paul b wrote:
What i can’t understand reading through all the reply’s to this thread is that every company driver see’s the regulations as something that dictates how they work, some have said they’d like to see the minimum daily rest extended from nine hours because they don’t feel thats long enough, so what happens, does someone from your firm come and knock on the cab door to make sure your back on the road on the nine hour mark? if you feel you need eleven hours rest then why not take that? it’s the same with the drivers hours, it’s say you can drive upto 4.5 hours at a time but that dosn’t mean you have to, it just means you can if you wish, so why would anyone want those driving hours reduced? is it so you can go to your bosses and say i’m only driving eight hours a day from now on because the regs say so? surely if thats all your prepared to do then go and find a job that only requires that or have the gumption to tell the boss thats all you want to do! i really don’t see whats so difficult?
There are hauliers out there who expect you to have no more than the minimum legal breaks and they build there JIT deliveries to the minimum breaks.
Now most of us in the present climate when pushed like this would say up yours mate, I’m off to work for a decent haulier. So this bloke employs inexperienced drivers and you know the one that’s asleep at the wheel heading for you. Also in the present job climate there are plenty of jobs to move to, there was a time that it was a choice between sticking with your job or being unemployed and these thing come round again.
Most of these companies are large as well as small companies these days most of your work has to be on minimun break if you plan you days correctly then you can have more than the minimum break
theres an easy way to get a long break at the end of the day you say i need a longer rest tomorrow as i feel tired an this will allow the traffic office to plan you a longer rest
But theres another side to the argument as has already been said the fact is in this day and age trucks have to earn there keep and using the miminum break available can mean the difference between make the truck earn or you been out of a job
personally the regs are fine as they are just because it say you have to have 45 mins after 4.5 hrs driving doesnt mean you have to do 4.5 hrs driving and then stop you can split you driving break to what ever you like be it 3 x 15 mins,
1 x 30 then 1x15 or you could have 2x30 min breaks if you stop for forty five to have an hour if youve time then have an hour
Don’t know about anyone else, but the places I’ve worked have told me how many hours rest I will have and it is not up for discussion .
One of these was a company in Morley (Orange & white motors, company name starting with ‘V’) who would regularly have me finishing at 8pm, signing me off and then telling me I was to be in for 5am in the morning. At this time I was living up near Todmorden (far side of Halifax for those not familiar) and it was an hour and quarter each way on an average day. I told them if they send me home I’m taking 11 off to which they replied that I’d get the sack. So in my usual fashion I saved them the breath and told them what to do with their job.
I raise the issue of daily rest a few months back because I was lead to believe it was legally at the driver’s discretion whether he took 9 or 11hrs off. As it turns out, there is no legal blurb about it nor even any pointers so it seems that you have to bow down to what they want, regardless of whether you’re absolutely shattered and need a good night’s sleep or not.
I believe that the working week should be limited to 48 hours; 48 hours then home no exceptions other than to self employed owner drivers.
TC personnelly i couldn’t care less what they do with the driver’s rule’s and reg’s as i only work mon-fri with every w/end off.But i don’t see why owner driver’s get different rule’s than the employed driver working for a company.As far as i’m concerned they should be placed under the same banner as me and every other driver who work for companies around the country.Just because they are o/d and need to keep the wheel’s turning to pay for the big new wagon’s and to make a living doesn’t mean that they should be give special right’s,they should be made to employ another driver if they want the truck rolling 24/7.just my opinion.
It’s not only about time which owner driver spend doing work with his truck. If driver’s working hours are stricly enforced over them and they have already used all their work hours they aren’t even allowed to do their paper work or repair their own truck at weekend. I don’t think that is case in any other one-man company and it would give unfair advantage to large companies.
Rob K:
As far as the original thread question goes, I think they hours should be 12 on, 12 off, hour break (continuous; no splitting into smaller segments) after 4hrs driving/work and 48 off for weekly rest, NO EXCEPTIONS.
No way that one hour continous break would work, at least it wouldn’t work well here in Finland. If I want to stop for a coffee I don’t want to use a hour for it. Neither I do want to drink it in enermous rush to minimise loss of working time. I like to have 15-20 min break in some small cafe after couple hours of driving. What I don’t want is to spent 45 min or hour in some bigger service station which are overcrowded and -priced (smaller places would be unaccessible becouse of small parking space or they would have faced bankruptcy).
I think 45 min after 4.5 hrs is enough but minimun length of split should be little longer than 15 min, maybe to 20 min. About that 4 hour, here in Finland are some quite much used routes where you can drive 4 hrs without seeing a single 24h cafe. No problem at day but at night that would cause some grief. That’s diminishing problem but clearly shows that ideas which look good “down there” don’t work well in some other places.
i had an interesting conversation the other day with a company driver, basically he does the same job as me but obviously he’s on the books, i asked what effect the wtd had on his job? his reply was “i don’t even give it a thought nor does anyone else, at the end of the day what they gona do if i’ve worked to many hours?” it’s a fair comment, who is going to check all these millions of peoples work hours? and suppose they find someone has worked what hours he felt like but had kept within the tacho regs, what exactly are they going to do about it? it would make an interesting court case “man charged with working to hard to feed his wife and kids” they’d be a national outcry!
paul b:
i had an interesting conversation the other day with a company driver, basically he does the same job as me but obviously he’s on the books, i asked what effect the wtd had on his job? his reply was “i don’t even give it a thought nor does anyone else, at the end of the day what they gona do if i’ve worked to many hours?” it’s a fair comment, who is going to check all these millions of peoples work hours? and suppose they find someone has worked what hours he felt like but had kept within the tacho regs, what exactly are they going to do about it? it would make an interesting court case “man charged with working to hard to feed his wife and kids” they’d be a national outcry!
I’m totally with you on this one but lets not forget this is Britain, land of the free where a driver can and has been prosecuted for going 31 in a 30 zone, for being overweight on an axle despite the sheer impossibility of said driver ever having the means to determine this himself and lets not forget the £2000 per stowaway found that is only administered to British citizens now, I know this because they’ve tried to hammer my dad for it, until he told them to contact the legal department of his embassy, when they thought he was British he was fair game, when they found him to be German, nothing more was said and he was sent on his way, as was the Latvian truck next to him at the time.
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