Poor vehicle maintenance hits GB Liners' renewal
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• Following maintenance problems at the Hereford depot of GB Liners the company's West Midland licence has been renewed for only two years by Licensing Authority John Mervyn-Pugh.
The company was seeking the renewal of an international licence for 15 vehicles and eight trailers. Its solicitor, Michael Carless, said it had a good record going back to 1930 and licences were held in the Metropolitan, Western and South Eastern Traffic Areas without complaint.
It was conceded, however, that there had been a problem at Hereford. A long-serving mechanic had retired and the company had felt the apprentice could cope. That turned out not to be the case and a new mechanic had since been employed to help out.
After director Robert Bartup reported that the vehicles were inspected every three weeks, Mervyn-Pugh said he did not like mileage alternatives when operators had maintenance problems, as vehicles could be missed.
Mervyn-Pugh said he would !Bre the company to introduce a "nil daily defect" reporting system for its drivers, but Bartup did not feel this would be helpful. He said the problem had been a poor standard of maintenance rather than a failure by drivers to report defects.
Insisting that the company introduce such a system, Mervyn-Pugh said it would help it to know that its maintenance was right. He wants the company to write to its drivers pointing out there have been problems and asking them to help by using the system. The company had been in difficulty over maintenance and he was not going to have operators who had problems with maintenance. It had 15 vehicles and that was a lot of vehicles. His job was to ensure that those 15 vehicles were safe at all times.