The 12-tonne driving ban: an exemption register that will not lie to your dispatcher at Friday 18:00
On 21 August 2026 the Minister of Infrastructure’s ordinance (Journal of Laws item 1110) entered into force: three new exemptions from the ban on combinations above 12 tonnes — foreign armed forces, civilian carriage of military equipment, and driving instruction or the state test with no commercial load. A week earlier the ministry restated the hours around 15 August. A haulage firm does not need a compliance slide. It needs an exemption register and a latch in dispatch.
21 August 2026 is the day the Minister of Infrastructure’s ordinance of 17 August 2026 (Journal of Laws item 1110) entered into force. It was promulgated on 20 August 2026 — and applies the next day. This is not “another autumn amendment”. It lands in the last full weekend of the summer driving bans for combinations above 12 tonnes. The ordinance adds three new exemption points to § 3(1): vehicles of foreign armed forces carrying military equipment, civilian vehicles carrying that equipment for the Polish Armed Forces or foreign forces, and vehicles used for driving instruction and the state driving test — provided they are not used for commercial carriage of goods at that moment. A driving-ban exemption register either holds that, or it dies as a PDF dump in the “Friday dispatch” chat.
A week earlier, on 13 August 2026, the Ministry of Infrastructure restated the holiday ban around 15 August: Friday 14 August 18:00–22:00, Saturday 15 August 8:00–22:00, Sunday 16 August 8:00–22:00. Vehicles and combinations above 12 tonnes, buses excluded, on roads nationwide. The catalogue of exemptions — medicines, perishable food, live animals, road works, return from abroad, 50 km from the border — lives in the ordinance of 31 July 2007 (Journal of Laws 2023 item 2423). The August amendment does not wipe that catalogue. It adds three items. If your dispatch office treats an “exemption” as a spoken “go, it’s a school truck” or “go, it’s the army”, 21 August is no longer a nuance. It is a driving-ban dispatch programme, or the lack of one.
This text does not replace haulage-company software. That piece is one truth about the job, the truck and the document. Here we add the layer ordinance 1110 will not leave alone: whether this specific vehicle, at this hour, on this legal basis, may be sent out while the rest of the fleet sits. A driving-ban exemption register must show a card: vehicle, GVW, exemption type (point 7, 8 or 9), document (stay permission, legal title, instruction / test card), who approved it, until which hour. GESOFT — Paweł Matusiak, Laravel, Vue, Android — builds that panel when TMS, a spreadsheet and three messenger groups cannot join a driving school, commercial FTL and a defence haul in one truth. If a boxed TMS is enough — buy it.
We do not invent the GITD tariff for breaking the ban, and we do not promise an app will “open the motorway”. We do not replace the tachograph, PUESC/SENT, the Road Transport Inspectorate or your books. We do not burn a TMS that already holds one truth about the job. You write to contact: how many tractors and combinations above 12 tonnes, whether you run a driving school or a test centre on the same fleet, whether you haul for the Polish Armed Forces, which TMS lives today. A quote returns in 24 hours. If SaaS is enough — we will say so. If the model is odd (commercial FTL plus a driving school, a reefer plus tests, a defence job plus LTL) — we will say you need your own panel, not another valley subscription.
What the 17 August 2026 ordinance actually added — and what you must not invent
The act is dated 17 August 2026, promulgated 20 August, in force 21 August. Legal basis: Article 10(11) of the Road Traffic Act. It enters into force on the day following promulgation — no autumn vacatio legis, no “from 1 January”. In § 3(1) of the 31 July 2007 ordinance, after point 6, a semicolon appears and points 7–9 are added. The full text is in Journal of Laws item 1110. You must not stretch that into “summer bans are lifted” or “every driving school may always run”. The ban stays. The exemption list changes. A driving-ban exemption register starts from that difference.
Point 7: vehicles belonging to foreign armed forces that obtained permission to stay and move on Polish territory, carrying military equipment. Point 8: civilian vehicles carrying military equipment under legal titles for the Polish Armed Forces or foreign armed forces. Point 9: vehicles used to teach people seeking a licence or a professional driver qualification, and to conduct the state test — provided those vehicles are not used for commercial carriage of goods while those activities are performed. That proviso in point 9 is sharper than driving-school marketing. If the combination hauls gravel in the morning and “goes to a test” in the afternoon, during commercial carriage the exemption does not apply. A driving-ban dispatch programme must be able to say “no”, not only “go”.
The ordinance was signed under authority of the Minister of Infrastructure (S. Bukowiec as deputy). It changes only the catalogue of exemptions from periodic restrictions and traffic bans. It does not change the tachograph. It does not change SENT. It does not change the inspectorate tariff. It does not say how many checks there will be on the last August weekend. Anyone who writes “we will cut inspection risk by 80 percent” is selling weather. You buy a dossier: which plate, which legal basis, which document, which hour. You still read the older exemption catalogue in Journal of Laws 2023 item 2423 — medicines, food, animals, breakdowns, 50 km from the border. Amendment 1110 adds, it does not delete.
- Act: Minister of Infrastructure ordinance of 17 August 2026, Journal of Laws item 1110.
- Promulgation: 20 August 2026; entry into force: 21 August 2026 (the day after promulgation).
- Amendment of § 3(1) of the 31 July 2007 ordinance (Journal of Laws 2023 item 2423): points 7, 8 and 9 added.
- Point 7 — foreign armed forces with stay-and-movement permission, carriage of military equipment.
- Point 8 — civilian vehicles, a legal title, carriage of military equipment for the Polish Armed Forces or foreign forces.
- Point 9 — driving instruction (licence or professional qualification) and the state test; no commercial goods carriage during those activities.
- Ministry communiqué of 13 August 2026 on the 14–16 August ban: 18:00–22:00 / 8:00–22:00 / 8:00–22:00, GVW above 12 t, buses excluded.
- The text does not state the penalty for breaking the ban — we do not invent a tariff from memory.
