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Sun Valley licence tri ed due to speeding offences
Page 18
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Speeding drivers have resulted in eight vehicles being lost from the licence of Sun Valley Foods for two weeks.
The company, which holds a licence for 40 vehicles and 80 trailers, was called before the West Midland Traffic Commissioner David Dixon at a Hereford disciplinary inquiry.
Traffic examiner Ronald Arnott said that he had examined 977 tachograph charts from 34 drivers employed by the company between March and April 2002. There were a number of occasions on which 12 drivers had exceeded the maximum speed limit of 40mph on a single carriageway.
The drivers said their work, mostly carrying live poultry for slaughter, was to tight schedules and they were often phoned by the transport office to see where they were.
Other motorists were frustrated at having to follow slower-moving trucks; sometimes they were abusive and took dangerous risks in overtaking. It was in the overall interest of road safety for Sun Valley drivers to go up to 50mph.
The company accepted that before the investigation there had been no system in place to check on speeding by drivers.
Phone calls to drivers out on the road were purely to find out their location in order to schedule work and avoid any animal welfare problems. There was no intention to 'hurry them along", and no driver had been disciplined for late arrival.
The drivers' contracts of employment included reference to speeding. However, recently some had refused to sign the contracts, although broadly working to the contractual conditions.
They had now issued fresh instructions to drivers and started checking charts daily for speeding. GPS equipment was being installed in all vehicles to remove the need for most phone contact.
Curtailing the licence, the TC said he did so due to the manifest failure by the company to control speeding by its drivers.
In order to minimise animal welfare concerns and the impact on the company's business, he said that the final day of the 14-day period could be at the company's choice but before 30 March. Four vehicles could be removed over such a period, and four different vehicles removed over the preceding fortnight.