Transfreight driver sees ban shortened
Page 8
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
• by Mike Jewell
One of the Transfreight Services drivers who was disqualified from holding an HGV driving licence for 12 months has won his appeal to reduce the ban to three months.
Eastham-based Derek Reed
produced cuttings from Commercial Motor at Wallasey Magistrates Court which he claimed showed the 12-month ban was harsh compared with other bans dished out by Traffic Commissioners in similar cases.
Reed accepted that his tachograph charts showed the speed limiter did not work on 14 occasions and that he had falsified tachograph charts 10 times over a period of a month.
But he said that he had no convictions in 41 years of driving. He felt a 12-month ban was extremely harsh especially as the Transfreight drivers had been forced to do what they did ( CM13-19 July 2000).
"I am not saying that there is a vendetta, but Mrs Bell is making life very difficult for Merseyside hauliers and drivers," said Reed.
Reed was supported by former Transfreight transport manager Gerald Glanville who said he had left a couple of months before the investigation into the allegations began because he was not happy with the way the company was run.
Managing director Anthony Long was in prison at the time and the other directors, Long's wife and brother-in-law, had forced the drivers to do what they did. He had tried to set up a drivers' training course. And when he told director Kevin Malone that they had a duty of care to the drivers it "fell on deaf ears".
He felt the Commissioner was doing a good job but in this particular case he felt the tariff was too severe.