We quote those facts from the Journal of Laws and the ministry communiqué. We do not add “the average weekend-ban fine”, “the share of driving schools stopped on the A4” or “how many military combinations run on Saturday”. Ordinance 1110 did not write that. GITD on 11 August showed another story from the road — at Zembrzyce on DK28 a timber combination had a total mass of 60.4 t, an overload of more than 20 t, a drive-axle load of 16.8 t, a group of three non-drive axles exceeded by 45%, a PLN 3,000 ticket for the driver, and an administrative case against the haulier. That is the inspection climate, not the amendment’s text. A driving-ban exemption register does not weigh timber. It stops you mixing two regimes: mass, and the hour at which you may drive.
The 13 August communiqué: a holiday that closes the road before the amendment opens it for a few
The ban around 15 August 2026 is not a seasonal novelty. It is the annual rhythm of the 2007 ordinance. On 13 August the ministry only restated the hours: 14 August 18:00–22:00, 15 August 08:00–22:00, 16 August 08:00–22:00. In the same week amendment 1110 was already signed (17 August) and waiting to be promulgated. For a dispatcher that is two clocks on one wall. One says: stand, it is a holiday. The other, from 21 August, says: unless point 7, 8 or 9 and you have the document. If your spreadsheet has one column “runs / does not run”, the two clocks collide. A driving-ban dispatch programme holds the ban calendar and the exemption card, not either-or.
The communiqué lists exemptions you already know: rescue and humanitarian work, natural disasters, breakdown recovery, medicines and medical products, free preventive screening, perishable food and groceries, live animals and continuous production, construction and maintenance of roads and bridges. Separately: return from abroad to finish a haul or reach the consignee when the seat is in Poland; entry outside ban hours — up to 50 km from the border; vehicles waiting at the border to leave. That is not a list of “just write it on the CMR”. Each point has a condition. A driving-ban exemption register is not a meme that “food always runs”. It is a photo of a document and the hour at which that document still lives.
Buses are excluded from this ban — the communiqué says so plainly. A lorry that is “almost a bus”, a 3.5 t van, a 7.5 t rigid do not become a bus because someone labelled the run that way. GVW above 12 tonnes is counted for the vehicle or the combination. A 7.5 t tractor plus a trailer that pushes you over the threshold is over the threshold. A panel that looks only at the tractor GVW lies the other way: it sends out a combination already inside the ban. If a field-service app can refuse to send a crew without parts, dispatch can refuse to send a combination without a lawful hour. It is the same kind of latch: you must not click “send” when the condition fails.
The last weekend of the 2026 summer restrictions — around 28–30 August — will already fall after the amendment. Driving schools and test centres that, until 20 August, sat with everyone else after 18:00 on a Friday, from 21 August have a different condition, provided they are not carrying goods. A haulier who “throws a pallet onto the test run” takes the exemption away from himself. That is not a GESOFT gloss. It is the literal proviso in point 9. A dispatcher who does not see it on the vehicle card will hear it from a patrol, not from us. That is why a driving-ban exemption register sits beside the tachograph, not instead of it: driving hours and ban hours are two different clocks, and both can stop you.
Friday 18:00 in dispatch: why a spreadsheet lies faster than a tachograph
The Friday summer ban starts at 18:00. In your firm at 17:40 it still “looks possible to make the junction”. At 17:55 the driver asks in the group, the dispatcher replies “go, you’ll make it”, and the navi shows a jam. At 18:07 you are inside the ban, with goods, with no exemption. A spreadsheet that has said “en route” since morning cannot say that the status before 18:00 and after 18:00 are two different legal states. A driving-ban dispatch programme closes the slot. Not as a punishment. As a latch: after 18:00 there is no “send FTL” click unless the exemption card is green and the document has not expired.
A spreadsheet lies in three ways you already know. First, file version: dispatcher A has “bans_2025.xlsx”, dispatcher B has a July copy, the owner has a 2023 email. Second, no clock: a cell called “Saturday” does not know that Saturday 08:00–14:00 in summer is not Saturday 08:00–22:00 on a holiday. 15 August 2026 was exactly that day — the ministry communiqué stretched Saturday to 22:00. Third, no vehicle: the exemption list “food, medicines, school” lives in an email footer, not on the plate. A driving-ban exemption register ties the condition to a VIN and a clock window, not to office folklore.
A tachograph lies less often, because it is a device. The driving ban is not inside the tachograph. A driver can have lawful driving time and still be inside the 12-tonne ban. Those are two regimes. An inspector on the road reads both. Your panel, if it only shows “2 h 15 min left”, sends a person into a window the ordinance closed. We do not replace the tachograph — we repeat that like a mantra, because vendors like to promise “everything in one”. GESOFT does not flash a head unit. We show beside it the ban calendar and the exemption card. If the TMS already does that — stay. If the TMS only has an ETA, it does not have what ordinance 1110 talks about.
In roadside assistance and recovery you know this pain from the other side: a pin on the map, a status, a photo, “free / busy”. A 12-tonne dispatch office needs the same, plus the ban clock. A recovery truck often sits in other conditions (breakdown, aftermath). A lorry with pallets does not. A mixed fleet (tractor, recovery truck, training bus) in one spreadsheet is three regimes in one cell. Your own panel (Laravel, Vue, Android) has three resource cards. A SaaS that only knows “FTL job” will squeeze you into one template. At contact you write how many vehicle types you actually run, not how many “lorries on the licence”.
Three new exemptions: the military, civilian equipment, instruction and the test — each with a different document
Point 7 is not for your fleet if you are not a foreign armed force. It is for a vehicle that belongs to those forces, has stay-and-movement permission, and carries military equipment. Polish haulage firms do not “fall under point 7” because they have a contract. A civilian contract is point 8. Mixing 7 and 8 at the gate is not a bookkeeping quibble. It is a different condition and a different document. A driving-ban exemption register has two card types, not one “military” tag. A tag is a slide. A card has fields: whose vehicle, which permission, which title, which load.
