out of scope driving

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

Hi, can anyone tell me the rules on out of scope driving. I have just started driving for a recovery firm and we put the tacho to out of scope and leave it all day. We apparently can drive as long as we want but must take 15 minutes break before 6 hours are up. Does anyone know the full rules ? Thanks in advance.

2

Just run like that and have your normal breaks.

When dvsa stop you eventually they will let you know.

Or you could ask your gaffer he will be up to spec on rules of the trade.

Recovery is excempt from tacho. Especially with 911 recovery as they do most police work so obviously the rules dont apply to the law.

3

If you are driving a specialist vehicle, Only doing recovery and breakdown, and Never go more than 100km from base, you are probably exempt from EU rules.
You may be on UK Domestic rules, or may even be exempt from those if you Never drive more than 4hrs in a day.

gov.uk/government/publicati … fety-rules
gov.uk/drivers-hours/gb-domestic-rules

4

There was a very good post about operating as a recovery vehicle without an O licence in this thread and it applies to your driving out of scope:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=93526

Where it says O licence and “Not Legal” in this quoted text read that as “need a tacho”.

cieranc:
Back to your 7.5 tonner. If you tax it as recovery you can only do recovery. You cannot take out a courtesy car (even if you’re picking up the casualty vehicle in the same trip) or do anything that constitutes haulage. That includes moving pallets/garage equipment/anything other than a casualty vehicle.

As said above you can move a vehicle from one place to a place to be scrapped but only if the second movement to the scrapyard is part of the original job. Examples:

  1. You recover a broken down car from the side of the road to your yard. 3 days later you take the car from your yard to the scrapyard. LEGAL.
  2. Someone else recoves a broken down car to their yard for storage. The customer contacts you to pick it up and take it to the scrapyard. NOT LEGAL.
  3. You are requested to pick a car with no T+T up from someone’s garden and take it to a garage. NOT LEGAL.
  4. You are requested by a bodyshop to load a courtesy car, travel to the scene of an accident, drop the courtesy car off for a customer and recover the customers accident damaged car back to the bodyshop NOT LEGAL.
  5. You are asked to pick a car up from an auction and deliver to garage. Car doesn’t run. NOT LEGAL.
  6. You pick a broken down car up for a customer and recover it to your yard for storage. Next day you recover it to garage. LEGAL.

For doing bodyshop work you will deffo need an O licence as you’ll be moving courtesy cars regulary.
For backstreet garage wor you’ll be competeing with Billy Beavertail in his Transit. You can’t operate a 7.5 tonner legally and compete with them lads, you just can’t. Up here they’re doing jobs for £15 a pop.
For collecting scrap you’ll need O licence. Moving scrap doesn’t constitute recovery.