Hi there, we would like to rent a small flatbed from time to time and I realise that this needs a (restricted) O licence. I have tried VOSA but to no avail. Can we apply for a licence even though we have no LGV of our own? Whatever we rent would be returned to the hire company at the end of the day’s hire or parked curbside overnight at my house to get an early morning start. We will not maintain anything as it’s not ours.
Does anyone that rents trucks from time to time know what the procedure is?
Many thanks
Chris
PS we are limited company and will collect/deliver our own goods only and 99% of time in single working day.
in your o licence application, you will need to stipulate an operating centre, if you say it will be ‘parked curbside overnight at my house’, they will not grant it
Basically Joe Public cannot hire a lorry for the day. To get an Operator’s Licence you would need to fulfill VOSA’s requirements, which include an operating centre. I’m not sure of the exact requirements for a restricted licence, I’ll check when I get home, but I think you would also need a CPC holder and a maintenance contract at the very least.
It’s also a (recent) requirement that you have to have at least one vehicle on your O licence, I obtained an O licence last year and I had to write an explanation letter to the Traffic Commissioner saying that I couldn’t nominate a vehicle until and unless my O licence was granted but I intended to buy one if it was. He accepted this but he/she just wouldn’t grant an O licence for your circumstances.
In any event, unless you needed a truck for two or three days a week at the very least, it would be far cheaper to give the work to an outside haulier.
Harry Monk:
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It’s also a (recent) requirement that you have to have at least one vehicle on your O licence, …
That was my reading of it.
Thanks to everyone for your feedback, much appreciated. We have a commercial vehicle dealer two doors away so I figured no hassle and the hire place is 300m from our unit (with hire trucks parked outside it).
I’m not really sure how anyone is meant to earn a living these days! If our transit is off the road I can rent one and carry on as normal, but if we have a particularly big load I cannot rent a 7.5tonne truck despite having two drivers capable and licensed to drive it. Madness.
I think the maintenance part would be dismissed since the vehicle would be short term rental ie 1 or 2 days. when you say Small lgv are you talking about 7.5t if so your going down the route of tachos unless you have any other vehicles that require them. you could just enquire at your area traffic office (not VOSA) they should point you in te right direction but as said it might e better to find someone that needs a small back load that would suite your needs
You still need an O licence even if you are hiring the vehicle.You can drive a vehicle up to 7.5 ton gross on your car licence which gives you Grandfathers rights for the licence up to that weight,provided you passed your test before 1989.You would still need your own restricted O licence and operating centre regardless of the hire company being 300 yards away.
Your best bet is to invest in a David Lowe transport managers handbook,it will give you all the information you need to know in there.
Harry Monk:
…
It’s also a (recent) requirement that you have to have at least one vehicle on your O licence, …
That was my reading of it.
Thanks to everyone for your feedback, much appreciated. We have a commercial vehicle dealer two doors away so I figured no hassle and the hire place is 300m from our unit (with hire trucks parked outside it).
I’m not really sure how anyone is meant to earn a living these days! If our transit is off the road I can rent one and carry on as normal, but if we have a particularly big load I cannot rent a 7.5tonne truck despite having two drivers capable and licensed to drive it. Madness.
neither can anyone else
yoy may have a hgv licence to drive a 44 tonner but that doesn’t grant you a licence to operate it
its to prevent people like you from attempting to operate vehicles when you obviously have no idea how to
green456:
its to prevent people like you from attempting to operate vehicles when you obviously have no idea how to
“We made the law very complicated so that people can’t comply with it” Is that the idea?
Any application of common sense would say that it’s completely absurd that an individual can hire a lorry to move house, but a business run/staffed by the same individual cannot occasionally hire the same lorry to move its own goods.
There’s no maintenance-planning issue with short-term hired lorries, there’s no operating centre issue - the lorry’s permanent home is the hire co, and there’s no driver licensing issue because that’s separate anyway.
Transport law is an ■■■, particularly when it comes to restricted o-licensing or any other non-haulage-company-related use all all but the tiniest vehicles. That’s the long and short of it, and it’s just one of a million little tiny paper-cuts which are gradually destroying a whole continent’s economy.
wilbur:
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Any application of common sense would say that it’s completely absurd that an individual can hire a lorry to move house, but a business run/staffed by the same individual cannot occasionally hire the same lorry to move its own goods.
There’s no maintenance-planning issue with short-term hired lorries, there’s no operating centre issue - the lorry’s permanent home is the hire co, and there’s no driver licensing issue because that’s separate anyway.
Transport law is an ■■■, particularly when it comes to restricted o-licensing or any other non-haulage-company-related use all all but the tiniest vehicles. That’s the long and short of it, and it’s just one of a million little tiny paper-cuts which are gradually destroying a whole continent’s economy.