Point 8 is yours if you carry military equipment under legal titles for the Polish Armed Forces or foreign forces. “Under legal titles” is not a line in the dispatcher’s notebook. It is a contract, a job order, a document an inspector can see. The panel is not a ministry of defence registry. It stores a scan, a number, an expiry date and a link to the plate. When the title dies at 16:00 on Friday, the 18:00 latch will not open “because yesterday it still did”. Your own workflow (Laravel) can expire the card. A boxed product that only has “customer: army” will leave you a green light too long. That is the moment SaaS stops fitting.
Point 9 is closest to Polish driving schools, professional driver centres and test centres. Instruction for a licence or a professional qualification, or the state test. The closing proviso is blunt: during those activities the vehicle must not perform commercial carriage of goods. A pallet “while we are at it”, bags on the trailer “because we are coming back”, a parcel for a friend — that is commercial carriage in the eyes of someone who does not run your messenger group. A driving-ban dispatch programme has no “add freight” field on a training card. It has “activity: training / test” and a load lock. If there is a load, the exemption dies. Simple. Sharp. Faithful to the act.
- Point 7: owner = foreign armed forces; document = stay-and-movement permission; load = military equipment.
- Point 8: owner = a civilian party; document = a legal title for the Polish Armed Forces or foreign forces; load = military equipment.
- Point 9a: activity = driving instruction (licence or professional qualification); commercial load = forbidden during the activity.
- Point 9b: activity = the state driving test; the same ban on a commercial load.
- Mixing 7 and 8 (whose vehicle) is a card error, not a “military detail”.
- Mixing 9 with FTL (the same plate in gravel at dawn, on the pad in the afternoon) kills the exemption the moment goods return.
- A document without an end date in the panel is worse than no document: it stays green without a right.
- The exemption card does not replace a CMR, a consignment note or a commander’s permission — it stores their identifier.
We do not write how many Polish hauliers carry military equipment. We do not write how many driving schools run combinations above 12 tonnes. Those figures are not in Journal of Laws item 1110. If your fleet is purely commercial, the amendment does not open Friday after 18:00 for you. You stay with the old catalogue (food, medicines, breakdown, 50 km). That is also a conclusion you must be able to tell the owner. GESOFT does not sell “an exemption”. It sells a driving-ban exemption register that can be empty. An empty card is more honest than a green one without a basis. At contact you may hear: “stay with the ban calendar, no defence or driving-school module”.
One plate, two regimes: gravel in the morning, the manoeuvre pad in the afternoon
In small firms the same lorry is a freight tool in the morning and a classroom in the afternoon. Until 20 August 2026 both uses sat still in a ban window. From 21 August the second may run, the first may not. A dispatcher who thinks “it is our truck, it goes” is not reading point 9. He is reading habit. The panel must split the commercial job and the training job onto two cards, even when the VIN is one. The hour the regime changes is an event: who switched it, at what time, whether the trailer is empty, whether there is a photo of the load space. Without a photo you have a story. A story dies quickly at a GITD check. A driving-ban exemption register lives as long as you keep the timestamp.
The exemption card: vehicle, legal basis, document, hour, who approved it
A card that survives a check is not “a TMS note”. It has fixed fields. Vehicle: plate, VIN, vehicle GVW, combination GVW, whether it is a bus (excluded from the 12 t ban). Basis: the § 3(1) point number — the old catalogue or points 7, 8, 9 after 21 August. Document: type, number, valid from, valid to, file. Hour: the window in which the card is valid today, not “this month”. Person: who approved the release, with a separate login, not a shared dispatch tablet. A driving-ban exemption register without an author is a chorus. A chorus at a check sings sharp, even when it means well.
A shared “dispatch” account is convenient and lethal. After a check nobody remembers who said “go”. 2FA and separate accounts are not a fad from Laravel application security. They are who will stand by the truck and say: “I approved point 9 at 17:12, trailer empty, photo on the card”. Without that you have a messenger group. A group is not evidence. It is noise. GESOFT puts in accounts, roles (dispatcher, manager, owner, driving-school instructor) and an event log. We do not promise the log will “win the case”. We promise you do not start from zero when a patrol asks for the basis.
A photo of the load space under point 9 is cheap and unfashionable. It is also the only thing that separates “a test” from “a test plus pallets”. The Android app takes a photo with a timestamp, GPS and a user. It does not replace an inspector’s look. It gives you your own trace that at 17:12 the trailer was empty. If the driver refuses the photo, the latch does not open the route. That is a procedure, not a gadget. Firms too shy to ask for a photo still take one after the damage. Better to take it in the panel. A driving-ban dispatch programme without a point-9 photo is an instructors’ story, and a story is not point 9.
The document end date is the first field a spreadsheet loses. A foreign-force movement permission, a legal title for the Polish Armed Forces, a test booking — everything has a horizon. The panel kills the card at midnight on the end date, or at the hour in the title if the title has one. A day-before notice goes to the dispatcher and the owner, not only to a group. If the document is in an office folder and the truck is in Gdańsk, the scan on the card is the only thing the driver can show. We do not replace the paper archive. We duplicate what must be with the truck. The rest may stay in the folder.
- Create a vehicle card with combination GVW, not only the tractor.
- Assign a § 3(1) basis (old catalogue or points 7/8/9) — one basis per event, not three “just in case”.
- Upload the document with a from–to date; without a date the card cannot be green.
- Force a load-space photo under point 9 before opening a route in a ban window.
- Approval with a personal login; you switch off the shared “dispatch” password on day one.
- The ban clock (Friday 18:00, Saturday, Sunday, holiday) must block FTL without a green card.
- Cards expire automatically; a manual “still running” needs a new manager approval.
- Export the vehicle file to PDF on demand — an inspector will not wait while you find an email.
What the panel will not replace: tachograph, SENT, GITD, the weighbridge, the books
GESOFT is not a tachograph. We do not read the sender, we do not “fix” rest, we do not promise an app will replace a smart tachograph version two. GITD has taught what a magnet on the gearbox ends as — that is not a slide of ours. Your panel may show beside the ban window and the driving-time window, so a dispatcher does not send a person into a collision of two clocks. The source of driving time remains the device and the readout you already have. Anyone selling “TMS instead of a tachograph” is selling a ticket. We say: a driving-ban dispatch programme sits beside it, or it does not sit at all.
