How Many Days of Tacho Records Must I Carry?

You must be able to produce your driver card and records for the current day and the previous 28 calendar days at a roadside check. That's the standard for GB domestic and AETR journeys under the assimilated rules. If you've been on international journeys to and from an EU member country, the period is longer — 56 days.

What the rule says

GOV.UK's tachograph rules guidance requires drivers to be able to produce at the roadside "charts and any legally required manual records for the current day and the previous 28 calendar days for AETR or domestic journeys under the assimilated rules or 56 days for international journeys to and from an EU member country." So the baseline is 28 days plus today; cross into EU international work and it steps up to 56. The records include your driver card data plus any manual printouts and entries covering the same period.

The set of vehicles this applies to is also about to widen, though narrowly — our guide to the van tachograph rules from 1 July 2026 sets out exactly which 2.5–3.5 tonne vans doing international hire-or-reward work come into the tachograph regime, and which vans are not affected at all.

Days off still have to add up

You don't need a tachograph record for genuine non-working days — weekends and days off don't have to be "recorded" — but you do need to be able to account for the whole 28-day window. If there's a gap, an examiner will want to know why. In practice that means keeping your card downloaded and any manual entries for periods away from the vehicle, so the picture across the 28 days is complete. An unexplained blank is exactly the kind of thing that turns a routine check into a longer conversation.

The card itself is part of it

Remember that being unable to produce your driver card is an offence in its own right — even if you only drove analogue-equipped vehicles in the period. So "carrying your records" isn't just about printouts; it's about having the card and being able to show the full 28 (or 56) days from it. That's also why driving without the card when you shouldn't is so damaging: it punches a hole in the very record you're required to produce.

What to do

Keep your card on you and downloaded, retain manual printouts and entries, and make sure the current day plus the previous 28 (or 56 for EU international) are always complete and to hand. If DVSA finds shortfalls they can issue graduated fixed penalties covering that window. The drivers' hours and working time guide and the free drivers' hours calculator explain how your recorded hours are assessed, and keeping every driver's rolling record complete across a fleet is part of what our per-vehicle plans are built to make routine.