Navigating Meal & Rest Breaks

At Alto, your safety and well-being are our highest priorities. Taking regular breaks to rest, recharge, and refocus is a crucial part of performing at your best and staying safe while navigating the road ahead.

This guide explains our break policies, app procedures, and location-specific rules to ensure you are fully informed and supported during your shifts.

General Break Guidelines

Alto provides meal and rest breaks in accordance with all applicable state and federal labor laws.

• Meal Breaks: These are off-duty and unpaid, lasting at least 30 minutes. Meal breaks cannot be taken at the very start or the very end of a shift.
• Rest Breaks: These are paid, on-the-clock periods lasting up to 10 minutes. They should be taken midway through your work period, cannot be combined with meal breaks, and must not be taken at the start or end of a shift.
• No Working During Breaks: During both meal and rest periods, you must be completely relieved of all duties. This means you should not check or respond to work-related messages or monitor any company communications.

How to Properly Record Your Breaks

To remain compliant, both meal and rest breaks must be actively and properly recorded in your driver app.

Steps for Recording a Meal Break:

1. Go offline in the Uber Driver App (if applicable).
2. In the Alto Driver App, mark yourself as unavailable and select “Lunch Break.”
3. Once your 30 minutes are finished, mark yourself as available in the Alto Driver App and go back online in the Uber Driver App.

Steps for Recording a Rest Break:

• Mark your rest break in the Alto Driver App by selecting “Rest Break” when you begin, and resume your status when you have completed your rest break.

Important Reminder: Failing to record your breaks correctly, or simply going offline without logging your break in the Alto Driver App, can result in disciplinary action.

California Drivers Only

If you are a driver operating in California, state labor laws require additional strict break structures:

California Meal Breaks:

• Your first 30-minute unpaid meal break must begin no later than the end of your fifth hour of work.
• A second 30-minute unpaid meal break is mandatory if you work more than 10 hours in a single day.
• You must be completely relieved of all duties, and you are strictly prohibited from working off the clock or skipping meal periods in order to leave your shift early.

California Rest Breaks: You are entitled to one 10-minute paid rest break for every 4 hours (or major fraction) worked. These should be taken in the middle of each work period whenever possible and follow this structural breakdown:

• 3.5 to 6 hours worked = 1 mandatory rest break
• 6 to 10 hours worked = 2 mandatory rest breaks
• 10 to 14 hours worked = 3 mandatory rest breaks

Managing and Troubleshooting Break Violations

Any missed or late meal breaks are automatically flagged. If you took your lunch but still received a penalty, remember these three rules:

• Your lunch must start before you finish your 5th hour of work.
• Your lunch must be a full, 30-minute break with no work at all.
• You must fill out your end-of-shift checklist to confirm you got your full, uninterrupted break.

If you miss any of these rules, it causes a meal penalty. This means you will see an extra hour of pay added to your timecard. However, please remember that getting meal penalties will also lead to disciplinary action (write-ups).

Requesting a Compliance Review

If you believe a meal or rest break violation was issued to your account in error, you have the right to submit a formal request for review.

Important Note Before You Submit a Ticket: Meal records are added to your timecard manually once a day, Monday through Friday. Meal breaks from Friday, Saturday, and Sunday shifts will not show up on your timecard until Monday. 

When to request a review:

• You actually took the required break, but the app failed to record it correctly.
• You worked fewer than the required hours to trigger a break but received a violation anyway.
• You were involved in an accident on shift that physically prevented you from safely taking your break.

When a review will NOT result in removing a violation: Alto enforces policies equally to protect driver safety. The following operational or personal reasons are not valid grounds for removing a break violation:

• Your workload or high trip volume: You are expected to set yourself offline to stop accepting new trip requests through the Uber app to properly plan for your meal break. If you run into any issues doing this, you should report them to On-the-Road Support through the Zello app right away for assistance.
• Heavy traffic delayed your break timing.
• You simply forgot to log or take your break.
• You experienced technical issues: If the app acts up, you are still required to take the break and notify the team of your correct times immediately after.
• You were in an inconvenient location or simply chose not to take it.

Reporting Concerns & Still Need Help?

If you ever feel pressured by anyone to skip your breaks, please report it to us through phone or using the contact us option. Alto strictly prohibits any form of retaliation or coercion related to taking your legally protected rest periods.

If you have reviewed the guidelines above and need to request an official review of an issued break violation, use the link below to submit a ticket to the review team.

Request Meal Penalty Review