Compliance.
My heart sinks when I know I am going to have to spend some quality time looking at drivers’ hours, six-weekly PMI sheets, tachograph infringements, gate checks and the infamous wheel nut torque folder.
It is a critically important matter, and most of ours is digital. I am grateful for small mercies in that I don’t have to try to decipher dog-eared, illegible analogue tachograph charts these days, but it doesn’t bring any more business to the table. What it does do is keep the friendly DVSA man or woman from the door.
So when I noticed that the latest DVSA crackdown is on knowing exactly where your drivers have been, and most importantly, what they have been doing, at all times during the past 28 days, alarm bells started ringing before I could say “manual entry.”
I have always been a big fan of the digital tachograph, and the information that it gives us as a tool for ensuring that things are done properly. It can be checked quickly and has been a real force for good.
Where I draw the line, though, is expecting drivers to account for what they were doing on their weekend off, or after they have finished a shift.
95% of our few tachograph infringements are manual entry mistakes. When one driver was off for 12 weeks to have a knee replacement, upon his return he declared via manual entry that he had been on other work for the previous 84 days! Our scores against Earned Recognition matrices are still recovering two years later, although I am happy to report that Glyn did walk up Snowdon during his period of ‘other work’. I’m not sure how to record that.
When a driver is fortunate enough to finish work at 1700hrs on a Friday and not start again until 0700hrs on a Monday, what they do in the meantime is entirely up to them. To have to record it as rest is a step too far in my opinion.
While resting they could have spent all weekend building a wall, landscaping a garden, doing 12 hours behind a bar or running a marathon. None of that is recorded anywhere.
If they have been foolish enough to moonlight for another company, or drive a truck, and they have put their driver card in, I will know by Monday evening anyway. I fail to see the point in recording that they are at rest – unless, of course, there is a tachograph mode for white water rafting. The DVSA enforcement officers I have spoken to quietly agree.
I suppose it all boils down to budget. It is something that is easy to find and enforce, and cheap to do, I imagine. But I would prefer if the authorities looked more closely at actual driving offences, maintenance issues, and other things that are actually important.
