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Complying with WTD does not come cheap
Page 72
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Peter Lamer knows his drivers abide by the law.
It's not a problem. What does vex him is the cost of proving that they comply with the law.
prior to2003 we.like many fleet operators. used an external supplier for tachograph analysis services. But concerns regarding sending tachograph charts through the post and the looming introduction of both digital tachographs and the WorkingTime Directive, prompted us to review these arrangements.
We switched our tachograph analysis to the ETA and decided to use their Visit service. Despite the increased cost incurred by the ETA staff visiting our 16 operating centres to analyse the charts it proved to be well worth it.
As well as two years of excellent service it means that we no longer risk losing charts in the post and, perhaps more importantly, our drivers get to meet the person who analyses their charts. so they can raise any queries directly with them.
We also received assurances from the ETA that, unlike many postal tachograph analysis services, they were preparing for the WorkingTime Directive and the introduction of digital tachographs.
Confident that it would produce a software-based solution to the WorkingTime Directive —or more accurately, the Road Transport Directive — we waited for their new service to be unveiled.
Like many others in our particular sector—fuel distribution —we are already compliant with the main hours restrictions introduced by the RTD. Our drivers rarely work more than 48 hours a week; most of the shift rotas we use are based on 45 hours. So unlike so many other hauliers out there,my main concern was not about complying with the hours restriction, it was proving to VOSA that we were compliant.Enter the FTA, with their initial quotation for managing our Drivers Hours and RTD requirements through the Visit system: £400 per driver — that's £100,000 for our workforce of 250 drivers. Bearing in mind I was paying about £20,000 a year for the Visit tachograph service, that meant it was going to cost us 180,000 to comply with the RTD.
After continued negotiations, the lowest quotation we received from the ETA was to revert to the postal service at a cost of .E140 per driver; that's £35,000 overall.
Not wanting to return to a postal service, but needing to comply with RTD, we have continued with the FTA Visit service for our tachograph chart analysis, but are attending to RTD compliance in-house. In two days I created an Excel spreadsheet to manage the requirements and the drivers complete a simple weekly record sheet to feed information into the system. Data input employs one staff member for about two days per week for around 250 drivers.
While I imagine that most hauliers out there would tell me to count my blessings, I do think that, while we were all worrying about complying with the hours requirements, we underestimated the cost of managing that compliance. Perhaps I was also guilty of over-estimating the ETA's ability to help us. •