On my job we very rarely have another 45 to drive another hour due to the job as its takes up to 5 hours to tip
My transport manager just phoned me who is new and said can you do a 10 hour today but i am on my 45 break so my 3rs driving I did this morning are spent ?.
he is saying I can drive for another 4.30 correct…after my dinner
then have my 45 break again correct but he is saying I have my extra hour… correct but i can pull my 1 and half hours from my first driving as i only was driving for 3 hours WTF i have never heard that one
greatdane:
On my job we very rarely have another 45 to drive another hour due to the job as its takes up to 5 hours to tip
My transport manager just phoned me who is new and said can you do a 10 hour today but i am on my 45 break so my 3rs driving I did this morning are spent ?.
he is saying I can drive for another 4.30 correct…after my dinner
then have my 45 break again correct but he is saying I have my extra hour… correct but i can pull my 1 and half hours from my first driving as i only was driving for 3 hours WTF i have never heard that one
Can’t quite make sense of this, but you can lawfully drive under the following pattern:
3 hours driving
45 min break
4.5 hours driving
45 min break
2.5 hours driving
That is 10 hours driving in total, with no period of driving longer than 4.5 hours before a 45 min break. Not sure whether that addresses your issue.
If you’ve already driven for 3 hours and had a 45 minute break, you could drive for another 4.5 hours then have another 45 minute break, then drive for another 2.5 hours.
You don’t lose any daily driving time just because you have a break before 4.5 hours driving, so your boss is almost right.
Basically yes. You did 3 hours drive then took a 45. You can then drive for upto 4.5 hours and then you are due another 45. After that you can drive for as long as you have left on your 10 hour drive day. You can do this twice a week. Your driving day, either 9 or 10 hours, can be split into as many segments as you like, using either 45s or split breaks to divide the driving up.
tachograph:
If you’ve already driven for 3 hours and had a 45 minute break, you could drive for another 4.5 hours then have another 45 minute break, then drive for another 2.5 hours.You don’t lose any daily driving time just because you have a break before 4.5 hours driving, so your boss is almost right.
I always thought once you had taken your first 45 break the driving time you had left was spent i.e. lost and you could only pull the driving time taken from the second period
greatdane:
I always thought once you had taken your first 45 break the driving time you had left was spent i.e. lost and you could only pull the driving time taken from the second period
Regardless of how many breaks you have or when you have them you do not lose any of the daily driving time limit, You could have a 45 minute break after every 2 hours driving and you will still be entitled to drive for a total of 9 hours or 10 hours twice a week.
tachograph:
greatdane:
I always thought once you had taken your first 45 break the driving time you had left was spent i.e. lost and you could only pull the driving time taken from the second periodRegardless of how many breaks you have or when you have them you do not lose any of the daily driving time limit, You could have a 45 minute break after every 2 hours driving and you will still be entitled to drive for a total of 9 hours or 10 hours twice a week.
cheers for al the replys at least I know he isn’t taking the ■■■■ cos if he was i was bound to be pulled I’ve no luck at all
this is what confused me on the vosa site.
A driver ‘wipes the slate clean’ if he takes a 45-minute break (or qualifying breaks totalling 45 minutes before or at the end of a 4.5-hour driving period. This means that the next 4.5-hour driving period begins with the completion of that qualifying break, and in assessing break requirements for the new 4.5-hour period, no reference is to be made to driving time accumulated before this point. For example:
greatdane:
A driver ‘wipes the slate clean’ if he takes a 45-minute break (or qualifying breaks totalling 45 minutes before or at the end of a 4.5-hour driving period. This means that the next 4.5-hour driving period begins with the completion of that qualifying break, and in assessing break requirements for the new 4.5-hour period, no reference is to be made to driving time accumulated before this point. For example:
That just means that after a 45 minute break that 4.5 hours driving period slate is wiped clean and you start a new 4.5 hour driving period, it doesn’t affect the daily driving limit.
greatdane:
I always thought once you had taken your first 45 break the driving time you had left was spent i.e. lost and you could only pull the driving time taken from the second period
■■ me in that case I would be parkin up after about 2 hrs driving 
Some one really needs to read the book.
tachograph:
greatdane:
A driver ‘wipes the slate clean’ if he takes a 45-minute break …That just means that after a 45 minute break that 4.5 hours driving period slate is wiped clean and you start a new 4.5 hour driving period, it doesn’t affect the daily driving limit.
Indeed, there are about 10 different slates to manage in this game. Some are wiped by work breaks, some by daily rest, some by weekly rest, some by the elapsing of 24 hours, some by the elapsing of 7 days, some by 14 days, some by the fixed week, some by 17 weeks, the slates are almost endless!
I suppose the idea originally was that the driver only had to manage his own work breaks, with the rest handled in the office by planners of sufficient administrative skill, but those are hard to come by.
CPC working well again
Tachograph must have been thinking of me - drive for 2 then break, drive for 2 then break! Sometimes not even 2. Didn’get my user name by accident.
mac12:
CPC working well again
OP might not have elected to do drivers hours as part of the training.
CPC just ■■■■■, nowt more than a money making scheme for government.
mac12:
CPC working well again
The problem is that most drivers have working hours that are so complex, change so often during the day and from day to day, and which seek to touch every extreme corner and crevice of what is permitted by the rules, that drivers cannot be expected to apply the drivers’ hours rules to those working hours without an undue administrative burden which would be beyond the capability of many drivers (and is certainly beyond the will of any driver).
