How to cheat Tachomaster

A lesson on how to cheat the hours declared on Tachomaster

Firstly, instruct your drivers to insert their charts just before they leave the Centre (UPS name for depot)

Tell your drivers that the lines that they draw on the chart will be picked up by Tachomaster.

Whilst this is an exaggerated case, done by me to prove the system/instructions were wrong, it shows how UPS were falsely declaring the hours. In fact the girl keying the information into the Tachomaster system was expressly told not to key these hours. Which is the reason why she didn't key them, even though I showed her the system was wrong.

This chart shows that I started work at 06.45.

I took my break at 13.30

Tachomaster shows that I was legal and worked only 3.5 hours, when I actually worked over 6.5 hours. This exceeds the working time regulations.

It also doesn't show any work during the period that the tachograph was on break.

Even with these reduced hours, Dewsbury's drivers still had potential fines of £13,160 in just over 10 months. This is just one Centre, and only includes drivers with vehicles fitted with tachographs

Other Centres had a total of 3049 infringements in just over 4 weeks.

Bear in mind I had started my Tachograph project at this point, so there was some reduction in the figures.

Note the comments from Jay Singh the author of the report. No mention of infringements, just a reduction in the missing driver days (insufficient/missing charts) and driver cards (not being downloaded)

And just to prove that I raised the issue of infringements........note that denizen of Integrity Roger Mays is on the mailing list.

By my calcuations that would be 39,637 infringements in a year.

This doesn't include any drivers in non tachograph vehicles driving through their breaks.

Another instruction that was given by the Management was specifically NOT to key manual timecards.

I think I've already shown some of those figures before.

Now why wouldn't VOSA be interested in this level of infringements?

• They've been paid off*
• My/their e-mails have been blocked*
• Both of the above*
• None of the above*

*Delete as you think appropriate.

Maybe this level of infringements is why Steve O'Donnell binned 3 months worth of infringements reports that should have been signed by the drivers.

A little quiz, did

1. Emma Stott lose the reports
2. Did Emma Stott have the reports in a drawer
3. Did I have the reports
4. Did Dan Walton have the reports
5. Did Steve O'Donnell have the reports in a drawer
6. Did Steve O'Donnell destroy the reports
7. Did Steve O'Donnell say that Matt Gale (Safety dept) had told him that it was OK to bin the reports
8. All of the above

The correct answer is, as you've already guessed, number 8.

But he's not there now, and unless an investigate took place by roughly the end of June, the reports could now have been destroyed as they are only kept for a year.