njl:
When recovering breakdowns and accident damage you get tacho exemption inside a 100km radius of your operating base. Commonly local firms have most ops inside the circle most days and rarely need to go on card.Aa etc will be tacho all week as they will get work anywhere geographically.
I work in recovery too and it would seem you have read the DVSA document or listened to colleagues who don’t know.
Like the poster below I assure you there is NO EXEMPTION whatsoever.
Read the Department for Transport Dec 2018 publication. It should make things clear and it also NOW defines an emergency which EU and GB domestic do not (fully!).
In recovery you do two types of work - shunting (as I call it in recovery work or general haulage in other industry). The other type is emergency which it defines - whether a police job or someone stranded by the roadside. In the case of an emergency the Unforeseen Events applies. Do the job and then take break. (Unforeseen Events is different in recovery work compared to other businesses - almost every job you do could transpire into an unforeseen event).
A shunting job is usually taking a car from a home to a body shop or similar - no emergency involved or more simply put non-roadside.
Also it states para 9 “it would be for the driver to decide whether it was necessary to depart from the rules”. Very important if you have an infringement that you can justify ‘why’.
Your manual record sheet should show (IMO) what jobs are shunting, emergency and infringements and a tacho printout with explanation as to why. e.g. I did a SOC (scene of crime) job this morning… and only took break once it had been unloaded and under cover (it was not raining but could have been).
As the DfT doc says “it would be for the driver to decide whether it was necessary to depart from the rules” - powerful but do not attempt to misinterpret it… in case you are stopped. I keep a copy on my phone.
I wanted to write something on this a while back but haven’t got round to it.
As for EU or domestic rules - remember if you go outside the 100 km on day 1 of your shift EU rules apply until your weekly rest period. I stick to EU as domestic has no advantage.