How many of you use the old fashioned way of recording the driving times, for me it is the Salter brand, easy to buy from any hardware store and now in most truck stops, i can imagine the profits went up when they realised they had a trucking market.
i use mine as a timer for daily rest, set it to 9 or 11 off.
Starting off, i set it to 9 hours, if i need to do a 10,just add an hour when it bleeps.
I use these. Being on tippers you don’t do huge amounts of driving time so I tend to time the first 4.5 hours and then the break and then not use it for the rest of the day. Pre weighloaders and at an old gravel pit we part owned I used to use one when loading shingle under a blender belt. It dropped 5t per minute so I timed something like 3 mins 15 seconds.
I think I’ve seen them for about £5 so much cheaper than a proper hours calculator.
Why the hell can’t the ability to access all of the required information be built into the tachograph itself?
Harry Monk:
Why the hell can’t the ability to access all of the required information be built into the tachograph itself?
Think on the newer lorry they have done this but not the old analog
I use a timer set 4.25 min then know I need a break if not had 1 all ready then after break set for another 4.25
I used to use one from the kitchen but the sand kept running out to quick. 
Harry Monk:
Why the hell can’t the ability to access all of the required information be built into the tachograph itself?
It already is to some extent (e.g. a single button press will show how much of your 4.5 hours driving time you have used, and how much of your 45 minutes break you have already taken). A couple of button presses will show your total drive time so far today.
One problem is that Digi tachos have only been with us for 6 or 7 years, so an awful lot of drivers are still using paper charts at least some of the time. A digi tacho cannot know about any data recorded on such a chart, meaning that any running totals of daily/weekly hours would be meaningless unless analogue tachos were outlawed.