Whats the law for trade plate driving? i’ve been told i dont need a tacho but have to keep a record of my driving hours
Depends upon what you’re actually doing.
If the vehicle is unregistered and being moved from say docks or importers premises to bodybuilder or supplying dealer then you don’t need to use tacho.
If you move a registered but not yet used vehicle from the supplying dealer to the end user, this should also be none tacho.
If you move a vehicle from an operator to a garage for service/repair or back to a compound for storage after the lease is expired or to an auction then that is a tacho journey. Do one of these in a day and you will need to keep a record for the whole day. You will need to take daily EC rest and a weekly EC rest period. When the new tacho rules come in on 11th April 2007 only 3 days away now, if you drive any EC during a week you have to keep full records for that day and the week. With this in mind you may be better off using the tacho each journey and writing on the chart ‘EC hours exempt’ or something similar.
The actual exemption is; EC Regulation 561/2006 Article 3 (g);
vehicles undergoing road tests for technical development,
repair or maintenance purposes, and new or rebuilt
vehicles which have not yet been put into service;
It would appear that whilst you are exempt from EC rules in some cases you actually fall into Domestic Rules when driving is EC exempt. In which case you may drive for up to 10 hours per day and be on duty for 11 hours per day. Records could be made in a logbook, which is probably where the ‘written record’ bit in your question comes from. However, the Domestic Hours logbook would not be sufficiently detailed as a manual record for other periods of work if you drive EC rules during a week.