Fined £5,120: Has to Sell Bus Business
Page 34
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
FINED £5,000 at Alloa,. loot week, for using duty-free oil in his vehicres, Scottish bus operator asked for three months to pay so that he could try to sell his business. He was-County Cllr. George Gray, Clackmannan, who was alleged to have used 10,700 gallons of duty-free fuel in buses between October 12, 1956. and Qctober 11, 1957 (The Commercial Motor, March 6).
He denied this offence and two others —failing to keep accounts and records of heavy oil used, and failing to produce records to two Customs and Excise officers. On these two summonses he was fined a total of £120. Sheriff C. D. L. Murray found an alternative charge of obstructing the officers not proven.
Sheriff Murray's summing up took nearly an hour. He said there was no doubt at all that Gray's oil-engined buses had been run on duty-free fuel. There had been a curious secrecy about fuelling the vehicles—no driver filled up his own bus with the exception of a man called McNeil, who termed himself fuel supervisor. McNeil had given quite impossible evidence about the way he had managed to keep the buses running with fuel obtained legally.
a28 Sheriff Murray recalled the suggestion that the vehicles might have been run on a mixture of petrol and oil, but he found it hard to understand why anyone Should dream of doing such a thing, The result would be fewer miles per gallon, so there seemed to be no motive.
The inevitable inference was that dutyfree oil alone was used and that would stand unless evidence were produced to show that the fuel was obtained from legitimate sources.
"1 am sorry it has come to this," he told Gray. "I appreciate the qualities of character and personality, loyalty and generosity which I know you possess, but there is no doubt that I must do my duty."
Mr. I. A_ Grant, defending, pointed out that there was no evidence that Gray had been making an extraordinary profit. The benefit had largely been passed on to the people who hired his vehicles.
After consulting Gray he asked for three months to pay so that arrangements could be made to sell the business, perhaps by option. The sheriff granted a month, saying that if at the end of that time it could be shown that efforts were being made to pay the fine an extension would be granted.