i have been offered a job via family, 7.5t work driving for a garage. he has 3 vehicles, a car transporter, a breakdown truck that has the dolly thing on the back that the cars front wheels go in and a flat bed car transporter crew cab.
some questions.
1, one of the vehicles can take a car on the back and also has the thing on the back that the front wheels go in so can tow a car, can i drive this towing a car with raised front wheels?
2, what tacho laws apply, is break down exempt, can i go to a breakdown and take the people home with their car wherever in the uk with no tacho?
3, i will also be delivering cars, (ferrari, maserati , hondas), i guess this will be on tacho?
4, what if i deliver cars for 3 days and do 3 days of breakdown/accident recovery work, what about tacho?
one more, i will need to be on call every fourth weekend for breakdowns, so how will this work with tacho laws?
sorry to ask so many things but want to be covered and not get in to trouble.
Driving breakdown trucks ie recovering broken down vehicles is tacho exempt.
Driving the same truck transporting perfectly healthy new vehicles is NOT tacho exempt.
With a car being towed its all down to weight. Basically a flat bed truck ie 7.5 tonner or bigger with a spec frame on the back to tow another car/van or even a caravan requieres the driver to have a licence relevent to tow. So C+E or im pretty sure its possable to do a test to be able to tow a small trailer/car. Best to check DVLA licencing on that one. Might be C1E not sure.
More confusing is doing breakdowns and delivering on same days!
As for being on call again exempt. Well was when I was doing same job.
Be advised to check the 2007 April11th changes to tacho laws as im sure there is some sort of refereance to recovery in there.
If its a 7.5 tonner be aware what you carrying weight wise big motors like you mention tend to be heavy, should be ok but with another on the spec be carefull of your GTW.
When using the spec frame make sure its extended out but not too far if possable. Failier not to extend out can result in going straight on at first corner!
I used to do recovery, loved it best job I have had but was doing huge amount of hours. Accident work is excelent, yes its someones misfortune but its your job just to get on and recover the wreckage. Always a challenge getting a vehicle out of a ditch field back on wheels etc. Truck recovery even more challenging!
thank you for your reply, yes i am really looking forward to starting this job like you said going to breakdowns and accidents will be really interesting to me, not knowing what you are going to find or where you are going to travel to.
i will find out more info on this matter form dvla or whoever.
so what can i drive on a car licence passed in 1993 7.5t wise with trailer, i read somewhere you can have trailer as long as it is not over 10.5t. ■■?
waynedance:
so what can i drive on a car licence passed in 1993 7.5t wise with trailer, i read somewhere you can have trailer as long as it is not over 10.5t. ■■?
I am sure that you can only tow a trailer that weighs no more than 750kilos.
All drivers who passed a car test before 1 January 1997 retain their existing entitlement to tow trailers until their licence expires. This means they are generally entitled to drive a vehicle and trailer combination up to 8.25 tonnes MAM. They also have entitlement to drive a minibus with a trailer over 750kgs MAM.
Drivers who hold subcategory C1+E - limited to 8.25 tonnes MAM, may apply for provisional entitlement to the new subcategory C1+E, in order to take and pass the test which will increase their combined vehicle and trailer entitlement to 12 tonnes MAM. It is not necessary to gain subcategory C1 entitlement first but drivers have to meet higher medical standards, and pass both the category C theory test and the subcategory C1+E practical test.