SENT and PUESC stay where they were. Clothing and footwear in SENT, geolocation, the carriage declaration — that is the tax administration, not our engine. The panel may hold a declaration number on the job, so a dispatcher sees whether a truck that has a driving-ban exemption also has what SENT wants for that load. Those are two regimes on one truck. Mixing them (“it runs because of SENT”) is a category error. The 12-tonne ban does not ask about SENT. SENT does not ask about 15 August. A driving-ban exemption register is not a SENT declaration. Anyone who joins that into one button without two cards is doing you harm.
We do not replace GITD / the inspectorate and we do not “prepare you for a scripted check”. On 11 August 2026 at Zembrzyce a timber combination weighed 60.4 t with an overload above 20 t; the driver was fined PLN 3,000; an administrative case went against the haulier. Those figures are from the GITD communiqué, not from our price list. The panel does not weigh axles. It does not cut a 45% overload. It may hold the last weigh ticket and an alarm when someone tries to send a combination without the weighing that is your procedure. That is still not a weighbridge. The weighbridge sits on the yard or on the road. We hold the result, the date and who clicked “cleared for the road”.
The books and KSeF stay with your accountant. From 1 February 2026 the duty to issue in KSeF sits on large taxpayers (2024 sales above PLN 200 million including tax), from 1 April 2026 — on a wide remaining circle. The panel is not KSeF.gov. It may pin a KSeF number to a layover, a service job, a driver hotel, a parking fee, so the invoice from a ban-window layover does not live in another reality than dispatch. A wider account of that latch is in KSeF in a company application. It does not promise that “AI will post the layover by itself”. It promises the same day-stamp in dispatch and on the invoice.
Working time, time off for 15 August and the Article 281 fine — the second clock beside the ban
On 12 August 2026 PIP explained time off for 15 August. A Saturday holiday cuts the working-time budget by 8 hours. Employees for whom Saturday is the rest day of a five-day week are entitled to an extra day off in the same reference period. For a month — still in August. For 1 July–30 September 2026 — inside that window. Failure to grant the day is an offence under Article 281 § 1 point 5 of the Labour Code, a fine from PLN 2,000 to 60,000. August 2026 budget: 160 hours. On a full-time monthly reference — no more than 20 working days and at least 11 days off. That is not GITD. That is PIP. A driving-ban exemption register does not count rest days. A driver rota on an employment contract does. Two modules, two authorities.
PIP also wrote who the extra day does not cover in the same way: when Saturday is a normal working day (the hairdresser Tuesday–Saturday example), 15 August is a rest day on that day, with no second day in lieu. Equivalent working-time, a half post, sickness on the lieu day, leave overlapping the lieu day — the communiqué has examples, we do not guess them. In haulage some of the crew are employed, some on mandate contracts, some are owner-drivers. A rota that “gives everyone Friday 14 August” may comply with PIP and still hit the 18:00 ban if you wanted to roll FTL before the window. Two authorities, two clocks, one crew. The panel shows the collision. It does not decide which authority ranks higher. You do, with HR and a lawyer.
We do not copy the PIP tariff onto the driver in the tachograph. Working time in the Labour Code sense and driving time in the 561/2006 sense are neighbouring, not identical worlds. A panel that mixes them in one “hours” column will harm you at both checks. A separate card: employment, mandate, B2B. A separate card: tachograph readout. A separate card: the 12 t ban window. Three cards is not over-engineering. It is the minimum so a PIP inspector and an ITD inspector do not read the same lie in two ways. If your HR SaaS already holds the employment contract — we leave it. We pin a “lieu day for 15.08” event to the person, not to the truck.
An owner-driver and a subcontractor do not get “time off for 15 August” under Article 281, because they are not your employees. They get a job, or they do not. If at 17:50 on Friday you send a subcontractor into the ban, the problem is not called PIP. It is called the contract and whether the job held a window. The subcontractor panel shows the same latches as yours: ban, exemption, document. We do not hire for you. We do not reclassify B2B. After 8 July 2026 PIP has new tools against civil-law contracts — that is the subject of the agency contract register, not the driving-ban tariff. In haulage it joins like this: who drives, on what employment basis, in which road-hour. Three questions, not one.
KSeF, e-Delivery and the paper that still comes back from a layover
A ban window breeds cost: a hotel, a guarded park, a layover, sometimes a transhipment, sometimes a second driver. Those costs become invoices. From 1 April 2026 most of you issue them in KSeF; from 1 February — if you sit in the PLN 200 million 2024 threshold. A PDF by email is not an invoice in a B2B deal once you are under the duty. A driving-ban exemption register does not issue the invoice. It pins a KSeF number to the event “combination stopped, because 18:00”. The accountant sees the same day, the dispatcher sees the same day. Without that latch the layover lives in a chat, and the invoice in another world. The wider mechanism: mandatory KSeF in a company application.
e-Delivery for CEIDG firms registered before 1 January 2025 becomes mandatory from 1 October 2026. The court register has its own, earlier rhythm. GITD, the inspectorate, the tax administration and PIP increasingly use a channel that a private “office@” box does not serve. The panel is not an e-Delivery mailbox. It may hold a correspondence identifier on the vehicle file and on the person, so a summons after a 12-tonne check does not die in an inbox nobody reads on Saturday. We do not replace the public registered e-delivery service. We pin a case number to a card that must exist anyway if you want a driving-ban dispatch programme, not a month of email archaeology.
Paper from the road — a record, a driver’s ticket, a weigh receipt, a trailer photo — comes back in the cab, in a pocket, on WhatsApp. Android, before the truck leaves the “after the check” park, asks: did you upload the scan? Without the scan the job does not become “closed”. That is not sadism. It is the only moment the document has not yet been lost. After three days it is lost. After the GITD check at Zembrzyce the PLN 3,000 ticket and the case against the haulier live in two files. If the driver’s file and the company’s file do not hold the same document, the accountant and the lawyer work on two truths. The panel makes a third, shared one. The books still post. We do not post.
