The 6×24 Rule: When the Next Weekly Rest Must Start

What the 6×24 rule is

Under assimilated Regulation (EC) 561/2006, a weekly rest period must start no later than the end of six 24-hour periods counted from the end of the previous weekly rest. Six times 24 hours is 144 hours.

This page is only about when the next weekly rest must begin. It is not the 56-hour driving week, and it is not how reduced weekly rest is paid back — that is the 3-week compensation rule.

Start, not finish

The clock is about the start of the next weekly rest, not the moment you finish it. If you reach 144 hours and only then begin a 45-hour rest, you are already late. The rest has to have begun by that point.

What starts the 144-hour clock

Time runs from the end of the last weekly rest — the moment that rest finished, not from Monday 00:00 and not from when you last slept in the bunk on a daily rest.

A weekly rest that resets this clock is at least 24 consecutive hours (reduced) or 45 consecutive hours (regular). A daily rest of 11 hours does not reset it.

Worked example

Weekly rest ends Monday 08:00. Six 24-hour periods later is Sunday 08:00. The next weekly rest must have started by Sunday 08:00. Starting it at Sunday 10:00 is a 6×24 infringement even if the rest that follows is a full 45 hours.

Not a calendar week

This limit is not “by next Sunday night” and not the Monday–Sunday week used for 56-hour driving. It is six consecutive 24-hour blocks from when the last weekly rest actually ended. Finish weekly rest on a Wednesday afternoon and the 144 hours run from that Wednesday, not from the following Monday.

Reduced rest still resets the clock

A lawful reduced weekly rest of 24 hours does restart the 6×24 count when it ends. You still owe compensation for the missing hours against 45 — but that debt is a separate rule, with its own 3-week deadline.

On this site’s timesheet

The 6×24 card shows hours since the end of the last detected weekly rest, against a 144-hour cap. It is a live countdown aid. It does not replace the tachograph record.

Official source

Article 8(6) of Regulation (EC) 561/2006 (as it has effect in the UK). GOV.UK drivers’ hours guidance restates the same six 24-hour periods rule.

This is an educational summary for drivers, not legal advice for a specific chart or investigation.