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Trucks suspended while their drivers are properly trained
Page 37
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Company which delayed implementing driver training programme has vehicles suspended so it will have plenty of time for half-day courses.
DESPITE A WARNING last December after numerous offences were discovered, a container company took five months to implement a training programme on drivers' hours and tachograph regulations. Now 15 vehicles and nine trailers have been suspended from its licence !Or three rolling periods of five days for training to he carried out.
The offences included hours and tachograph breaches and the falsification of tachograph records. Felixstowe-based Gipping Container Services holds a licence for 45 vehicles and 65 trailers based at Liverpool and Manchester. The company faced North Western Traffic Commissioner Beverley Bell.
The TC was told the company's tachograph records forJuly 2004 revealed a series ofoffences by nine of the 27 drivers based at Liverpool and Manchester. There was no evidence that the company was causing or permitting offences. The false records were not due to fuse pulling or electrical interference, but were cases of running without a chart in the tachograph for distances of up to 59km
Fleet expansion
MD and transport manager Hussein Ahmed said that towards the end of 2003 the company had taken over a firm called FTS, increasing the fleet from six to 20 vehicles in the North West. It was currently operating 30 vehicles and planned further expansion. Initially the firm's tachograph records had been checked by Liverpool-based director lain Simber, but because of the number of vehicles being added to the licence it was decided last June to send the charts for outside analysis.
It was difficult to discipline drivers until the court cases were concluded and they had needed to know the nature of the offences before launching a training programme. That training was delayed because of the need to educate the drivers about the Working Time Regulations, but it had now taken place (CM 30June). The TC said that the business had grown too quickly. It had taken five months for it to implement a simple half-day training session on the driver's hours and tachograph rules.
Assertion rejected
She rejected the company's assertion that it could not train its drivers until it knew the outcome of the prosecutions or until it knew the scale of the problem.The company was put on notice that it had a problem in December 2004 and there had been nothing to prevent it from taking its own steps to find out the extent of the problem at that time.
Furthermore, its excuse of waiting for the Working Time Regulations to come into force had proved to be irrelevant.
The failures were about training, monitoring and effectiveness. Orders for curtailment or revocation would not achieve the objectives. Instead, this would be achieved by a period devoted to driver training with subsequent monitoring and the establishment of continuous and effective control without external customer and operational pressures.
She considered it appropriate to make an order for suspension of the vehicles operated under the licence for a rolling period to allow the drivers to be trained and the company's systems to be reviewed and monitored. a