A hotel invoice in a ban window is a cost the owner wants to see on the route, not in an “other” report. Pinning KSeF to the job shows how much that Friday 18:00 cost in money, not in mood. We do not invent an industry average. Your figures are on your invoices. The panel gathers them. If you do not want to see that, you stay with the group chat and the month-end surprise. GESOFT does not cure surprise. It puts a sum on the plate. At contact you write whether the hotel and park are on the company, or the driver pays and reclaims. That changes the model, not the app palette.
SaaS, boxed TMS and the moment the model no longer fits a subscription
A boxed TMS is right when you have one regime: commercial FTL or LTL, a ban calendar, no school, no defence, no mixed recovery truck. Then you buy the box, load the fleet, switch on the Friday 18:00 alert and do not write to us. Truly. GESOFT does not live off taking a working system away from you. It lives off cases where the box has one resource card and you have three. A driving-ban exemption register in pure FTL is often just a calendar. In a driving school plus gravel plus a Polish Armed Forces job it is three workflows. A box that promises “the TSL industry” usually knows the first.
Signals that the box is crushing you: a second “school” licence in another programme; an “army” spreadsheet beside the TMS; a manual ban by SMS, because the TMS alert only knows summer Fridays 18:00–22:00, and 15 August has a different Saturday; no combination GVW field; no load lock under point 9; a shared dispatcher account. Each of those signals is cheaper to name than “fleet transformation”. In boxed software versus custom we write that chapter in general. Here the TSL point after 21 August 2026 is concrete: a new ordinance point will not fit in a “job notes” field.
Your own panel is Laravel on the server, Vue for the dispatcher, Android for the driver and the instructor. It is not “an app-store product for European TSL”. It is your model: these plates, these roles, this latch. Paweł Matusiak builds so that you do not burn a TMS if the TMS holds the freight. We add an exemption layer and a ban clock, or — when the TMS is dead — we put up dispatch from the job. A 24-hour quote at contact says which road. If the road is “stay on SaaS and write a procedure on paper”, we will write that too. Paper is cheaper than needless code. Paper will not hold point 9 across twenty trucks.
Integrations we do not invent: the tachograph stays with the readout vendor; maps — if you already have them; KSeF — a gateway, not our office; e-Delivery — a mailbox, not our office. We build APIs and queues, not a “magic connector to everything”. If your tachograph readout has no API, we say so at the start, not after a month’s invoice. A driving-ban dispatch programme lives when the latch works without an integration: even a manual “1 h left” readout plus the 18:00 clock is better than a map ETA with no ban. A map with no ban is pretty. An inspector does not look at pretty.
Scenarios: FTL, reefer, LTL, a mixed fleet, a job for the Polish Armed Forces
Pure FTL above 12 t: amendment 1110 is not your Friday gate. You stay with the old catalogue and the calendar. The panel is then simple: a window latch, an exemption only when you truly have food, medicines, a breakdown, 50 km. You do not write point 9 onto yourselves because the driver “once did a C+E course”. Point 9 is about the activity now, not the history of a licence. A driving-ban exemption register in pure FTL is short and should stay short. Anyone selling you a defence module “just in case” is selling a field someone will one day click wrong.
A reefer and perishable food: the old catalogue carries you if the condition is true. “Perishable” is not every yoghurt on next week’s commercial offer. It is a load and a document that shows it. The panel does not rule whether the yoghurt is perishable. It holds the CMR, the recorder temperature if you have one, and the dispatcher’s statement. A lie on the statement stays yours. We do not certify groceries. We show that someone took the condition at 17:40. That is enough to kill the chorus. It is not enough to win a dispute about goods classification — that is the load and the law, not Vue.
LTL and adding pallets on Friday afternoon is the fastest road to “point 9 plus goods”. A school that throws on a friend’s pallets kills the exemption. A forwarder who throws on a test “because the truck is going anyway” does not create an exemption — it creates a mixture. An LTL panel must be able to drop a stop, not only add one. Latch: if the card in a ban window says point 9, the load list must be empty. If it is not, the route does not count as green. That is one line of code and the whole difference between the amendment and a ticket. GESOFT likes that line. It does not like a slide called “load optimisation in a driving school”.
A job for the Polish Armed Forces (point 8): a legal title, load = military equipment, a civilian vehicle. The card holds a load classification you do not throw onto a public office screen. Roles and permissions are sharper here than in furniture FTL. The driver’s Android shows “route allowed / not allowed”, not a load description in the park. That is not a paranoid thriller. It is ordinary discipline. If your SaaS shows the load on a tablet visible from the corridor, it is not fit for point 8. Your own panel can have two views. At contact you say whether this regime even exists with you. If not — we do not build it. Empty modules click themselves.
- Pure FTL: ban calendar + old catalogue; points 7–9 stay switched off.
- Reefer: the “perishable” condition on a document, not in a sales slogan.
- LTL: the ability to drop a pallet; an empty load list under point 9.
- Driving school / test centre: training or test activity, a load-space photo, zero freight in the window.
- Recovery and breakdown: the old catalogue (breakdown recovery), not point 9 “because it is also a lorry”.
- Point 8: a legal title, a restricted load view, a card that dies with the title date.
- Mixed fleet: three resource cards, not one “truck” cell.
- Subcontractor: the same latches on the outbound job, or it does not go out.
Android for the driver: “go / don’t go” instead of a PDF dump from the office
A driver in the cab will not read ordinance item 1110. He will read one state: you may drive or stop. The Android app shows that state as a large field, the hour the window ends, and — if there is an exemption — a short basis (point 9, food, 50 km), not an essay. Underneath: a “trailer photo” button, “upload ticket”, “confirm empty load”. Offline: the state computed before the network died stays on screen with a warning “no network, do not guess”. A driving-ban dispatch programme without Android ends as a PDF in an email the driver will not open on a roundabout. Vue is for the dispatcher. Kotlin is for the cab.
