Keeping track of the work and hours you have done over previous weeks is obviously important for working out rests, average driving etc etc
I was just wondering how you experienced drivers do this? do you simply use a notebook?, have proper sheets etc as are available from ‘TACHODISC’
tachodisc.co.uk/products/Ana … ducts.aspx
Or maybe you have created your own excel sheets or something.
Any tips, examples etc would be handy.
As well as filling in the tacho wallets, I keep a small diary.
I dont !!! I dont have less than 11 hours off and rarely drive more than 8 hours in a day some days its as little as 2 so I dont bother, But I do use a Drivers Hour Guard to record my daily travels and daily breaks, and ive never had an infringement yet.
jammymutt:
I dont !!! I dont have less than 11 hours off and rarely drive more than 8 hours in a day some days its as little as 2 so I dont bother, But I do use a Drivers Hour Guard to record my daily travels and daily breaks, and ive never had an infringement yet.
Me too… 
I’m on a Digi-card.
Due to the peculiarities of the way it records things I keep a diary of what time I arrive on site and how much driving time has lapsed.
I also record shift start time, where and when I take my breaks and when I finish my shift.
That helps me predict, roughly, how long a similar journey will probably take on a future occasion.
write them down ina log book as the day goes on but as most of my day is on a bay on p.o.a or break im always well within driving time etc
I write everything in my diary. These new hours rules have hit us tipper drivers pretty hard (no off-road driving) so I try to make a note of every stop over 2/3mins and work pretty much to the max. 
It annoys me that I now stop for ‘dinner’ at 10:15
i dont. do about 7 hours a day thats enough for me no poa just a 45min break
We supposed to keep a record then■■?
I have a tiny notebook which fits into one of the nooks in the dash with all my driving since September 2005 in it (which is when the previous book ran out). I could tell you exactly how many hours of driving, spread, and rest I’ve had in that time, as well as how many km I’ve driven - nearly 200 000, for the record. It gets updated at the end of every day.
We quite often do all 45 hours of driving in a week, run out of reduced rests etc. and are bang up against the 90 hour limit most of the time. You have to know where you’re up to at any given time else, as one of our drivers puts it, you’re doomed.
Day to day I just use a basic countdown timer for driving, and make a note of where I’m up to in my day-to-day notebook - the one for box numbers and pins and addresses etc. - as the day goes by. I make a note of what time my card went in, too. The result looks some thing like:
3.25 (30)/ 2/ 3 (20)/ - 45/1.75
The main numbers are driving, the ones in brackets are part breaks, and a “/” indicates a completed break. The bit in bold is normally just in biro with a ring round it, and is the amount of driving I have left on a 9 or 10 when I run out on the last period of the day, so I know where I am at a glance. Works for me.
Pretty much same as Lucy,I have all my Breaks Driving periods and rests ,start /finish locations since September 2004 (sad really)
I used to use an old mobile phone stopwatch but now I have DIGI so dont need to bother about the stopwatch but I still write down ■■■■■■■■■■ driving time and breaks as the DIGI resets after 45 minutes of break.it even does it with POA so I have to keep an eye on it as it does’nt realise the 30 minute split break rule either
best joke ive heard all week gave up about 2 days after wtd came in recording my hours
hours guard works for me 
I use an A4 notepad, and write my start time then the activity, then the time of the start of any new activity, underneath.
ie:
08.00 start
ow (other work walkround checks etc)
08.15
drive (4’ 30" left)
10.00
ow (tipping lidls runcorn)
11.45
drive (2’ 45" left)
12.30
rest (15")
12.47
drive (2’ left)
13.30
ow (fuel 327.8 L 238457 km)
13.40
drive (1’ 17" left")
…
etc, etc.
It helps for later when filling out the firms paperwork, and also I can tell where I was and what I was doing on any particular day if I get accused of anything 
I also write down my load instructions/ load ref. numbers on the same page so a whole day is represented.
I have a Hourguard for my daily work, and record it at the end of the day in a diary. Write start and finish times, total duty, total POA, WTD work, and driving hours, as well as the drops i’ve done and any problems.
scania245:
best joke ive heard all week gave up about 2 days after wtd came in recording my hours
Sod the WTD, we’re talking Drivers Hours here…Or don’t you bother keeping track of them either? It’s your licence…
Ive just had a couple of days in a digi tacho wagon, I have used a DHG for years and had very very few infingemens when using it!!!.
Now that I have been running the DHG alongside the digi i find that the digi tells me oim out of time up to 20 minutes before the DHG what a ■■■■■■■ rip off digi tachos are they are robbing drivers of valuable minutes every day.
I tihnk I need to find a campaigning truck drivers website to do something about this as its a ■■■■■■■ joke as it is at the minute.
That will be this magic time it adds on .
I pulled up behind a truck the other night at 4hrs 12 mins to book into our depot .Waited in the que about 30 seconds , moved forward, stopped and booked in , the digi then recorded other work for 2 mins whilst I booked in . I drove 150 yds and parked up .
Total driving time 4hrs 18 minutes .
Where did the 6 minutes come from 
Doing the same run every time makes it easy - 3 1/2 hours each way unless there is a delay. I use an Hour Guard as well just to make sure of the breaks although the Actros has a timer built in.
A question did come to mind the other day though. The M4 was closed and I was on stop on it for quite a while. I left the tacho on other work, but it does not record actual driving time whilst stopped. Does that time count as driving (I was in the cab, behind the wheel, but could have got out if I had wanted - others did) or is it just other work? Incedentally even if it was all driving I was still well within my 4 1/2 hours! Also, If I was able to leave the cab for 15 mins would it be legal to put it on break?
I,ve been driving a Digi Tach truck for almost 12 months now and very often read complaints that they add on driving time, I only do one drop some days so its easy to keep a written record of when i start driving, stop for a break, arrive at delivery point and so on. If I have been through stop start traffic like M1 junction 10 then around M25 to Heathrow on a monday morning my digi tach can display less than my manual adding up because if you stop for a whole calender minute it stops counting whereas I wouldn,t add all these up myself! (I know you only have to move for a few seconds for it to record a whole calender minute but if you stop start 5 times in same calender minute it still only records one minute driving).
In my view if your in the driving seat in traffic or in a queue you should be counting it as driving time, do people with Drivers hours guards swap modes every time the wheels stop turning? because thats the only way I can see how a digi tach “robs them of driving time”