I have been lurking around the forum for a couple of weeks, reading and trying to understand but have a few questions. Hopefully you guys can help.
A little about me, I have been working in the retail industry for over 20 years and would like to eventually move into a different industry. I don’t like retail anymore, don’t like the politics, the sneakiness of companies towards customers, the demands etc etc. I did take a couple of years out and worked as a courier driver in a small van and then a sprinter for a nationwide same-day company and then registered onto an exchange and started getting jobs from there. I started as early as I could and stopped when I stopped, to give you an idea I remember my hardest day I left the house at 3am and got to Glasgow for 8.30am, came back to the midlands, then onto Southampton and then back up to Coventry and then home to Brum. I delievred anything and everything from small envelopes - to pallets all over the UK, sometimes had to handball stuff on and off. I stopped driving and went back into retail management because of cash flow problems, some companies paid whenever they wanted and terms were daft at times,20, 60 , 90 days etc.
Anyhow, I would like to get back into driving but this time HGV driving but I would still like to keep my day job for about a year or so until I have a tad more experience driving trucks. This means I would like be to working 1 or 2 days a week as a HGV driver or maybe even a class 2 driver.
Is this possible with a full time job in a different industry? Am i allowed to drive 8-10 hours a day 2 days a week after my full time job of 40 hours, which is any 5 out of 7. I have read there is a 90 hours limit for class 1 drivers, I assume I will be well under that for any 2 week period?
I don’t want to quite my job and go into HGV driving full time just yet, can you guys me accordingly with my plans? Can you guys advise on the possible restrictions I may face?
Okay, can of worms time; it is entirely possible to pick up the odd shift driving a HGV whilst still holding down a “normal” job, however (in layman’s terms) you need to have 45 hours rest every weekend. This can be reduced to 24 hours every other weekend so you need to bear that in mind. Of course you could ignore that and just do Sat and Sun driving a truck. Chances are you’d get away with it, but there’s also a chance you wouldn’t and then you’d face punitive fines as a result.
Another issue is that you’d need to account for on the tachograph your Mon-Fri working times when you (for example) insert your card on a Saturday morning. Unless you are completely au fait with tachograph operations that is a potential minefield. I personally wouldn’t relish doing a week or two’s worth of manual entries in one go, and I use a tacho every day, the potential for disaster is immense.
My personal advice would be to piss or get off the pot! By that I mean choose one or the other between retail OR driving. Mixing and matching is fraught with problems.
Good luck though with whatever you decide is right for you.
Just a question, what happens when you come back off a 2 week holiday, are you required to input every day
Been out of game a while and when was there it was just a matter of 2 choices to continue to drive yes or no
As @maoster said you need to be careful about weekly rest periods, if you’re working 5 days a week in your full time job it’s very unlikely that you would be able to legally work 2 shifts driving HGVs unless you have very flexible start/finish times, some people find they can legally do one HGV shift every second week.
You will need to keep 28 days of records but they don’t need to be recorded on a tachograph, the records for none HGV driving days can be written on tachograph printout paper.
Why would my full time job have to be recorded on a tachograph? I don’t understand this part. After working 40 hours a week, + 20 hours driving, this leaves me with much more than 45 hours rest a week.
I was considering agency work, virtually taking any jobs that come my way for class 1 or class2.
As a HGV driver the regulations state that in any week in which you drive in-scope of EU regulations you must have a weekly rest period of 45 consecutive hours, this can be reduced to no less than 24 consecutive hours rest every second week.
If you’re working 5 days in your usual job it’s unlikely, though not impossible, that you will be able to do a driving shift and still have 45 consecutive hours rest in the two days you have off from your usual job.
The work hours done in your usual job can be recorded on tachograph printing paper.
Your full time job needs to be recorded because in any week in which you drive in-scope of EU regulations the hours you do in your usual job cannot be counted as rest and are therefore counted as other work.
You need to record these activities so that the DVSA can see that you’ve had the correct weekly rest and the correct daily rest on days that you drive HGVs.
You need to understand that these days driving HGVs is highly regulated.
You can’t work more than 6 days a week.
Then you . Need a break of 45 hours. Or 24 so your working Mon to Fri that’s 5 days work Saturday that’s your 6 days.
If your mon to Friday job start time is flexible you could work every Saturday as long as you have 45 hours off between finishing Saturday and starting Monday.
Lot of rules regulations hours in truck driving.
Yet as your post states driving a van you can legally drive up to Glasgow then down to Southampton do as much driving as you want quite legally.
The 90 he rule is how many hours you can drive over 2 weeks.
Working time is different
You could have a job truck driving where you just drive half hour once a week and spend rest of your week in warehouse your still under hgv regulations.
Which basically is can’t work more than ,6 full day then need at least 24 hours off .
That might happen, but isn’t necessarily legal.
Because they are not fitted with tachographs does not mean that hours laws do not apply.
I believe GB Domestic rules apply to goods vehicles under 3.5T gross that are driven for over 4hrs per day for hire and reward,
True but how many vans get stopped.?
Not many as be to much hassle trying to prove how long been driving when did you stop etc.
As no records are kept unlike using a tacho.
Keep hearing stories over they years there planning on making vans have a tacho fitted but will never happen
Plus imagine Amazon DPD etc will object to it as they can’t afford for there drivers to have a 15. /30 min break they have to many deliveries to do
Not getting prosecuted, is not the same as being legal. Loads of people speed but do not get locked up for it every time. That does not mean speed limits do not exist.
In event of an accident then anyone who has driven/worked excessively will be in big trouble. It does not matter who caused the accident either.
Satnavs, tracking devices, mobile phone records will all be used in bad cases.
Vans may not be regularly stopped for record checks, but that does mean they are not possible, and certainly driving too long is not legal.
Many companies get around their responsibilities by using self employed/ sub-contractors/ owner drivers etc.
You hit the nail on the head there, GB domestic rules are ignored on an industrial scale in the entire express parcel industry, and lots of others, where people drive and do more than 11 hours duty a day. Most van drivers don’t even know the rules exist, none keep records. Some of the big parcel carriers do enforce the rules for direct employees, but it’s also why the industry relies on subcontractors or “self-employed” drivers to supposedly get around these rules, even though they still apply to owner drivers. Amazon Logistics, DPD, Yodel, Evri et al. business model relies on drivers ignorance or indifference, and non compliance with these rules.