A notice of the coming window (Friday 17:00: “ban from 18:00, your FTL card is red”) matters more than a map dashboard. A map is pretty. A clock is law. FCM on Android delivers the clock. The dispatcher in Vue sees who confirmed the notice was read, and who “did not see it”. Did-not-see is an event, not an excuse. If a subcontractor does not have your app, he gets a job-status link and an SMS. A link without a login to the whole fleet. An SMS without a military load in the body. Those are details a “TSL” SaaS often skips, and point 8 does not forgive them.
A driving-school instructor and an examiner are different users from an FTL driver. A different role, a different screen, the same database. The instructor confirms the training activity and an empty load space. A test — if the test centre is a party of yours — has its own flag. We do not build a system for the state test centre. We build your side: the truck left for a test, the truck came back, it took no pallets in between. If the test centre has its own system, we leave it. We pin a test number if they give you one. If they do not — you keep your own timestamp. A driving-ban exemption register does not have to be a state hub. It has to be your truth about your own truck.
Photos and scans weigh. Retention: as long as you need to defend the event, not “everything forever”. GDPR in the cab is not a poster. A driver does not throw a trainee’s face onto a public channel. The panel holds a trailer photo, not a training gallery. The wider frame: GDPR in web applications. In haulage we add: Android GPS is for the event “confirm layover / photo”, not for tracking life after the shift. If you want full fleet tracking — that is a separate product (fleet), a separate consent, a separate talk. We do not add tracking “while we are at the ban”. While-we-are-at-it is how a complaint is born.
A rollout that does not burn the TMS that already holds the job
If the TMS holds the job, the customer, the rate and the CMR — it stays. We add a layer: a vehicle card with combination GVW, a ban calendar, an exemption card, Android with go/stop, an approval log. Integration: the TMS job id enters the layer as a key. We do not migrate freight history “because there is a new system”. We migrate the truck list, the people list and exemption documents. That is a week or three, not a quarter of transformation. A driving-ban dispatch programme has value when the latch works this Friday, not at a November conference. 21 August has already fallen. 28 August is still on the 2026 summer calendar.
If the TMS is a graveyard (two logins, nobody types, truth lives in a spreadsheet), we do not glue a layer onto a corpse. We say so. Then dispatch from the job stands up with us, and the old box stays on invoices until the accountant says enough. We do not burn it on signing day. We switch vehicle by vehicle or route by route. A vendor who demands “a Sunday big bang” does not deliver. GESOFT delivers small switches. At contact you write whether the TMS lives or pretends. The quote hangs on that answer, not on the number of slides.
Data you must have on day one: a plate list with combination GVW, a people list with roles, a window calendar (summer, holidays, Sundays — from the ordinance, not from memory), scans of exemption documents if they already exist. What you need not have: a perfect tachograph API, a full CMR history, an app for subcontractors. We add those. The Friday 18:00 latch runs on a truck list and a clock. The rest is meat. Meat without a latch is a report. A report will not stop a combination. A driving-ban exemption register starts with the latch. The report is an extra for the owner on Monday.
Training dispatchers takes less time than training on “the new TMS”. Because we do not teach the whole freight stack. We teach: red = do not send, green = show the basis, a photo under point 9, an expired card = a new approval. An hour with dispatchers, an hour with drivers in the yard, a PDF instruction on the wallpaper. If after a week someone still SMSs “go, it will be fine”, that is not a UX problem. It is a manager problem. An app will not replace a manager. It will leave a trace that the SMS went around the latch. The trace is for you, not for us.
A checklist for the last August 2026 weekends and for every later holiday
Before the next Friday 18:00 you do not need a strategy workshop. You need a list you can tick. Below is an operational list, not a certificate. It does not replace reading Journal of Laws item 1110 or the 13 August ministry communiqué. It replaces the illusion that “everyone here knows”. A driving-ban exemption register is ticking against a truck, not against a firm. The firm does not drive. The combination does.
- List every combination with GVW above 12 t (vehicle or combination). Buses separately — they sit outside this ban, but not “by the way” as lorries.
- Lay the window calendar: summer Fridays 18:00–22:00, Saturdays 08:00–14:00, Sundays 08:00–22:00, and holidays per communiqués — Saturday 15 August 2026 ran to 22:00.
- For each truck mark whether an exemption is even possible: food, medicines, breakdown, 50 km, point 7, point 8, point 9. Most FTL will have an empty field — that is a correct result.
- Gather documents for the non-empty fields. No date = no green.
- Switch off the shared dispatch password. Every approval has a name.
- Set a trailer-photo procedure under point 9. No photo, no route in the window.
- Join the employed-driver rota with PIP (lieu day for 15 August, 160 h, max 20 days) — a separate file from the road ban.
- Tell subcontractors in writing that a job in the window with no basis does not go out. An SMS “it will be fine” is not a job.
- Run a drill: Friday 17:30, one FTL truck, one (if you have it) school truck. Does the latch work?
- Write down who looks at the event log on Monday. A log with no viewer is a log for the log.
The last summer weekend of 2026 is not the last ban of your life. Sundays, holidays, the next season — the 2007 ordinance stays. Amendment 1110 stays until someone changes it. The checklist is not “an August project”. It is a rhythm. A panel that holds the ban calendar as data, not as a paste in an email, will survive 2027. A paste will not survive a change of Saturday hours on a holiday. 15 August just did that. Anyone who has “Saturday always 08–14” in code has already erred. A driving-ban dispatch programme holds a day type: a summer Saturday, a holiday Saturday, an ordinary Sunday. A day type, not “the weekend”.
If you do not make a panel for 28 August, you can still make a procedure: a sheet by the dispatcher, a truck list, green only with a document on the desk. That is worse than an app and better than nothing. GESOFT is not offended by a sheet. It asks that you do not pretend a sheet scales across three shifts and twenty combinations. At contact you may write “a sheet for this weekend, a latch from September”. That plan is serious. A plan to “buy a TMS for Europe by Friday” is not.
