Stobart driver gets two-year discharge
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• Eddie Stobart driver Duncan Robinson, who admitted falsifying a tachograph chart, was given a conditional discharge for two years before Crewe magistrates.
Robinson, from Carlisle, also pleaded guilty to failing to produce tachograph records for the last day of the previous week. For that offence he was fined 130 and ordered to pay £35 costs.
He told magistrates he left the chart in his vehicle, being unaware that he was going to be put on a different vehicle the following week. When he arrived at work on the Monday morning, the other driver had already left and he had been unable to recover the chart.
For Robinson, John Backhouse said the circumstances of the false record offence were that Robinson had started his journey at 05:10hrs. He arrived at Corby and removed the chart. He then found out that he could load that night if he wanted. He forgot to put the chart back in the tachograph. As there were three parts to the load, and he was concerned that his vehicle should not be overloaded, Robinson chose to run his vehicle over the weighbridge, after each part was loaded.
The total driving time was no more than 20 minutes, said Backhouse, and a minimal distance was travelled on the road. Robinson carried the odometer reading forward from the previ. ous day's tachograph chart, instead of taking it from the machine, and that was why there was no gap between the readings on the two charts.