Night trunking is the backbone of UK logistics, and it runs on a rule many traffic offices only half remember: the Road Transport (Working Time) Regulations 2005 cap night work at 10 hours in any 24-hour period. That limit sits alongside drivers’ hours, not inside it, which is exactly why it catches people out.
The working time regulations are a separate regime from the assimilated drivers’ hours rules. The drivers’ hours rules govern driving, breaks and rest. The working time rules govern total working time: how much work, driving included, a mobile worker may do. A driver can be legal on drivers’ hours and illegal on working time in the same shift, and night work is the most common place that happens.
For night work, the rule is that working time must not exceed 10 hours in any 24-hour period. Night time is defined as the period between midnight and 4 AM for goods vehicles, and between 1 AM and 5 AM for passenger vehicles. The 10-hour limit can only be exceeded where a collective or workforce agreement permits it, which means a real agreement, documented, not a nod in the cab.
The night work limit sits inside a wider structure worth restating because it drives the same rota decisions. Weekly working time must not exceed an average of 48 hours over the reference period, which can only be 17 or 26 weeks; a single week can reach 60 hours provided the average holds. Breaks under working time are separate from driving breaks: no more than 6 consecutive hours of work without a break, at least 30 minutes of break if working time totals between 6 and 9 hours, and at least 45 minutes beyond 9 hours, with each break at least 15 minutes. Rest requirements mirror the assimilated drivers’ hours rules.
The regulations also carry wider employment rights: 5.6 weeks’ paid annual leave, and health checks for night workers, which DVSA enforces under the 1998 regulations alongside the working time rules. Annual leave questions belong to Acas, whose national helpline handles them.
The 2005 regulations reach further than many operators assume. Self-employed drivers were brought into scope in Great Britain in May 2012, and they are responsible for keeping their own working time records for 2 years and producing them for enforcement. Employers keep working time records regardless of whether the operation runs anywhere near the 48-hour average, and must keep them for 2 years after the end of the relevant reference period. Owner drivers who do not meet the self-employed criteria should still record their own working time.
Drivers who only occasionally drive vehicles under the assimilated or AETR rules may fall within the exemption for occasional mobile workers, but the criteria are specific and should be checked rather than assumed.
Three features of night work make it the compliance tripwire. First, the 10-hour cap is measured on working time, not driving time, so a night trunker who loads for an hour, drives four, waits two hours at a bay and drives four more can breach the limit while being comfortably inside driving limits. Waiting time that counts as working time is where the arithmetic goes wrong.
Second, the definition of night time for goods vehicles, midnight to 4 AM, is narrower than the industry’s mental image of “night”, so drivers whose shifts only brush the early hours may still be night workers on the nights that count.
Third, the collective or workforce agreement route is the only lawful way past 10 hours, and operators often believe they have that flexibility without the paperwork that creates it. If your night operation depends on exceeding the limit, the agreement is a compliance document, not an HR nicety.
The traffic office habits that keep night work legal are unglamorous. Flag which drivers are night workers and on which patterns. Track working time, not just driving time, for those shifts, using the records the regulations already require you to keep for 2 years. Check any planned night duty against the 10-hour cap before the run, not on the infringement report after it. Keep any workforce agreement that extends the limit current, signed and findable. And make sure night workers get their health checks, because that duty sits with the employer and DVSA enforces it.
Night work is where the two rulebooks overlap in the dark. The operators who run it well are the ones who stopped assuming the tachograph tells the whole story.