The cost of chaos: a layover, empty miles, a driver’s ticket, a case against the haulier
We do not invent an average fine for breaking the 12 t ban — the tariff does not sit in act 1110. We have one hard figure from the road this month: GITD at Zembrzyce, a PLN 3,000 driver’s ticket, mass 60.4 t, an administrative case against the haulier. That was mass, not a ban hour. We carry the conclusion carefully: the driver and the firm get two different bills from one check. A panel that only holds the driver’s ticket loses the case. A panel that only holds “the company matter” loses the person who will then not climb in. A driving-ban exemption register does not compute the penalty. It records the event so both bills share the same file.
A layover from 18:00 to 22:00 on Friday is four hours of combination and driver. A hotel, a park, food, sometimes a second day. We do not convert that into an “industry average”. You convert it at your combination rate. The panel shows a sum on the route when you pin KSeF invoices. Without the latch you count in your head and it always comes out “somehow small”. Empty miles, when someone rolled at 17:50 and turned back at 18:20, cost more than a layover planned at 17:00. A latch is cheaper than a U-turn. That is not an aphorism. It is your fuel, your time, your row with the customer who wanted to “still make it”.
A customer who will not accept a ban window is not an app problem. It is a contract problem. The panel may show the customer a “delivery after the window” status if you give them a B2B panel. It need not. It may stay inside. The lie “we are rolling, we will make it” to the customer ends as either a ticket or a lie to the driver. Both cost more than a sentence in the contract: we do not perform deliveries in ban windows unless a § 3 condition applies. If you have a B2B panel for regular principals, that status is the same kind of truth as a B2B panel for a wholesaler — a different industry, the same mechanism: the customer sees the rule before they see an excuse.
PIP and the PLN 60,000 under Article 281 is yet another bill: not for the road, for a day off. In August 2026 that bill sits beside the 14–16 August ban. A firm that “gives” employed drivers 14 August and at the same time pushes FTL after 17:00 on Friday has two conflicts in one day. A rota with no road latch and no HR latch is one spreadsheet with two lies. Split them. Then look at whether you even want to be on the road on 14 August. Sometimes the cheapest driving-ban exemption register says: today there is no exemption and no crew. We stand. That too is a decision the panel can record.
How to talk to GESOFT: 24 hours, three possible answers, no transformation slide
You write to contact. In the message we do not need a “logistics 4.0 vision”. We need: the number of combinations above 12 t; whether there is a driving school / test centre / instructors on the same trucks; whether there is a job for the Polish Armed Forces or foreign forces; which TMS (or spreadsheet) lives today; whether employed drivers take holiday lieu days; whether subcontractors run your jobs in the windows. That is enough for one of three answers to return in 24 hours: stay with the box; we add a latch layer; we put up your own dispatch. A driving-ban dispatch programme starts from that trio, not from a mock-up.
The answer “stay with the box” is a full answer. You get it in writing, with a list of fields to demand from the current TMS (combination GVW, day type, exemption card, separate logins). We are not a TMS partner. We are someone who would rather you did not pay twice. The answer “a layer” means: the TMS stays, we put Laravel + Vue + Android beside it, the key is the job id and the plate. The answer “your own dispatch” means: the TMS is dead or the model (school + FTL + defence) will not fit the box’s card. The price hangs on that, not on the slogan “AI in haulage”. AI in haulage will not sign point 9 for you.
Paweł Matusiak. Laravel, Vue, Android. No marketing team that will draw you a lorry in the cloud. An event log, 2FA and a latch that can say no. If after the quote you prefer another vendor — go. You take the exemption-card spec you should have anyway. We do not lock you in a licence that holds freight data hostage. That is the same honesty we describe in what a Laravel app costs: you pay for the model, not for the fear of leaving the spreadsheet. You will leave the spreadsheet when the latch starts working, not when a slide starts spinning.
Finally, plainly: the 17 August 2026 amendment is short. Your problem is not short, because fleet, school, holiday, PIP and KSeF sit in one August week. We do not join that into “one system for everything”. We join a road latch to an exemption card and — if needed — to the employed-driver rota. The rest (tachograph, SENT, the books, KSeF.gov, the e-Delivery box, GITD) stays in its offices and devices. Anyone who promises you one button in place of those offices is lying. We promise a quote in 24 h and a sentence you will not hear at a conference: we will not build that for you, because we must not.
What to leave in the folder, and what must live with the truck — a split a spreadsheet cannot do
The office folder holds: policies, roadworthiness, the Community licence, subcontractor contracts, full point-8 legal titles, employed-staff files. The truck holds: a scan of today’s condition, a photo of the load or of emptiness, a go/stop status, a job number, a contact for the dispatcher who approved. A spreadsheet flattens that into one row and that is why one or the other dies. A driving-ban exemption register is the “with the truck” layer. It is not the company archive. You leave the archive where it was. If the archive is a cardboard box, we do not fix the box in this job. We say: today’s scan must be in the phone. The box can wait.
A subcontractor does not get your archive. He gets a job card: the window, the latch, whether to arrive or to stand. If his truck is above 12 t and has no condition, the job does not go out in the window, even when the rate is pretty. That is the only protection you have when ITD stops his combination on your CMR. The panel will not make you his employer. It will make you someone who did not SMS “go” into a red window. After 8 July 2026 mixing a subcontractor with an employee hurts extra at PIP — hence a separate file and a separate article on civil-law contracts. Here we leave that as a warning, not as an HR product.
Test centre, driving school, state test: your training file (trainees, hours, certificates) may stay in the driving-school programme you already have. We do not burn it. We only add: this truck, at this hour, is in a point-9 activity, trailer empty. If the school programme has no API, the instructor taps that in Android. Two taps. Cheaper than migrating the school into a freight TMS. A freight TMS cannot do a trainee. A school programme cannot do the 12 t ban. GESOFT does not pretend it can do both worlds on one trainee screen. It can do a latch on the truck. That is enough so that amendment 1110 is not a dead PDF on the driving-school director’s desk.
When the check has passed, the “with the truck” file comes back to the office as a PDF export: window events, approvals, photos, document numbers. Retention under your policy, not under our “forever” cloud. That is GDPR plus ordinary order. We do not build a data lake of trailers. We build a file a lawyer can put into a case. If there is no case, the file still teaches the dispatcher what they clicked on Friday. A Monday meeting without the file is a meeting of impressions. Impressions do not hold point 9.
