Finance and repute questioned
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4% • Despite "tarnished" repute and finance sufficient for only one vehicle, Rodney Bunce, trading as T Smith Transport of Walthamstow has been granted an international licence. But South Eastern & Metropolitan Deputy Traffic Commissioner John Stevenson heard . at a Westminster public inquiry that Bunce had amended his application for two vehicles and trailers to one of each.
Stevenson said Bunce had to have reserves of £2,400 per vehicle before he could be granted an international licence.
Bunce's fitness to hold a licence was questioned at the hearing as Bunce had been transport manager of M J Fuels, which went into liquidation in July 1991. In February 1992, while trading as T Smith Transport, he was convicted of unauthorised use and the fraudulent use of a licence disc belonging to MJ Fuels.
A traffic examiner said Bunce told him that two of his vehicles were seized by the Customs & Excise, one in March 1991 and the other in May 1991. Bunce said he had been acquitted. He had held his own licence between 1975 and 1983. He was then employed as a driver by Edwin Shirley Transport for about three years and had a clean record.
He went to work for MJ Fuels in about 1985 and was never a director or shareholder of that company. At the time of the convictions, he was hiring a vehicle of his own to MJ Fuels. The drivers were not paid properly, he added and another company offered him a contract for one load and that was when the vehicle got stopped. The vehicle was his but the driver was an employee of MJ Fuels.
Questioned by the Deputy Commissioner, Bunce said Customs had been watching him for six months. They came into the yard, confiscated his vehicles and shut down his business, accusing him of using rebated fuel, but he was later cleared. He was now suing Customs & Excise.
Granting a licence after seeing a building society account, Stevenson said he was satisfied Bunce met the financial requirements, but only in relation to one vehicle.