I’m not aware of any operator that actually rigorously checks its planned schedule against the drivers’ hours rules. Instead, planners use rules of thumb, margins of error, they rely on drivers monitoring their hours as they go and pushing back against plans that would breach the rules, and operators now use tachograph analysis software to check compliance retrospectively.
To check compliance of plans prospectively, and to do it properly by hand, each driver would probably need a full-time administrative counterpart in the office. The Ho Chi Minh trail probably had more organisation to its schedule than today’s road haulage, and nothing in the CPC can help drivers manage that.
Even the OP’s question, which seems quite simple to answer, has lots of pitfalls. The rule of thumb that a driver can drive 10 hours a day with two breaks, provided no period between breaks exceeds 4.5 hours, falls down in at least the following cases where 10 hours would mean: he has driven over 9 hours more than twice that week; driven over 90 hours that fortnight; he has reduced his rest below 9 hours that 24-hour period (or below 11 hours, if he has already reduced his rest three times that week). It’s no laughing matter trying to keep track of all these corner cases, and I’m not surprised some people become confused.
Rjan:
mac12:
CPC working well againThe problem is that most drivers have working hours that are so complex, change so often during the day and from day to day, and which seek to touch every extreme corner and crevice of what is permitted by the rules, that drivers cannot be expected to apply the drivers’ hours rules to those working hours without an undue administrative burden which would be beyond the capability of many drivers (and is certainly beyond the will of any driver).
I’m not aware of any operator that actually rigorously checks its planned schedule against the drivers’ hours rules. Instead, planners use rules of thumb, margins of error, they rely on drivers monitoring their hours as they go and pushing back against plans that would breach the rules, and operators now use tachograph analysis software to check compliance retrospectively.
To check compliance of plans prospectively, and to do it properly by hand, each driver would probably need a full-time administrative counterpart in the office. The Ho Chi Minh trail probably had more organisation to its schedule than today’s road haulage, and nothing in the CPC can help drivers manage that.
Even the OP’s question, which seems quite simple to answer, has lots of pitfalls. The rule of thumb that a driver can drive 10 hours a day with two breaks, provided no period between breaks exceeds 4.5 hours, falls down in at least the following cases where 10 hours would mean: he has driven over 9 hours more than twice that week; driven over 90 hours that fortnight; he has reduced his rest below 9 hours that 24-hour period (or below 11 hours, if he has already reduced his rest three times that week). It’s no laughing matter trying to keep track of all these corner cases, and I’m not surprised some people become confused.
Very well put!
Having read Rjan’s excellent post it provides just another reason why we are paid soooo much.
Fantastic isn’t it. Even the basics seem to be beyond the professional driver out there!
Plambert:
Fantastic isn’t it. Even the basics seem to be beyond the professional driver out there!
What basics?
The OP has a perfectly tenable rule of thumb, that he counts the driving time on the tacho, completes a break before it reaches 4h30, which resets the driving clock back to zero, then finishes his shift before it reaches 4h30 again - or takes another break and gets another 1h00 of driving time before finishing.
This rule of thumb would have made even more sense under the analogue tacho, when actually counting the precise minutes of driving time was impossible at the wheel (and without a microscope).
Also, applying the rules in a more complex way to wring out the full 10 hours, requires you to manually record your driving time prior to completing each break (or make a printout after the second one), and then subtract this from the 10 to give you your remainder for the final stint of driving. You must then keep this remainder in mind and ensure that you do not exceed it. For some guys who are drivers and not mathematicians, this is already too much to ask.
Certainly, nobody at any CPC course ever showed me the above procedure (of recording numbers at specific times during the working day, subtracting one from the other at a specific time, etc.) - I’ve just knocked it up from first principles, and that is precisely what many drivers simply cannot do.
mac12:
CPC working well again
If in doubt…ASK …that’s what this forum is for,is it not
Rjan:
Plambert:
Fantastic isn’t it. Even the basics seem to be beyond the professional driver out there!What basics?
The OP has a perfectly tenable rule of thumb, that he counts the driving time on the tacho, completes a break before it reaches 4h30, which resets the driving clock back to zero, then finishes his shift before it reaches 4h30 again - or takes another break and gets another 1h00 of driving time before finishing.
This rule of thumb would have made even more sense under the analogue tacho, when actually counting the precise minutes of driving time was impossible at the wheel (and without a microscope).
Also, applying the rules in a more complex way to wring out the full 10 hours, requires you to manually record your driving time prior to completing each break (or make a printout after the second one), and then subtract this from the 10 to give you your remainder for the final stint of driving. You must then keep this remainder in mind and ensure that you do not exceed it. For some guys who are drivers and not mathematicians, this is already too much to ask.
Certainly, nobody at any CPC course ever showed me the above procedure (of recording numbers at specific times during the working day, subtracting one from the other at a specific time, etc.) - I’ve just knocked it up from first principles, and that is precisely what many drivers simply cannot do.
The basics being that if you aren’t aware of what you can do how can you know what you can’t do. It’s incumbent on you to know at least the essentials as a driver.
Take an hour to read the basic stuff on the internet from DVSA. It’s very simple to understand. Also, within that hour have a play with the tacho it gives you all the required info about breaks, driving, etc., without the need to do a print out. Even if you have to do a print out a couple of times a day, so what, it’s worth it if you’re not sure.