Alford to pay £1,175
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• The falsification of tachograph records cost South Humberside haulier Graham Alford and two lorry drivers, plus a yard shuntman employed by his sole customer a total of £1,695 when they appeared before the Grimsby magistrates.
Alford who trades as Graham Alford Transport of LAceby admitted six offences of falsifying tachograph charts and 41 offences of aiding and abetting the drivers to falsify charts. The drivers were Stephen Strange of Doncaster who admitted six offences of falsifying charts and six offences of aiding and abetting and William Cooke of Doncaster who admitted 30 offences of falsifying charts and five of aiding and abetting. The yard shuntrnan, Thomas Smith, of Grimsby admitted five offences of falsifying charts.
Prosecuting for the North Eastern traffic area Michael Broome said the offences which came to light as a result of information received related to a fleet of three articulated vehicles operated by Mr Alford. Tachograph charts had been created in the names of people who had not done the work. When the drivers ran out of time on a daily and a weekly basis they made charts in other people's names.
Strange and Cooke were employed by Afford. Smith had been employed by Alford's sole customer Norfreight Limited. When interviewed Smith had said that when Alford had found his drivers were running out of time he had asked him to fill in a number of blank charts.
Defending, Ian Rothera said Afford had originally been employed as a lorry driver by a firm working for Norfreight. When he was made redundant Norfreight agreed that he could work for them as an owner driver.
Alford was keen to keep his sole customer happy and was anxious to take on all the work offered. During the miners strike Norfreight were unable to rely upon their normal hauliers and the work given to Alford built up.
It had not been a case where Alford had been gaining a commercial advantage over other operators by falsifying charts as the other operators had not wanted the work.
The offences had started off unwittingly; they had snowballed and got out of hand.
Alford was fined 225 per offence, a total of 21,175, Strange £10 per offence, a total of 2140, Cooke £10 per offence, a total of 2330 and Smith 210 per offence, a total of 250.