Occasional tacho use

I believe the answer is that there is no legal requirement to insert the card, just to keep a record of start and finish times, which shows that you have had sufficient daily and weekly rest.

In terms of what entry to make when you do enter the card, it would be incorrect to specify rest for the entire time if you have completed other work in between. You can use the question mark symbol (as opposed to poa, rest, other work) to record time as unknown, which means your manual record then comes into play. If you don’t do an entry, the entire time since the card was last ejected will be recorded as unknown.

Having said this, I was required to insert my card when driving bin lorries that were only picking up from residential addresses (out of scope) and download every day. I didn’t really question it and just did what was requested, as putting the card in was what I was used to anyway.