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First curs the deepest? Try two in a year...
Page 30
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A SCOTTISH plant-hire firm has had its licence curtailed for the second time in a year for breaking the terms of the original curtailment, imposed in June 2003.
The licence held by George and Brian Hill, trading as Strath Plant Hire, of Forfar, has been cut to two vehicles and three trailers for four months.
The partners, who hold a licence for six vehicles and three trailers, were called before Scottish Traffic Commissioner Joan Aitken at a Dundee disciplinary inquiry. In June 2003 the TC had imposed an identical curtailment for breaches of the hours and tachograph regulations, including false tachograph records. Traffic examiner James Marshall said an examination of tachograph charts revealed that three vehicles had been used during the period of curtailment rather than two. George Hill had explained that they used
the third vehicle, which was not yet specified on the licence, on 13 occasions when one of the specified vehicles was under repair. Two drivers had repeatedly failed to use the mode switch correctly and had worked some very long days with insufficient rest.
Hill said it was sometimes difficult to organise the drivers' days due to customer demands. The FTA had visited three times so far to examine the tachograph charts. Neither he nor his transport manager had understood some of the FTA reports.
The curtailment had been very awkward, he added; it cost them money and they lost contracts.
Curtailing the licence for a second time, the TC said that she took a dim view of the use of the third vehicle. There was little point having the FTA check tacho charts when the drivers were made to sign report sheets which neither they nor the firm understood.
NOT GOOD ENOUGH
There is little point paying for outside analysis unless you understand the data.