Drivers Hours... Diary, Big Timer or Excel spreadsheet?

UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS THE UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUM (INTERACTIVE)
1

Anyone like to share their particular methods or tips for keeping legal and monitoring their
Drivers Hours and WTD rules?

It seems ( To me anyway! ) that Tachograph and ROG are both quite conversant and expert
in all things tachograph and hours related… but are there other drivers that would claim
to be ‘On the ball’ on these matters?

I thought it would make an interesting topic, and would be helpful for newbies coming into
the industry, and oldies like myself, thinking of returning after 7 years away from haulage
and trying to get my head around it all again!

So what are your preferred methods… Big timer, Diaries? Have you found or created an
excel spreadsheet that does the various calculations for you? Do you NEVER get any
Infringements with your ways of record keeping?

How about sharing your tricks, tips or thought processes on how you deal with the thorny
issue of Drivers Hours and WTD on a daily basis?

2

There’s an app for Android called Trucker Timer. It is good and well worth a few £.

Sent from my SM-T335 using Tapatalk

3

My digi card is enough for me

4

I use a diary and a pen. Can’t go wrong unless you lose your diary.

5

As the driver you do not need to keep track of your weekly/reference period WTD hours because that is on the employer(s) to do
You just need to present the company with the records such as downloading digi-card

6

Diary with start and end times, unit reg, trailer no. and destination. Weekend has total working time. Easy, takes one minute.

7

My company keep a check on my wtd hours so there’s no need for me to check for anything, I certainly get nowhere near my 90 hrs driving a fortnight or my 60 hours worked in a week.

8

ROG:
As the driver you do not need to keep track of your weekly/reference period WTD hours because that is on the employer(s) to do
You just need to present the company with the records such as downloading digi-card

My reason for keeping a diary is for my own use, so many employers it seems from the horror stories I have read about on here are only too willing to simply give you an infringement from their record keeping and from their requests of pushing. A diary gives you the knowledge and power to say no to those requests. A decent firm and there is no need for a driver to keep a record of WTD.

9

If your capable of using an excel spreadsheet, or able to construct a rudimentary one for your needs from scratch then go for it. I’ve done it in the past and maintained one keeping records for several years, it calculated total hours, average hours, wtd hrs, mileage, annual mileage, and if I imputed start/finish times & hrs worked it calcated gross & net wages and more, but in the end it was a waste of my time

10

Diary all the way.
Same unit,different trailer,run no.,destination,drops,collections etc.Start and finish times.Easiest method for me.As Rog says,all others is for the co to sort out.
And, as Baldy says,never close to working or driving limits thankfully!

11

As already mentioned some people use an app called Trucker Timer, there are also on-line sites where you can put your times in and they will keep track of your driving and working time hours, I’ve never used them but I’m sure someone on TN will know where these sites are.

ROG:
As the driver you do not need to keep track of your weekly/reference period WTD hours because that is on the employer(s) to do
You just need to present the company with the records such as downloading digi-card

As far as I’m aware the driver is as responsible as the company for making sure he/she complies with the RT(WT)R.
(that’s if anyone actually cares about complying with the WTD)

The regulations place a burden on the employer to keep records that enable them to see that the driver is complying with the WDT and to make those records available to the driver on request, but that does not negate the drivers responsibility to comply with the regulations.

12

tachograph:
As far as I’m aware the driver is as responsible as the company for making sure he/she complies with the RT(WT)R.

Reading the rules they do not expect drivers to have a PC programme to keep track of the average 48 and the Tacho is not designed to keep track of the weekly max which is why it is the responsibility of the employer to do that in the admin dept

13

I used to use a spreadsheet. Last week I found a good bit of software (£60) and a card reader (£20) and now I download my card. It works out hours, remaining hours, violations etc etc. Exports to excel for reports. Last week’s customer timesheet took about 2 minutes. Fully compliant and sorted.

Sent from my SM-J510FN using Tapatalk

14

peirre:
If your capable of using an excel spreadsheet, or able to construct a rudimentary one for your needs from scratch then go for it. I’ve done it in the past and maintained one keeping records for several years, it calculated total hours, average hours, wtd hrs, mileage, annual mileage, and if I imputed start/finish times & hrs worked it calcated gross & net wages and more, but in the end it was a waste of my time

I spent hours on a spreadsheet to print out time sheets for the agency. It all worked fine until I started doing nights and I could never get the hours right across a midnight. I gave up in the end and carried on doing them manually.

15

ROG:

tachograph:
As far as I’m aware the driver is as responsible as the company for making sure he/she complies with the RT(WT)R.

