(W-1). So the recap for the day after tomorrow equals that value, and so on down the line. In short, the sequence of recaps you will receive over the coming days is simply the on-duty hours of your oldest days, read from the back of the window forward.
This is why the recap is completely predictable. It is not random and it is not tied to how much you drive next week. It is fixed by the days already in your logbook. The HOS recap calculator just reads those days back to you in the order they will roll off, so you can see your available hours climb day by day.
The 34-hour restart and how it relates to recap
Recap and the 34-hour restart are two different ways to get hours back, and it helps to see how they fit together. Recap is automatic and gradual. It hands you hours one day at a time as your window advances, and it never sets your total to zero. The restart is deliberate and complete. When you take at least 34 consecutive hours off duty, whether off-duty, in the sleeper berth, or a mix of the two, your weekly cycle resets to zero and you begin fresh with the full 60 or 70 hours available.
Which one is right depends on your week. If a healthy recap is arriving in a day or two, riding the recap keeps you earning and avoids parking for a day and a half. If your recap is thin because the days rolling off were light, a restart may return far more usable time than waiting would. Many drivers time a restart to overlap with a natural break, like a weekend home or a long wait for a load, so the reset costs them little productive time. If you want to plan that timing in detail, our companion 34-hour restart calculator shows exactly when your 34 hours would finish and when you would be clear to drive again.
Important disclaimer: a planning aid, not legal advice
Please read this part carefully. The HOS recap calculator is a planning aid only. It is not legal advice, it is not compliance advice, and it is not an official record of your duty status. It cannot account for every exception, split-sleeper arrangement, adverse-driving provision, short-haul exemption, or state-specific rule that might apply to your situation. It also does not model the 11-hour driving limit, the 14-hour window, or the 30-minute break, all of which still apply to you separately from the weekly cycle.
Your electronic logging device and your official logs are what enforcement relies on, and they are what you must follow. Hours of Service rules are set by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and can change, and some states add their own requirements for intrastate driving. Always verify your numbers against your ELD and the current federal and state regulations that apply to you, and consult your carrier safety department when you are unsure. Use this tool to think ahead and to sanity-check, never as a substitute for your device, your logs, or professional guidance. The responsibility for staying compliant is yours.
Built for privacy: your logbook numbers stay on your device
The hours you enter are sensitive, and this tool treats them that way. The HOS recap calculator runs entirely inside your browser. When you type your on-duty hours, the math happens on your own phone, tablet, or laptop. Nothing is transmitted to a server, nothing is saved to an account, and nothing is stored once you close the tab. There is no tracking of your logbook data because the tool never receives it in the first place. You can plan your whole week and walk away knowing your numbers never left your hand.
Genuinely free: no sign-up, no account, no paywall
Some hours-of-service apps hide the useful parts behind a monthly subscription or make you create an account before you can see a single number. This tool does none of that. The HOS recap calculator is free to use with no sign-up, no email capture, no login, and no premium tier holding the real features back. Every function is available to everyone, every time, at no cost. Drivers already pay enough for fuel, insurance, and equipment. A quick hours check should not be one more bill.
Instant and unlimited, on a light page
Because everything runs on your device, results appear the instant you type. There is no spinner while a server thinks, no daily cap on how many times you can run the numbers, and no queue. Run it once before bed or twenty times while you juggle loads; it costs nothing and never slows down. The page is deliberately light and free of heavy scripts, so it loads fast even on a weak signal at a truck stop on the edge of coverage. Quick answers when you need them, as often as you need them.
Works on any device, even offline
The tool is designed for the cab, not just the office. It works on a phone, a tablet, or a laptop, and the layout adjusts to whatever screen you are holding. Because the calculation happens locally, once the page has loaded you do not need a live connection to use it. That matters when you are parked in a dead zone or rolling through open country with no bars. Load it while you have signal, and the HOS recap calculator keeps working when the signal drops. No app store download, no updates to chase, just a web page that does the math wherever you are.
Related Toolfiddle tools
If you manage hours and time for a living, a few other Toolfiddle tools pair naturally with this one. Use the 34-hour restart calculator to plan the reset that zeroes your cycle. Reach for the days between dates calculator when you need the exact gap between two dates, such as the stretch until your next home time. The time zone converter helps when a pickup window is quoted in a different zone from your home terminal, and the date calculator jumps you forward a set number of days to land on a delivery date. Before you roll out, the GVWR calculator checks your loaded weight against the rating. Every one of them runs on your device and is free with no sign-up, exactly like this recap calculator.
Short recap
The HOS recap calculator turns the confusing rolling window into a clear picture. It sums your on-duty hours across your 60/7 or 70/8 cycle, shows how many hours you have left, and projects the recap that arrives each day as older days roll off the back of the window. Recap gives hours back gradually and never zeroes your total, while a 34-hour restart zeroes it all at once. Enter your days, read your remaining hours, watch the recap column, and plan the week around it. Keep it accurate, update it daily, and always confirm against your ELD. The tool is private, free, instant, and works on any device even when your signal does not. Treat it as a smart planning aid and let your logs and the current rules have the final say.