Questions you do not ask a TMS vendor — and should, before you click a subscription
Before you buy “TMS with driving bans”, ask about the day type, not the map. Does a holiday Saturday have a different span from a summer Saturday? Is GVW counted on the combination? Does the exemption card have an end date and die by itself? Does point 9 block a load? Is the login personal? Does the driver see the state without a PDF? If to any of those you hear “that goes in the job notes”, you are not buying a latch. You are buying a text field. A text field will not stop a combination at 18:01. A driving-ban dispatch programme is a latch or it is a brochure. You already have the brochure in the Journal of Laws.
Ask too what they do not do. Do they replace the tachograph? (They must not, they do not want to — good. They want to — you leave.) Do they file SENT for you? (SENT stays in PUESC.) Do they “handle GITD”? (Nobody handles GITD.) Do they have a defence module on a screen visible from reception? (Bad.) Do they migrate you on a Sunday? (Bad.) Those questions matter more than the number of tiles. GESOFT answers them in the quote. Another vendor should too. If they cannot, it is not because you are too small. It is because the latch is an extra for them, and a Friday for you.
The box price is often lower on the invoice and higher in manual work. A second “school” licence, an “army” spreadsheet, a holiday SMS — that is a TCO nobody will put on a price list. Your own panel is often higher at the start and lower when three regimes sit in one database. We do not settle that for you without figures from your fleet. That is why the quote comes after the combination list, not before. What a Laravel application costs explains the parts. Here the main part is the number of regimes, not the number of trucks. Five trucks and three regimes is harder than forty trucks and one FTL. The box likes forty. We like the truth about five.
If after those questions you stay with the TMS — good. Write day type and combination GVW into the vendor contract. If you leave — do not burn the TMS in the notice week. A latch layer can live beside it for a month. GESOFT does that. Another craftsperson should too. A vendor who says “us or nothing” holds your jobs hostage. A hostage is not a latch. It is fear. Fear will not read point 9. An inspector will read point 9, on Friday, after 18:00, in a park where your spreadsheet is not.
Frequently asked questions
- Does the 17 August 2026 ordinance lift the summer ban above 12 tonnes?
- No. The act (Journal of Laws item 1110) amends the catalogue of exemptions in § 3(1) of the 31 July 2007 ordinance. The ban stays. From 21 August 2026 points 7–9 are added (foreign armed forces, civilian carriage of military equipment under legal titles, driving instruction and the test with no commercial goods carriage). Source: Journal of Laws item 1110. A driving-ban exemption register holds that difference, not the slogan “you may drive”.
- Which hours applied around 15 August 2026?
- Under the Ministry of Infrastructure communiqué of 13 August 2026: 14 August 18:00–22:00, 15 August 08:00–22:00, 16 August 08:00–22:00. Vehicles and combinations above 12 t, buses excluded. A holiday Saturday is not a summer Saturday 08:00–14:00 — the calendar in the panel must know the day type.
- May a driving school with a combination above 12 t always run in a ban after 21 August?
- Only when the vehicle is used for instruction or a state test and at that moment it is not performing commercial carriage of goods (point 9). Pallets “while we are at it” kill the exemption. A driving-ban dispatch programme blocks load on a school card. We do not gloss for GITD. We read the condition in the act.
- Does GESOFT replace the tachograph, SENT or the TMS?
- Not as a rule. The tachograph stays a device, SENT stays in PUESC, the TMS stays if it holds the job. We add a window latch and an exemption card, or — when the TMS is dead — we put up dispatch. The wider bill: boxed software versus custom. At contact you may hear “stay with the box”.
- How does this sit with KSeF from February and April 2026?
- KSeF does not open the driving ban. It counts invoices for a layover, a hotel, a park, a service job. From 1 February 2026 large taxpayers (2024 sales above PLN 200 million including tax), from 1 April a wide duty. The panel does not replace KSeF.gov. It pins a document number to the event “combination stopped, because 18:00”. Details: KSeF in a company application.
- What about time off for 15 August for employed drivers?
- PIP on 12 August 2026: a Saturday holiday, an extra day in the same reference period, August budget 160 h, max 20 working days, min 11 days off, a fine of PLN 2,000–60,000 (Article 281 § 1 point 5 of the Labour Code). That is an HR latch, not a road latch. The employed rota and the 12 t window are two modules. An owner-driver and a mandate contract do not take that Labour Code day.
- Do the GITD figures from the Zembrzyce check concern the weekend ban?
- No. The 11 August 2026 communiqué is about mass: 60.4 t, an overload above 20 t, a drive-axle load of 16.8 t, axle group +45%, a PLN 3,000 driver’s ticket, a case against the haulier. We quote it as the inspection climate and as an example of two bills (driver and firm). Not as the 12 t ban tariff. Act 1110 has no such tariff — we do not invent one.
- Will the app replace a decision that the load is “perishable” or “military equipment”?
- No. Load classification stays yours and the inspector’s. The panel holds a statement, a document and a timestamp. It does not certify groceries and it is not a ministry of defence registry. A lie on the statement stays yours. The latch can say no when there is no document. It cannot say that the yoghurt is perishable.
- How do we join this with field service and recovery in the same firm?
- A recovery truck often runs under the old catalogue (breakdown recovery), not point 9. That is a different resource card. The field-job mechanism is in the field-service app and roadside assistance. A mixed fleet in one spreadsheet is three regimes. Your own panel has three cards. FTL SaaS usually has one.
- How do we order a quote and what returns in 24 hours?
- Write to contact: number of combinations above 12 t, school / test / defence, TMS, employed or subcontractors, what hurts at 17:50 on Friday. GESOFT (Paweł Matusiak) returns in 24 h with one of three answers: stay with the box; a latch layer; your own dispatch. No slide. No promise that an app will open the motorway. A list of what we do not replace (tachograph, SENT, GITD, the books, KSeF.gov).
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