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8th February 2001
8th February 2001
Page 1
Page 1, 8th February 2001
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Page 6

DRUGS CHARGE A Walsall driver has appeared in court charged

with attempting to smuggle cannabis worth £8m into the UK. Leslie lambs, of Bloxwich. was arrested after 2,500kg of cannabis...

Hi Court sees first major challenge on penalty fines

io by Guy Sheppard The first major challenge to the appeals procedure for hauliers caught bringing illegal immigrants into the...

Straw gets tougher on asylum • Help for hauliers who

risk unwittingly carrying stowaways across the Channel could come from the unlikely source of Home Secretary Jack Straw. He is...

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Managers cut costs by subbing out to Europe

• by Guy Sheppard One in ten fleet managers has subcontracted all or part of their operations to the Continent in a bid to...

Salvesen blames diesel costs

• Christian Salvesen, the Northants-based logistics group, has issued a profits warning blaming the high price of diesel for...

ANC pays costs of Rapid decline

• A firm acting on behalf of a former ANC franchise which collapsed following an expansion has been awarded almost £200,000....

EC plans driver refreshers

• Hauliers wit be forced to ensure that even experienced drivers have 35 hours of retraining every five years, if a proposal...

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Corus cuts threaten hundreds of lost jobs

by Melanie Hammond Hauliers are likely to axe hundreds of jobs following the announcement that Britain's biggest steel maker is...

HFA meets Lord Whitty

• East Anglian members of the Hauliers and Farmers Alliance were due to meet with transport minister Lord Whitty yesterday...

Stowaways try out other routes

• More than 500 would-bestowaways were detained in just one week near the perimeter of the French Eurotunnel site last...

Debts disqualify director

• A former haulage boss has been banned from acting as a company director for five years after running up debts of more than...

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Moves to beat 48hr rule could be costly

by Miles Brignall Hauliers who plan to beat the Working Time Directive by sacking their drivers before offering them...

Another fine mess

All reasonable checks made; all documents in order; no question of prior knowledge—and a £22,000 fine for bringing illegal...

Former Caricold manager moves on to Norfolk Line

• Pat Clinton, the former transport manager of collapsed Scottish haulier R&M Chillspeed, and director of new firm Cadmic:I...

020 8652 3689

We like to hear the stories readers think we should be following. CM is happy to preserve the anonymity of readers who provide...

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Tribunal stands firm over non-EC drivers

• by Mike Jewell A Turkish-owned company which was stripped of its Operator's Licence after employing Turkish non-EC-qualified...

P&O pay offer

• Drivers working on P&O Trans-European's fuel distribution contract with Shell have voted on a 5% pay increase over two years,...

RNA defends procedures si The Road Haulage Association has hit

back after Eastern Traffic Commissioner Geoffrey Simms criticised its membership application procedures. Simms' comments came...

Council plans target truckers' rat-runs

• A Gloucestershire county councillor has unveiled plans to stop all the county's lanes and sideroads being used as rat-runs....

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Scottish fish firms go

• by Dominic Perry A long-standing Scottish fish haulier has gone out of business leaving 10 drivers facing redundancy and...

Handley arrested at milk depot blockade

• Former leader of the People's Fuel Lobby David Handley has been arrested in a picket-line clash where farmers blockaded milk...

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Checks expose rise in vehicle defects

a by Pate Swingler A recent crackdown on commercial vehicle safety by police forces, Vehicle Inspectorate and Customs and...

German driver nearly impaled

a A German truck driver who fell asleep at the wheel was almost spiked to death in a crash that left his truck dangling off a...

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Speedy Scania hits the as...

How it works The first phase of Scania's UK alternative-fuel programme gives a new lease of life to one specific model, the...

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Life's a gas for the users

Initially, Scania and its partners are only targeting fleets with 30 vehicles or more on single sites, and they'll need to be...

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DHL bans LPG from Transits after fires

a by Peter Lawton Parcels giant DHL has banned the use of LPG in its converted Transit fleet after three engine fires. The...

Renault's dCi engine hits UK

• Renault VI's all-new 90hp common rail engine Is now available in the In for the 3.5-tonne Master range (CM2127 Sept 2000)....

VW holds its tongue about LIN buy-up

• Volkswagen is refusing to confirm reports that it has progressed significantly in its bid to buy Daewoo's stake in LDV....

Backers please

MI The designer of a wheel retention system is looking for backers for his patented system. Mick Predeth reckons his design...

New shape Fiat Punta

• The new shape Fiat Punta Is now on sale in the UK. Fiat is boasting a range of improvements over the outgoing model including...

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ONE MORE

While warning Caerphilly Building Supplies about vehicle maintenance, Welsh TC David Dixon increased the company's 0-licence...

