I work in an office Mon-Fri 9-5. As many of you know I’ve recently done my C and C+E tests and so I’m going to do some weekend work to get some experience in. Obviously I want to stay legal as far as driver hours are concerned, so I would appreciate it if somebody could sanity check this for me please.
Firstly my 9-5 job will count as “other work”. Inbetween 5pm Friday and 9am Monday I need to fit in a Daily Rest of at least 9 hours and a Weekly Rest of at least 36 hours. This means that the window I’m available for work is from 2am on Saturday (9 hours after 5pm Friday) until 9pm on Saturday (36 hours before 9am Monday). However, I can only work at most 15 hours of that due to needing 9 hours Daily Rest in a 24h period. So legal examples would be 2am → 5pm, 6am → 9pm or anything inbetween. Obviously whatever I do I’m limited to 10 hours driving.
The reduction in Daily Rests to 9 hours from 11 will be trivially made up during the following week (as 5pm->9am is 16 hours).
The reduction in Weekly Rest has to be made up in a single lump, which rules out making it up during the week, so I would only be able to work at most 2 Saturdays in every 3, making both lots of reduced Weekly Rest up during the third weekend.
It looks about right to me, although I’ll await others confirm.
Of course, the alternative ‘window of opportunity’ would be 0500 - 2400 Sunday. (Slightly better rates).
Frankly, I don’t think VOSA would give a ■■■■ if you finished later than 2400 hours, as the Regs are designed for the benefits of road safety. The likelyhood of you falling asleep at your desk is hardly hazardous to the motoring public in general, and providing you took sufficient rest periods prior to your next period of driving, they are unlikely to view it as a cause for their concern.
One method of staying legal is to get some UK regs work, by doing this you can work 7 days a week legally.
The only kind of weekend UK reg work normally available is recovery work, this would be on call type work with no guarenteed work, but it would involve some C+E work as they recover vehicles pulling trailers, so need C+E drivers.
The “Made up rest period” Daily or weekly, would need to be attached to any other rest period of at least 8 hours, so you could legally work every saturday if you wanted, even if you reduced your weekly rest by 8 hours.
You work 8 hours per day, this gives you 2 X 8 hours per week day.
I find myself in a similar position to Paul, except my “day job” is on full rotating shifts, of varying length but typically 7x5 days, 2xmidnight lates and 11x7am nights (although there are many variations), with my days off (when I might be available for driving work) often falling mid-week. My shift pattern repeats on a 5-week cycle, which I can post here if it would help me get it right.
How do others deal with the need to keep records of hours worked in this situation?
I do a variety of jobs for a variety of people, some is self employed some on the books.
I keep a cheap diary with me & record all hours work & for who. I keep an index of employers, ( Name of employer, contact if relevant, phone number & address) each has a number & I write this number on both the rear of the chart & in my diary entry.
When I have been stopped I have shown this & handed over my tacho’s & exsplained how I do things, it’s simple easy to cross check & I’v never had any problems, in fact the only comments I have had from the VOSA / VI have been good ones.
If you work regular hours,( i.e. no over time paid,) just write all the relevant details on a sheet of paper & keep it with your tacho’s & if stopped & asked to produce your charts show this as well.
