Company card for a tachograph – what it is for and how to get one

What the company card does

A company card is a smart card that authorises a transport undertaking to the tachograph. When inserted into the unit it tells the unit who wants to download the data – a security mechanism so that not just anyone can reach the records.

Unlike a driver card it is tied neither to a person nor to a particular vehicle, but to the undertaking as a whole. One card therefore serves the whole fleet.

Its second function is locking data: an undertaking can "log in" to the tachograph and thereby mark that the records from that period belong to it and are not freely accessible to another party.

Why you cannot avoid it

Regulation (EC) No 561/2006, Article 10(5), requires a transport undertaking to ensure the downloading of all data relating to activities carried out by or for it. The maximum periods are set by Commission Regulation (EU) No 581/2010 – the driver card every 28 days, the vehicle unit every 90 days.

Data from the vehicle unit, however, cannot be downloaded without a company card. Without one you simply will not meet the obligation.

Downloaded data must additionally be kept for at least twelve months and, on request, made accessible to an inspecting officer either directly or remotely at the premises of the undertaking.

Who applies and how

The company card is applied for by the statutory representative of the transport undertaking, or by an authorised agent. The application is submitted to the card issuing authority in your member state – in Slovakia, for example, the collection points are operated by ČESMAD Slovakia in Bratislava, Zvolen and Košice.

Compared with a driver card this is corporate paperwork, so you will need documents proving authority to act for the company. Check the exact list of attachments and the current form with the issuing authority directly.

Issue takes on the order of two weeks from submitting the application, so deal with it in advance – especially if the obligation only arises for you on 1 July 2026 and you have not worked with tachographs until now.

Validity and renewal

A company card is issued for a period of up to five years. Renewal can be applied for roughly 60 days before expiry.

An expired company card is awkward in that the problem only shows up at the moment you need to download data – that is, usually just before the 90-day deadline runs out. The expiry date therefore belongs in the same overview as the download deadlines.

Why hold more than one card

A holder can have more than one card – a duplicate is issued. That makes practical sense in two situations.

First: a company with several branches. Carrying one card between sites is inefficient and risky – a lost card means the whole download process stops.

Second: remote downloading. If you take data from the vehicles automatically, the card tends to sit permanently in a reader, and you then need another one for manual downloads.

What the company card does not handle

The company card unlocks the data but does not evaluate it. You obtain files in DDD format that need to be archived and ideally checked as well – otherwise you find out about driving-time breaches only from the enforcement authority.

Equally, neither the company card nor GPS tracking replaces the other. SaveTrack handles the automatic mileage log, vehicle positions and costs; downloading and archiving tachograph data is separate paperwork that has to be set up alongside.