Had my first day of “proper” driving today. Bit of a balls up at the beginning with the tacho set up. The last time I drove on tacho was my assessment which was 10 days ago however I have done lots of porter work since. I put my card in the machine and it told me this it then asked if I wanted to make a manual entry to which I pressed yes as we are told we have to put in our finish time from the shift before. There is the rub though is it just 1 shift or all shifts while I was trying to work that one out the thing went haywire and started flashing up all sorts of things. I went to get help from one of the shunters/managers but by the time they came over it had decided to go onto other work and no amount of pressing the 1 button got it to spit out my card.
for future reference what are the steps I should do or is that company dependant.
The other issue I had is the gearbox (automatic) when stationary there was a good 3 or 4 second delay between me pressing the throttle to the bloody thing going. Also several times when going up hill the bloody box would go into top and then struggle to get up the hill. If I tried to use kick down to get it to drop a cog it just hissed and did nothing.
I just question mark the whole period, I’m not sitting there inputting weeks worth of other work. Tacho is there primarily to monitor your time in the vehicle. Company records will show your working time [emoji106]
I may be wrong, I suppose you could sit there for the first 30 minutes of your shift banging in your other work shifts along with breaks and rest periods but as long as there is a record somewhere (clock records, diaries etc) then I see no point
One trick with the LF gear box hold the park brake against stop but don’t fully lock it on and keep revs up , then when ready to pull away just release brake
If you’ve done other types of work since you last used your driver card use the ? symbol for the time from the end of the last shift on digital tachograph to the start of the current shift.
You’re supposed to keep records of any other work done in the same week as driving on EU regulations, legally the records for other work should be on printouts or charts but the DVSA will accept diary/notebook records.
Don’t try to put none driving days work into the tachograph, it’s not legally required and there’s a real chance you’ll make mistakes, not to mention the time it will take.
cooper1203:
for future reference what are the steps I should do or is that company dependant.
For anything other than a quick “filling in the gaps” between one shift ending and the next one beginning, just record “?” on the tacho and make written entries to cover the details. To comply with the letter of the Regs, these handwritten entries should be made on the back of a piece of printout paper/paper chart (signed, and including driver number/digicard number), although for an “occasional” driver a diary entry or some form of formal log showing start/finish times will suffice.
Hopefully I will be used as a driver more and more as that is my role. however there will be times im used as a porter or drive a 3.5 luton.
many thanks
coop
This is when it is actually easier just to be driving a truck all the time.
For the purposes of getting stopped, the DVSA would be looking to make sure your daily and weekly rests are adequate (amongst other things). This means that they need to know about the days you worked when there is no record on the driver card.
For the sake of keeping yourself right, a small diary which you can get on Ebay for £1.50 or something would suffice (that’s what I do). Record at the very least your start and finish times. The DVSA would not go as far as checking your breaks if you haven’t driven an in scope vehicle on the particular day. Technically I think the records should be on the back of tacho paper or on an analogue chart, but a diary is adequate as far as I know.
If you go down the making manual entries shenanigans route, then you would have to start putting in breaks because the computer would pick up on that when you download your card.
The ? symbol is selectable just like rest, other work, poa, when doing manual entries. This indicates that you are not committing to this time being anything other than what is in your diary. It is unknown time as far as the driver card is concerned.
If a company does insist on manual entries, to be honest it is easier to get the keys for a vehicle and go and do it at the end of the shift so you don’t have a backlog to do. Just like fueling up, getting debriefed etc, you are getting paid for it at the end of the day.
If you ever do a half day driving, I would always complete the manual entries to complete the full day.