JK must wait and see
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3. JK Transport
must wait to see what action • Hinckley-based must wait to see what action Eastern Traffic Commissioner Brigadier Compton Boyd will take following convictions for drivers' hours and tachograph offences and the unauthorised use of vehicles, In May the company pleaded guilty before Leicester magistrates to sample offences of permitting drivers to exceed the hours limits and take insufficient rest; failing to produce tachograph charts; and the unauthorised use of vehicles. It was ordered to pay fines and costs totalling £2,600.
DOT traffic examiner Christopher Harris said that tachograph charts examined in January revealed wholesale breaches of the drivers' hours rules and the use of up to 13 vehicles not specified on the licence since last September Ian Rothera, for the company, said that bemuse the authorisation on the licence was completely taken up, a lot of vehicles had been hired in for short periods without other vehicles being taken off the licence.
He added that a major new contract had left managing director Michael Martin so busy that he did not have to time to check the results of a tachograph agency's analysis.
Martin had relied on the fact that they were professional drivers who knew what the law was, said Rothera, and he lost track of what they were doing on a daily basis. Peter Bass, who had run his own haulage company, had been drafted in to tackle the problem in December, he added.
Martin said that on a number of occasions drivers had not been honest with the company. He had not expected the new contract to grow so quickly Bass had been given a free rein to get a grip on the situation.
Boyd said that a previous application to increase the number of vehicles and trailers on the licence was refused last June because the company did not supply the required financial information. In November it made a second bid to increase its authorisation but made no request for interim authority to operate additional vehicles until January which was after it had been convicted of unauthorised use.
Denying that the company had ever run 24 vehicles, Martin said that it had perhaps been a big mistake but the company had needed the contract. Financial evidence was heard in private at the company's request.
Reserving his decision, Brigadier Boyd.said that the company had been unable to satisfy him that it had sufficient finance for the additional vehicles, or that it had enough money to properly maintain the present fleet.
He required three months' bank statements as soon as possible and indicated that he would be looking for financial resources of £16,500.