There does seem to be no kind of balance of companies getting the intial cards for drivers . I hear a lot of people complaining they have to pay for one etc …
I got mine paid for .Only the first one though so we’ve been told .
Hi,
First post.
I’ve been on a digi tach for a few weeks now (owner driver, new truck) I struggled to begin with and was desperate to get on this site for advice. However its taken me some 6 weeks to get on here, with all emails ignored. I’ve had to create a new email address purely for this site, with a completely new id and password etc from that which I normally use on other sites (I’m a car and motorsport enthusiast and regularly post on other forums)
I’m pretty much all sorted out now, but it would have been better both for me and for the info I could have given to this site perhaps, which might have been of interest. I particularly needed advice on which downloader to buy, but had to buy blind. I bought the Downloader Solo from Smartcard Focus, which I have now seen referred to on this site.
I’m a concrete mixer operater. I’m not sure how suitable the digi tacho is for this sort of work, because as someone has said, each movement clocks up a minute of driving, plus we do a lot of quarry and big site work (as tippers do), meaning a lot of off road stuff. I haven’t figured out to prevent this from being added to driving time. What I have been doing is keeping a ‘Tacho Log’, of notes of when I have clocked up some driving time off road and other things, such as stopping for a break and forgetting to set the tacho to the correct activity, doh.
When I download my drivers card onto my PC, I then have an icon saved in the download folder of that particular download. I find I can’t open the file when I click on the icon, should I be able to? If not, how does the ministry man access the information?
I’ll post more questions as I think of them.
Mixermerc said;
I’m not sure how suitable the digi tacho is for this sort of work, because as someone has said, each movement clocks up a minute of driving, plus we do a lot of quarry and big site work (as tippers do), meaning a lot of off road stuff. I haven’t figured out to prevent this from being added to driving time.
All digital Vehicle Units (VU’s) have an ‘Out of Scope’ function. Basically, when you go off road you select ‘Out of Scope start.’ when you return to the road select ‘Out of Scope end.’ The VU will record these periods to the driver card and its’ own memory. The snag with this is that the VU still includes your ‘out of scope’ driving in the daily, weekly and fortnightly totals, it’s for you and the Ministry to subtract these times from the totals.
Mixermerc also said;
When I download my drivers card onto my PC, I then have an icon saved in the download folder of that particular download. I find I can’t open the file when I click on the icon, should I be able to? If not, how does the ministry man access the information?
Afraid cannot help with the programme as I haven’t got that one. What the Ministry Man will want is the original downloaded data from the card and VU. You have to save both. You will need a Company Card to get the file from the VU. Ministry will then run your file through their own data checker. It might be a really good idea to back-up copies of your files to cd rom and store in a safe place. Don’t think they’ll be too impressed with the line; ‘cannot give you the data as the hard drive’s crashed / got a virus.’ The digital equivalent of; ‘we’ve had a fire.’ ‘We’ve had a flood.’ or my favourite; ‘we’ve had a break-in and they stole all the charts.’ What wasn’t explained was why they didn’t nick the computer gear, the hi-fi or telly or the bosses wifes jewellery 
i have used the out of scope function a few times and it still clocks up your driving time and if you are due a rest period it sets off the warning signal and advises when you have driven more than 4.5 hours even when the last 25 minutes has been recorded as out of scope, the only thing i can assume is that it places a record within the memory that doesn’t display on the screen.
scanny77:
dont have one (much to my agencies annoyance)
being stubborn worked. they are running short of drivers on a new contract. they only have so many that fill the criteria so they are paying for my card to get me on it 
Morning All,
How do you operate the “out of scope” function? Anything I’ve tried has immediately reverted to ‘driving’ as soon as the truck moves.
I haven’t driven anything with an analogue tacho this year. Much prefer the digi-tacho, and it comes with the added bonus of not having to drive a “Tesco Value” motor…
G
scanny77:
scanny77:
dont have one (much to my agencies annoyance)being stubborn worked. they are running short of drivers on a new contract. they only have so many that fill the criteria so they are paying for my card to get me on it
Hey scanny wot ayg are you ?
I Starting useing mine in oct 2006 for the first time when the the firm i work for through a agency ,changed to new long term contract using rental trucks , most are brand new and come with a digital tacho anyway.
lucky i already had the card before passed my hgv class 1 test, that gave me the edge over another driver who worked for the same agency that did not have a card
so he’s driveing the 5 year old iveco and i get to drive the new merc.
card is easy to use no more messing about with paper disc’s and according
to the transport manager a lot easier to record things .
dparr
have used mine twice on agy work, without any training and TBH I hadn`t got a clue what i was doing
Mixermerc:
Morning All,How do you operate the “out of scope” function? Anything I’ve tried has immediately reverted to ‘driving’ as soon as the truck moves.
geebee45:
All digital Vehicle Units (VU’s) have an ‘Out of Scope’ function. Basically, when you go off road you select ‘Out of Scope start.’ when you return to the road select ‘Out of Scope end.’ The VU will record these periods to the driver card and its’ own memory. The snag with this is that the VU still includes your ‘out of scope’ driving in the daily, weekly and fortnightly totals, it’s for you and the Ministry to subtract these times from the totals.
I’ve been driving a Merc’ for the last two weeks. The ‘Trip Memory’ section of it’s dashboard computer display keeps track of all sorts of things.
There are 4 pages,
page 1 called ‘From Start’,
page 2 called ‘From Reset’,
page 3 strangely tells you how much fuel is in the tank and the estimated range,
page 4 gives your driving time since the last full break (it counts poa as break too) and your break time taken so far.
If you have a 20 min’ break, drive for a bit, then have another break, it doesn’t add your second break in until 15 mins have elapsed, it’ll then continue counting. Once your 45 min’s are up it zeros the drive time.
You can zero the two 'From * * * ’ pages with the button at the bottom of the dashboard marked 000.0. . Use one to total your days work, the other to total your weeks work. Its probably better to use the ‘From Start’ page for your daily totals, its then easy to move between daily totals and present times. I think they total hours worked rather than driving time.
With the Merc’, I quite like the digi-tacho.
The MAN I drove a few months ago was nowhere near as easy. I had to check everything on the digi-tacho display, which only displays the elapsed time in whatever mode you are using at the time.
The Merc is fitted with a Stoneridge tacho, the MAN with the other make,
(Veeder Roote 
).
I’ve had no training, other than what I’ve read in TNUK.