Got held at a Lutterworth warehouse for three hours last winter. Goods-in closed for the lunch break without telling anyone at the gate, then there was a system issue, then the fork-lift driver went on his own break. I sat in the cab and put the tacho on rest because I figured I wasn't doing anything, I was just waiting, and surely that counted.
It didn't. Not the way I'd set it. Took me an embarrassing conversation with the TM back at the yard and a review of my card to understand why.
The EU 561/2006 distinction between "other work" and "availability" is one of the most misunderstood parts of drivers' hours law. The practical effect on your driving limit and rest calculation is significant. Here's what Article 4 actually says and how it plays out in a loading bay.
The four modes — what each one means
EU 561/2006 defines four categories of time for drivers. Drive, rest, break, and then a broader category covering non-driving periods that splits into two: "other work" and "availability".
Your tachograph switch positions map roughly onto these: driving (the vehicle symbol), duty/other work (the hammer), availability (the bed — though this varies by tacho model), and rest/break. The bed symbol is often labelled differently depending on the manufacturer, which adds to the confusion.
Other work (Article 4(e)) covers any activity that isn't driving, rest, or break: loading, unloading, cleaning, assisting with a vehicle repair, tacho downloads, roadside assistance, general work-related activity. It counts toward your working day. It counts toward WTD working time. It eats into your daily rest if you're at it long enough.
Availability (Article 4(f)) is the nuanced one. The regulation defines it as time during which the driver is not required to remain at their workstation but must be available to answer any calls — to start or resume driving or to carry out other work. The key additional condition: the driver must know in advance how long the period is likely to last.
Availability counts as rest for EU 561 purposes. Not working time. Not other work. It's essentially a form of rest that acknowledges the driver might be called on, as long as the duration was flagged in advance.
The loading bay question
Here's the thing. Waiting at a loading bay is often framed as "I'm not doing anything, so it's rest." That's the intuitive reading. The regulation doesn't see it that way by default.
If you're at a loading bay and you don't know how long you'll be waiting — the goods-in team hasn't given you an estimated time, nobody's told you "you're looking at two hours" — that waiting period is other work, not availability. You're waiting for something to happen, you're subject to being called on at any moment, and you don't know the duration in advance. That's other work on the tacho.
If, on the other hand, the depot tells you at the gate: "You're in bay 7, we're looking at a two-hour wait for the pallets to be pulled" — a duration communicated in advance — then that waiting period can count as availability. You know how long it is. You can genuinely rest during it. Article 4(f) is satisfied.
That's the distinction. Known duration in advance: availability (rest). Unknown duration: other work.
The catch is that "in advance" doesn't mean the dispatcher told your operator the day before. It means you, the driver, at the time of the wait, know how long you're going to be. If you get to the gate and the gate says "could be 30 minutes, could be three hours, no idea" — that's not availability. That's other work.
The practical effect on your driving limit
Three hours of other work sits in your working day. It doesn't extend your permitted driving time — you still have the same 9 or 10-hour driving limit. But it means those three hours come out of the time available for your day. If you've spent three hours on other work at a loading bay, plus your driving time, plus your breaks, you need to take your daily rest at the end of it.
Three hours of availability is rest. Those three hours can count toward your required 11-hour daily rest period. Done correctly — with a pre-notified wait at a loading bay, on the correct tacho mode — a long loading bay wait in the middle of the day can actually help your rest calculation, not hurt it.
That's why I got it wrong at Lutterworth. I was on the wrong mode (rest, not availability), and nobody had told me how long I'd be waiting anyway. Even if I'd set the mode correctly, the three-hour wait would have been other work — because I had no advance notice of the duration. I'd have needed to use the other-work position, not the bed symbol. My calculation going forward was off.
The WTD angle
The Working Time Directive adds another layer. Under the road transport specific provisions (the 2005 Regulations), availability periods that occur between midnight and 06:00 can be excluded from the reference-period working-time calculation. Availability during normal hours doesn't get that exclusion — it counts differently depending on whether it was notified in advance.
The WTD doesn't use quite the same definitions as EU 561, which is part of why the two regulations don't map neatly onto each other. What counts as "working time" under the WTD isn't always the same as what counts as "other work" under 561. I covered the WTD vs 561 break distinction in more detail in this post on which rule bites first.
What to do at the gate
Ask. That's it. Walk in to the goods-in office or speak to the gate team. "How long am I looking at?" If they can give you a realistic estimate — and commit to it — you're in availability territory. Set the availability mode on the tacho. Make a note of the time they told you and the estimate they gave.
If they shrug or say "could be anything" — that's other work. Set the other-work mode. And push back if you're running out of day. A three-hour unknown wait late in a shift is worth a phone call to your operator before you commit to the delivery. If the wait is going to eat your daily rest, someone needs to know.
Some operators include guidance in their drivers' handbook. If yours does, follow it. If it doesn't, the rule of thumb is: no prior notice of duration = other work.
What DVSA check
At a roadside inspection, DVSA or a traffic examiner can download your card and look at the mode activity. A long period on the bed/availability symbol at a time when you couldn't reasonably have been resting — during a delivery run, in the middle of a shift — will flag as anomalous. They may ask what you were doing, where the vehicle was, and whether there was an agreement with the operator about the wait duration.
There's no automatic infringement just for using the wrong mode once, but a pattern of incorrect availability use — systematically using rest or availability symbols to extend daily rest artificially — is a falsification issue. That's not a fixed penalty conversation. That's a prosecution conversation.
Use the correct mode. Keep it simple. Other work unless someone told you specifically how long the wait would be, and meant it.
If you're a transport manager trying to see whether your drivers' tacho modes match the delivery records — or whether someone's been marking long loading bay waits as rest — ShiftOwt shows the download against the schedule in one place. £5.99 a month for drivers, fleet pricing on request.