Double manning hours help needed

NEW AND WANNABE DRIVERS (INTERACTIVE)
1

Hi Guys,

ive just started a new job with an overnight haulage company in edinburgh scotland, and i need some help understanding the hours for double manning.

basically its double-manned. we leave edinburgh 6:30pm, i drive for 3.5 hours then the other guy takes over for his 3.5 hours of driving. we arrive at the hub in watford, drop off and collect a trailer, then i drive for 3.5 hours back to scotland doing a change over at lancaster services so the other guy drives the last 3.5 hours, where we arrive back at 9am-ish.

So between the end of today’s shift at 9:05am and tonight’s shift which starts at roughly 6:30pm there is roughly a 9 hour break, is this legal as each “working day” is about 15 hours long, which doesnt leave much time to travel home grab a few hours sleep and then turn around and go back to work again. This runs from monday night until saturday morning and i’m concerned that we might be breaking the law with regard to driving hours and rest periods.

the reason that i am asking is that my co-driver and i relatively inexperienced, i think he has only passed his test recently and i’m wondering if the complany i’m now working for is using us as cannon fodder as there are no other drivers there that have stayed doing this night freight run.

I’d also like to hear from any other night freight drivers, if anyone has any useful survival tips particularly with regard to getting sleep as at the moment i’m crashing onto the bunk every time i’m not driving but then i’m finding im not sleeping well when i get home for a few hours.

2

Max u can work double manned is 30,hours, but there must be a minimum 9 our rest in there.try typing ‘vosa rules on drivers hours and tachographs’ in google and the info your after should be on there

3

Not to forget you still have to abide by the, daily, weekly and fortnightly driving hours limits.

4

Under MM rules the 9 hours off is counted as a full daily rest

5

newey91:
Max u can work double manned is 30,hours, but there must be a minimum 9 our rest in there.try typing ‘vosa rules on drivers hours and tachographs’ in google and the info your after should be on there

Max, when you talk about 30 hours work, do you mean “work” as in unloading a trailer or are you using the word “work” as an alternate word for driving? sorry to sound so nit-picky but i’d just like that clarified please.

as for the vosa site, i’m even more confused than when i started… at least the gap between the end of the last shift and the start of the second is 9 hours so that does meet the legal side of things. i will be having a weekly rest as of saturday morning through to monday night so that’s more than 48 hours weekly rest so that is covered.

6

You can have a max shift of 21 hours under MM rules because there must be a 9 hour rest within 30 hours of starting a shift which will also be the end of the previous daily or weekly rest period