Reading the rules they do not expect drivers to have a PC programme to keep track of the average 48 and the Tacho is not designed to keep track of the weekly max which is why it is the responsibility of the employer to do that in the admin dept

Where in the regulations does it say, or even insinuate, that a driver has no responsibility for complying with any particular part of the RT(WT)R :confused:

16

tachograph:

ROG:

tachograph:
As far as I’m aware the driver is as responsible as the company for making sure he/she complies with the RT(WT)R.

Reading the rules they do not expect drivers to have a PC programme to keep track of the average 48 and the Tacho is not designed to keep track of the weekly max which is why it is the responsibility of the employer to do that in the admin dept

Where in the regulations does it say, or even insinuate, that a driver has no responsibility for complying with any particular part of the RT(WT)R :confused:

It was a question posed to the old VOSA where they stated a driver is not expected to be maths experts to keep track and work it all out in the same way a company admin dept can

I suspect a different answer would have been given if the digi tachograph worked it all out so the driver can keep track but then that would leave an issue with analogue ones …

17

I keep a log in a notepad of unit, trl, km on, km off, time on, time off each day. Plus runs and any notes like where I spent the night.

The tacho deals with my driver’s hours and since I never work my 6th day on purpose, I’ve only had to check I was getting my weekly rest twice this year. It’s up to the company to monitor your WTD.

18

Santa:

peirre:
If your capable of using an excel spreadsheet, or able to construct a rudimentary one for your needs from scratch then go for it. I’ve done it in the past and maintained one keeping records for several years, it calculated total hours, average hours, wtd hrs, mileage, annual mileage, and if I imputed start/finish times & hrs worked it calcated gross & net wages and more, but in the end it was a waste of my time

I spent hours on a spreadsheet to print out time sheets for the agency. It all worked fine until I started doing nights and I could never get the hours right across a midnight. I gave up in the end and carried on doing them manually.

i spent weeks building one, most of it was looking for formulas like this

=IF(E3>F3,F3+1-E3,F3-E3) formula for total hours cell

E3 is start time
F3 is finish time
G3 is your total hours

19

205:
i spent weeks building one, most of it was looking for formulas like this

=IF(E3>F3,F3+1-E3,F3-E3) formula for total hours cell

E3 is start time
F3 is finish time
G3 is your total hours

Be interesting to know how accurate and comprehensive that sheet is! For example, the need to attribute instances of extended driving time to fixed weeks, whereas instances of reduced daily rests are attributed to a rolling period which begins with the end of the latest weekly rest which precedes the daily rest in question (and the need to differentiate between reduced daily rest and split daily rest) makes the logic absurdly complex.

Edit, thinking more about this…

It also strikes me that there are ambiguities in the rules - for example, if an instance of extended driving time straddles two fixed weeks (i.e. ignoring the need for driving breaks, driving begins on Sun, 2017-07-30 at 1900, and finishes on Mon, 2017-07-31 at 0500, a ■■■■■■■■■■ driving time of 10 hours in total), then to which fixed week is the extension attributed for the purpose of counting whether the two-extensions-per-week limit has been reached?

Also, most drivers aren’t interested in knowing at the end of each day whether they have been compliant.

Most drivers want to know “will I be compliant?”, based on a proposal to do work (so a non-compliant proposal can be rejected or revised before a violation actually occurs). It’s a hell of challenge to build a computer calculator for this kind of question!

Personally, I just work on paper, and take a risk-based approach to monitoring the different limits, initially using rules of thumb. So for example, if my weekly rests always take place on weekends, and I haven’t used either of the driving time extensions since my last weekly rest, then I don’t need to even begin applying a complex system of calculation which can accurately determine, under all possible circumstances, whether I have one or zero extensions remaining within that fixed week!

20

205:

Santa:

peirre:
If your capable of using an excel spreadsheet, or able to construct a rudimentary one for your needs from scratch then go for it. I’ve done it in the past and maintained one keeping records for several years, it calculated total hours, average hours, wtd hrs, mileage, annual mileage, and if I imputed start/finish times & hrs worked it calcated gross & net wages and more, but in the end it was a waste of my time

I spent hours on a spreadsheet to print out time sheets for the agency. It all worked fine until I started doing nights and I could never get the hours right across a midnight. I gave up in the end and carried on doing them manually.

i spent weeks building one, most of it was looking for formulas like this

=IF(E3>F3,F3+1-E3,F3-E3) formula for total hours cell

E3 is start time
F3 is finish time
G3 is your total hours

My formula looked more like this - =IF($A1=“”,“”,(MOD(A2-A1,1))*24) if you started working 4:00 PM and ended 1:00 AM without using MOD, it will give you -15 but Mod will give you exactly hours of work which is 9 hours.

It was still a bore to enter all the data, including dates for every day/time.