That’s the issue in a nutshell. We currently multi-drop on a panel van and if the total load goes over 3500Kg GVW then the you have to either run another van or use a carrier for some of the load. For under £100 I can rent a flatbed or box van for the day, single pallet rate on a carrier is 60 quid (plus the expense of the panel van and driver). Adding a trailer to the panel van also takes you over 3500Kg MAM and so tacho plus O licence but then you have a tacho issue for all the times the panel van is under the 3.5 tonne load.
Our physical location makes renting a C1 wagon very easy and convenient, the hire company’s charges are reasonable and both myself and the panel van driver experienced with bigger vehicles/tachos. It all looked like a no brainer until the hire company wanted an O licence.
This is stopping us increasing our product range and I agree is part of the “salami slicing” of business that gradually will see all small business either go under or get eaten up by the big companies.
I agree with Wilbur’s comments VOSA’s mentality of demanding that o-licences have vehicles specified, the numerous hoops to getting a restricted licence on anything over 3.5t and these days the ludicrous tacho requirement on any trailers towed commercially are just a foolish recipe for overloaded 3.5t vans. The trailer towing tacho requirement should be changed immediately to only genuine hire and reward not own account as this was the original intention of the EU legislation.
Personally, if it was me I would just buy a cheapish luton van over 3.5t gvw (eg Iveco Daily etc.) this will have virtually the same running costs fuel-wise as 3.5t but obviously there’ll be maintenance inspections. Apply for an o-licence for two vehicles, ideally at business premises, but you might get away with your drive for that size vehicles if no-one complains. You can then hire in a 7.5 tonner or larger whenever you want, you can hire it for block periods up to a month without having to specify it on your o-licence.
You’ll probably have to get a maintenance agreement letter of intent for the licence application but I would move to doing your own inspections on the van later on as really they are fairly straighforward on a vehicle like that.
I would try to avoid parking a hired 7.5t on the street outside your house overnight regularly, now and again might be ok as people will think it’s a resident moving house. You would be better to leave it parked on the road in a nearby industrial estate, you’re also less likely to get done for not having sidelights on at night there.
It would also be sensible to arrange your own insurance that covers any hired vehicles automatically. You may also find the hire place’s will only cover 7.5 tonners for private use and you would certainly need your own cover if you ever wanted anything larger than that.
Own Account Driver:
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I would try to avoid parking a hired 7.5t on the street outside your house overnight regularly, now and again might be ok as people will think it’s a resident moving house. You would be better to leave it parked on the road in a nearby industrial estate, you’re also less likely to get done for not having sidelights on at night there…
Thanks for your help. We are based on an industrial estate and hopefully we could squeeze a truck into the warehouse overnight. Just means driving to work in the morning to pick the truck up rather than going direct from home. The local Police have advised us against leaving vehicles parked on the industrial estate overnight due to the increasing number of thefts from vehicles. In particular people pinching the cat from anything they can crawl under to get at the exhaust. Other truck related thefts include the (now commonplace) theft of diesel. Sadly a neighbour had his panel van broken into in our street at home so I’m not sure it’s much of a safety strategy to be honest
I doubt in practice we would ever need the truck overnight - I should be able to do all the drops inside a working day and get it back to the hire place. We do Southampton docks sometimes and you can get held up there so I need to figure a “just in case” scenario.
Thanks again to everyone for their constructive comments.
ChrisC:
Hi there, we would like to rent a small flatbed from time to time and I realise that this needs a (restricted) O licence. I have tried VOSA but to no avail. Can we apply for a licence even though we have no LGV of our own? Whatever we rent would be returned to the hire company at the end of the day’s hire or parked curbside overnight at my house to get an early morning start. We will not maintain anything as it’s not ours.
Does anyone that rents trucks from time to time know what the procedure is?
Many thanks
Chris
PS we are limited company and will collect/deliver our own goods only and 99% of time in single working day.
Hire company should be able to put you right with all this as they have a legal responsibility as well to not hire to anyone who hasnt the correct licence.
Hi Chris c ,you don’t need a o licence to deliver your own goods with a 3.5tonner and trailer,just a tacho,and you dont need to use the tacho when just using the van.
green456:
its to prevent people like you from attempting to operate vehicles when you obviously have no idea how to
Really?
This guy runs a business and plans to borrow a truck for the day to do a larger load once in a while.
Excuse my naivety but how that does prove he has no idea how to operate? Bit presumptuous if I may say so.
My neighbour runs a small engineering company, however he has just built a 300 foot petroleum cracker plant to go to Orkney, the local heavy haulier quoted 2700 quid, my neighbour wants to hire a lorry and move it himself. Can you see a problem yet?
I cannot rent a 7.5tonne truck despite having two drivers capable and licensed to drive it. Madness.
