Do truck drivers get overtime in Puerto Rico?

There is a specific exemption for drivers, and it has three keys

A driver in Puerto Rico can work sixty hours in a week and legally collect no time and a half at all. The reason has a name: the **Motor Carrier Act exemption**, in FLSA Section 13(b)(1), which removes the right to overtime from anyone under the Secretary of Transportation's authority to set qualifications and maximum hours of service.

But the exemption does not cover everyone who drives. The U.S. Department of Labor sums it up in three conditions that must **all** be met:

If any of the three fails, there is no exemption and hours past forty in a week are paid at time and a half. Most real disputes happen on the second and the third.

• Being **employed by a motor carrier or motor private carrier**, as defined in 49 U.S.C. § 13102. A *motor carrier* provides motor vehicle transportation for compensation. A *motor private carrier* transports its own property (as owner, lessee or bailee) for sale, lease, rent or to further a commercial enterprise.
• Being a **driver, driver's helper, loader or mechanic** whose duties affect the safety of operation of motor vehicles in transportation on public highways in interstate or foreign commerce.
• **Not falling under the small vehicle exception**, which is the part that gives the right back to the most people.

Interstate commerce on an island? Yes, and here is how

Here is the question that makes this guide unique and that nowhere in the mainland United States is posed the same way. The exemption requires transportation in **interstate or foreign commerce**. From Puerto Rico there is no highway crossing into another state. So is no driver here exempt?

It is not that simple. The federal fact sheet defines the requirement in two branches, and the second is the one that decides on the island. The transportation must be **in interstate commerce (across State or international lines)** *or* **connect with an intrastate terminal (rail, air, water or land) to continue an interstate journey of goods that have not come to rest at a final destination**.

Read that again, because it is exactly Puerto Rico's situation. Practically everything consumed here arrives by ship or by plane. The trailer leaving the Port of San Juan with freight that just landed, headed for a distribution center or a store, moves inside the island, but may be continuing a journey that began outside it. That is the branch that applies here, and it is why the exemption does reach drivers who have never left Puerto Rico.

The fact sheet adds another piece that changes the analysis for many: a safety-affecting employee who has **never made an actual interstate trip** may still meet the duties requirement if the employer is shown to have involvement in interstate commerce and the employee could, in the regular course of employment, reasonably have been expected to make such a trip or to work on the vehicle in a safety-affecting way. And it sets the clock: the Secretary of Transportation asserts jurisdiction for a **four-month** period beginning with the date the employee could have been called upon to, or actually did, engage in the carrier's interstate activities.

Whether goods have "come to rest at a final destination" or remain in transit is a fact determination, case by case, depending on how that particular employer's freight moves. Neither the Department of Labor nor this guide can answer it in the abstract, what you can do is know the right question to ask.

The 10,000-pound line: the fact that gives back the most rights

This is the part the most drivers in Puerto Rico should read, because a great deal of freight here moves in light vehicles: delivery vans, service pickups, small distribution trucks.

Even where the Section 13(b)(1) exemption exists, FLSA overtime **does apply** in any workweek in which both of these are true: the employee's work is, in whole or in part, that of a driver, helper, loader or mechanic affecting the safety of operation of vehicles **weighing 10,000 pounds or less**; and the employee performs duties on vehicles of that weight.

The rule carves out three vehicles that stay outside that giveback even when light:

And one detail decides whole weeks: the exemption **does not apply in those weeks even if the employee's duties also affect the safety of vehicles weighing more than 10,000 pounds** in the same week. Put another way, mixing in a big truck does not cancel the protection the small vehicle triggered. It is analyzed week by week.

• Vehicles designed or used to transport **more than 8 passengers, including the driver, for compensation**.
• Vehicles designed or used to transport **more than 15 passengers, including the driver**, not for compensation.
• Vehicles used to transport **hazardous material requiring placarding** under the Secretary of Transportation's regulations.

Who is not exempt even working in transportation

The federal fact sheet devotes a section to "typical problems," which is where many classifications collapse. The exemption does **not** apply to employees who do not perform safety-affecting activities. The fact sheet names four:

Note the difference between the two kinds of loader, because it is fine and it decides cases: only a loader **responsible for proper loading** of the vehicle can be exempt. Someone who puts boxes in with no responsibility for how weight is distributed is not.

The other group the fact sheet excludes is just as useful to know, especially in a market like ours full of garages and equipment rental houses: the exemption **does not apply to employees of non-carriers**, commercial garages, firms in the business of maintaining and repairing motor vehicles owned and operated by carriers, and firms leasing and renting motor vehicles to carriers. A mechanic at an independent shop servicing a carrier's fleet is not exempt through that route.

And one clarification that avoids the costliest mistake of all: Section 13(b)(1) exempts from **overtime**, not from minimum wage. Puerto Rico's minimum wage ($10.50 an hour under Act 47-2021) applies just the same to a driver who is exempt from overtime.

• **Dispatchers.**
• **Office personnel.**
• **Those who unload vehicles.**
• **Those who load but are not responsible for the proper loading of the vehicle.**

Act 379 has its own driver exclusion, and it is broader

Puerto Rico has its own hours law, **Act 379 of May 15, 1948**, setting an eight-hour day and forty-hour week and requiring time and a half for overtime (Art. 6, 29 L.P.R.A. § 274). Under that law hours past **eight in a day** are already overtime; there is no need to wait until forty in a week. It is more generous than federal law.

The problem for drivers is that **Article 13 of Act 379 (29 L.P.R.A. § 285)** carries two subsections that hit them squarely. Under the text in force in the April 15, 2024 revision, the law **shall not apply** to:

Subsection (d) is broader than the federal exemption in one key respect: it does not ask about vehicle weight or about freight continuing an interstate journey. It asks **how you are paid**. A driver paid by commission, by fare or by route falls outside Act 379 even if the truck weighs under 10,000 pounds and never touches imported freight.

That leaves a four-corner map worth having clear. If you are paid hourly or on a fixed salary and drive a light vehicle on purely local routes, you have a good argument under both laws. If you are paid by route or commission, Act 379 does not cover you and everything rides on the federal analysis. If on top of that the freight continues an interstate journey from the port and the vehicle weighs over 10,000 pounds, there is likely no overtime under either route. And in every case the minimum wage still stands.

• **Subsection (d):** "drivers and operators of public and private motor vehicles who work on a commission, fare or route basis."
• **Subsection (f):** "employees, occupations or industries exempt from the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act."

What to check before claiming

Start with weight. The vehicle's gross weight is on the manufacturer's plate and sometimes on the registration. If it is 10,000 pounds or less and it is neither a passenger vehicle nor placarded for hazardous materials, you already have the strongest question on the table.

Next, how you are paid. Hourly, fixed salary, commission, fare or route; that is the first thing deciding whether Act 379 covers you, and it comes straight off your own pay stub.

Then, your real function. Driver, helper, loader responsible for proper loading, mechanic, or dispatcher, office, unloader. The federal fact sheet excludes the latter, and the job description does not govern: what you do governs.

And keep a record. Track your own hours starting today and hold on to your pay stubs. With that in hand there are two routes to claim: the federal complaint with the Wage and Hour Division (whose Puerto Rico office is in Guaynabo) and the Act 2 of 1961 summary procedure in court. We cover them separately in the guides below.