Salt overload discharge
Page 18
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• Walter Carefoot & Sons (Transport) has been given an absolute discharge after admitting exceeding the permitted weight of the rear compensating axles of one of its vehicles.
Penrith magistrates heard that the vehicle concerned was stopped in a weight check while carrying rock salt. The compensating axle's 19,300kg limit had been exceeded by 1,930kg; some 10%.
Managing director Clive Carefoot said that the company's vehicles were check weighed at least 15 times a month by the various enforcement agencies, and not one had exceeded its permitted gross weight in 1990.
The company had spent over £3,000 per vehicle on on-board weighing devices on the last 12 vehicles it had purchased to try and solve the axle weighing problem. Equipping the older vehicles in the fleet would be prohibitive.
In the past the company had complained to ICI about its staff putting on the rear, and ICI had produced an instructional video for its staff who were using Carefoot vehicles.
On this occasion the load had been picked up as the ICI salt works were closing and the vehicle was found to he overweight. The driver had tipped off the excess to bring the vehicle within its permitted gross weight, but he was unable to check weigh the axles because the weighbridge men were going home.
It was the first time the driver concerned had carried out of the salt works and he was unfamiliar with the density of rock salt.
For the company, John Backhouse argued that there was nothing more that it could have done.
The magistrates ordered the company to pay £40 costs; driver Mark Riley was fined 2100.