Editor's Note:

From looking at the Blue Book, pages 17-20:

If a crew person who drives a truck, even if only to and from set, is working a standard long-term engagement day of 10 hours + 45 mins lunch (“Model A” page 19), then as long as truck driving time is no more than 30 minutes before main Crew Call and 30 minutes after Crew Wrap including wrap time, AND the lunch break and Wrap are called exactly on scheduled time, then the new truck rules are not transgressed.

But on a standard long-term engagement of 11.25 hours + 45 minutes lunch break, normally taken at 5 hours after Main Crew Call: if no break is taken by a truckie during the afternoon shift of 6.25 hours, THE LAW IS BROKEN - and that’s before any travel time after wrap is even considered! The truck driver must either take a break within those 6.25 hours, or a swing driver must be used.

Note also that the swing driver may be another person from within the crew, but only if that person also does not exceed 5.5 hours between breaks!

And equally importantly, the new laws state that no driver may work more than 14 hours, INCLUDING the two separate half-hour breaks, within any 24-hour period – which means that no truck-driving crew person may legally work more than 13 hours in one day, even if they only drive that truck for as little as 15 minutes in that day!

By the way, the mandatory 10-hour break now dictated by the new driving laws matches the ten-hour turnaround provisions of the Blue Book.

You may think the chances of being caught breaking the rules are slim. You may think that you can circumvent the rules by using the old long-distance truckies’ habit of operating two separate logbooks for different parts of the day. In that case, you should take note that not too long ago, a truckie (not in the film industry, thank goodness) was fined $15,000 for a log-book breach. Not fifteen dollars, not fifteen hundred dollars - FIFTEEN THOUSAND dollars!

Can you afford to take that risk?

And this is where PRODUCERS - and Production Managers, First AD’s and other HoD’s MUST take note:

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In the handbook published by Land Transport NZ (now the NZ Transport Agency - NZTA), under “Chain of Responsibility” it states: (my capitals) “If you employ OR CONTROL drivers who are subject to work time requirements, and you knew, OR SHOULD HAVE KNOWN, that a driver did, OR WAS LIKELY TO, breach work time provisions, YOU could face fines of up to $25,000…”

The Techos’ Guild has copies of this guide, called which we will happilysend you for free! All you need do is contact Fritha at the office, by phone or email.

We won’t even charge you for postage!