Court clears Taylor
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• Ingleton haulier John Taylor and his son Robert have been cleared of an overloading offence by the Bingley magistrates in a case brought by the West Yorkshire Trading Standards Department. For the prosecution it was said that when a 5-axled Seddon Atkinson artic driven by Robert Taylor was check weighed on a plate weighbridge at the Keighley refuse transfer station, it was found that the rear compensating axles were overloaded by 1,470kg — some 7.82%.
Steven Smith, a trading standards weighing officer said that the artic had been too long to fit wholly onto the weighbridge. He agreed with Gary Hodgson, defending, that the weighbridge was on a slope and that the vehicle would have projected either up or downhill.
Hodgson also agreed that that would lead to a discrepancy, but maintained that if the front of the vehicle was down the hill, the rear axle would weigh lighter than its actual weight. He was unable to say what the discrepancy was. Evidence was given by Robert Turner that after he had adjusted the load of stone dust, the vehicle had been reweighed both up and down the hill. When it was weighed up the hill the result showed a lesser weight on the compensating axles than when it was weighed down the hill.
Hodgson argued that the method of weighing had been irregular. It was conceded that the weighbridge was accurate if the whole of the vehicle could be got on to the plate. The prosecution, however, was claiming that there was an error caused by the method of weighing but they could not say what that error was. In such circumstances the court could not be satisfied that the weight limit of the axles had been exceeded.
The magistrates dismissed the charge and ordered that defence costs be paid out of public funds.