Haulier stretched the rules

A haulier who encouraged his drivers to stretch the rules has lost his Operator's Licence after tech° charts revealed that 120...

Complacency sees 0-licence trimmed

ci A Merthyr Tydfil haulage firm has had its licence authorisation cut after its vehicles attracted nine prohibitions in five...

TC unperturbed

St Helens tipper operator Kealshore has appeared before North Western Traffic Commissioner Beverley Bell after four vehicles...

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Transport data on the Internet

• You can now check out all kinds of legal information at www.roadtransport.net—the web site operated by Commercial Motor,...

No proof of overloading

Oswestry haulier David Ford, and one of his drivers, have been cleared of overloading offences after Magistrates found there...

IC slams low pass rates

A haulage firm which admitted its average first time pass rate at the annual test was just 10% has been issued with a formal...

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GET OUT OF THE WAY!

On the Edge (CM25-31Jan) about hard shoulder breakdown work had particular significance to me as an HGV driver, as I have long...

PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY My eye was caught by the headline "Drivers

face ban for a half-pint of bitter" (CM25-31 January). I was somewhat shocked to read that an alcohol limit of 0.2mg of alcohol...

DON'T SIGN ANYTHING

I have been reading in your issue (CM25-31January) the concern about speeders losing the right to silence. My view is that...

POST IT!

Readers of your helpful articles on drugs and driving (CM25-31 Jan) may like to know that the Road Operators Safety Council...

JUST DON'T SPEED!

Regarding the right to silence (CM25-31January) your story is a fair statement of the current position and, despite Messrs...

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By our Northern Correspondent Eric Strongitharm

Oswaldtwistle. Acrimony is rife throughout the legendary "Iron Works", home of Spagthorpe Motor Company, following the shock...

Ambassador. with these free drinks you're really spoiling us...

The launch of the European Ambassador, P&,0 Irish Sea's new 123-truck-capacity ferry, was marked by a celebratory voyage...

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SMALL VANS TESTERS' CHOICE PEUGEOT PARTNER

by Peter Peter Lawton Commercial Motor didn't have much in the way of light vehicles to try out until June, when we got the...

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PANEL VANS TESTERS' CHOICE FORD TRANSIT 350 IWO I

E by Kevin Swallow Could it be that Slade's little ditty swung it for Ford? An endearing notion, maybe, but you've seen the...

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PICKUPS AND 4x4s TESTERS' CHOICE FORD RANGER 2.50 4xl

IN by Peter Lawton The 4x4 off-road sector is a bit of a niche market, so it's not particularly surprising that we only tested...

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RIGIDS

TESTERS' CHOICE CHOICE RENAULT MIEN le by Conn Barnett The five contenders here range from the plain-vanilla. do-anything Daf...

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TIPPERS

TESTERS' CHOICE SCANIA P114 8x4 m by Kevin Swallow The obvious test for this category would be to ask Bob the Builder which of...

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TRACTORS TESTERS' CHOICE MAN IG-A 410 XI

• by Toby Clark 2000 was not a big year for tractor testi ) ..rig in terms of quantity—only four new . nits passed through our...

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Direct action can be a two-edged sword

I t's not easy to make hauliers desperate enough to take to the streets, particularly when such action cost s them money and...

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To strike or not to strike?

A ny striking employee is almost certainly in breach of his contract of employment. The trade union which organises a strike...

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Demonstrations and the criminal law

J ust as hauliers have no immunity from liability to economic torts, they have no immunity from the criminal law. Simply...

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Wheel retention and spray suppression are fundamental safety issues which

no road transport operator can ignore. Sudden wheel loss can be fatal; spray suppression improves safety for truck drivers and...

Wheel retention systems

The Society of Operations Engineers (SOE)—previously the Institute of Road Transport Engineers—spearheaded the 1980s'...

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The law requires hauliers to ensure that their drivers are

fully rested before they get behind the wheel, but that is not always easy to do. The prosecution of two tired firefighters...

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PLEASE!

As it stands, the Working Time Directive will take effect for drivers in Britain in 2004. From that date they are likely to be...

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• Dave French, transport manager at Hastings-based R French and

Son, is not quite as cheery as Baker. The firm runs 21 trucks, including skip lorries, tippers and artics. It also operates a...

The long and winding road...

The European Union and the Working Time Directive. • The legislative process within the European Union can be painfully slow....

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lard to

Iswa ow Although motorway service areas were p leared of charges of profiteering by he Office of Fair Trading, they stand...

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d The facts are simple. Even if road tax was slashed to

zero, it represents such a small proportion of our overall running costs that it could never address our real problem of fuel...