I’ve been doing a spot of agency work in down town Melton Mowbray this last week or so, mainly 7.5 tonners.
I’m running a bit short of patience with them though, here’s an example to ponder:
First day, Thursday, told to start at 6 am. Turn up at factory, wait around like a lemon until the stuff is actually ready to be loaded, leave at 11:15 am. Ooops, I had put my digicard in at 6 am prior to backing into the yard!! It sat on other work for 5 hours!! I’ve done a print off and written rest next to that period.
Anyway, observe usual driving hours rules and get back at 10.30 pm.
I was asked to start on Friday at 6 am but “you will be in a van so you don’t need to worry about the tacho”
I make that a 7.5 hour daily rest period ? Is this right ? I don’t really like the idea of using vans to circumvent the spirit of the law.
Any advice, comments?
Doesn’t matter if your in a van or not, your at work so the hours you spend doing anything should be manually recorded and counted towards your working time. A lot of drivers seem to be unaware of the fact that they need to record all their work activities and its quite hard to police, so many do cheat.
In my experience the daily rest period you had was against drivers hours regulations, get the free drivers hours book from any VOSA test station or download it from www.vosa.gov.uk might answer some of your questions.
Wozzer:
First day, Thursday, told to start at 6 am. (some text snipped) Anyway, observe usual driving hours rules and get back at 10.30 pm.
I was asked to start on Friday at 6 am but “you will be in a van so you don’t need to worry about the tacho”
I make that a 7.5 hour daily rest period ? Is this right ? I don’t really like the idea of using vans to circumvent the spirit of the law.
Where do we start…
Firstly and most importantly, if you start work at 0600 then the latest you can work until is 2100, as that is the longest shift you can do and still get a 9 hour rest in that 24h period. This means that even if you weren’t working at all on friday then you’ve commited the offence of not having enough daily rest - you need 9h and you only got 7.5h. You can’t do a shift longer than 15h and be legal.
Secondly, whilst driving the van is tacho exempt, as it’s in the same week as you drove a vehicle that did need a tacho you have to make a record of the shift. This can either be by using the manual entry option on a digi tacho or by using a paper chart. So you can’t use a van to get around either the spirit or the letter of the regulations.
Either they’re trying to take the ■■■■ out of you or they’re completely ignorant of the law themselves.
Paul
Cheers for the replies.
Yeah, I think they are a bit of a cowboy outfit, I couldn’t get the hours to fit the regs either.
I’ve pretty much blown them away now, my licence is too precious to get a black mark on it. They rang up tonight asking me to do a run to the south coast overnight at a minutes notice, I said no as I haven’t had any sleep today.
I’m guessing the TM isn’t properly conversant with the rules, I mentioned the badly cracked ns mirror on one of his trucks and he asked the driver about it, the driver said not worth fixing until the new euro mirrors were fitted…
On my last day there I finally got a daily check sheet to fill in after asking for one several times in the days before. Managed to find 2 faults just to cheer them up. 
repton:
Wozzer:
First day, Thursday, told to start at 6 am. (some text snipped) Anyway, observe usual driving hours rules and get back at 10.30 pm.
I was asked to start on Friday at 6 am but “you will be in a van so you don’t need to worry about the tacho”
I make that a 7.5 hour daily rest period ? Is this right ? I don’t really like the idea of using vans to circumvent the spirit of the law.
Where do we start…
Firstly and most importantly, if you start work at 0600 then the latest you can work until is 2100, as that is the longest shift you can do and still get a 9 hour rest in that 24h period. This means that even if you weren’t working at all on friday then you’ve commited the offence of not having enough daily rest - you need 9h and you only got 7.5h. You can’t do a shift longer than 15h and be legal.
Secondly, whilst driving the van is tacho exempt, as it’s in the same week as you drove a vehicle that did need a tacho you have to make a record of the shift. This can either be by using the manual entry option on a digi tacho or by using a paper chart. So you can’t use a van to get around either the spirit or the letter of the regulations.
Either they’re trying to take the ■■■■ out of you or they’re completely ignorant of the law themselves.
Paul
Hi Paul is this the Regs you mean in your second paragraph
Article 4
For the purposes of this Regulation the following definitions
shall apply:
(e) ‘other work’ means all activities which are defined as
working time in Article 3(a) of Directive 2002/15/EC
except ‘driving’, including any work for the same or
another employer, within or outside of the transport
sector;
A driver shall record as other work any time spent as
described in Article 4(e) as well as any time spent driving a
vehicle used for commercial operations not falling within the
scope of this Regulation, and shall record any periods of
availability, as defined in Article 15(3)(c) of Regulation (EEC)
No 3821/85, since his last daily or weekly rest period. This
record shall be entered either manually on a record sheet, a
printout or by use of manual input facilities on recording
equipment.