Chart drivers blame bosses
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• Officials of NE Transport & Plant Hire (Broughty Ferry) Ltd may face criminal proceedings after some of its drivers told police they were forced to falsify tachograph charts.
This was said by the prosecution during a Carlisle Magistrates Court hearing last week in which nineteen NE drivers were ordered to pay more than £7,000 in fines and costs after admitting the falsification of tachograph charts.
The Beattock, Dumfriesshire company held tipper contracts in the UK and mainland Europe. The offences, which the prosecution said were committed to cover up drivers' hours abuses, were detected when police stopped a vehicle and then went on to seize tachograph charts and found 161 to be false.
Driver Alistair Kettles of Balbeggie said : "I just did what the job required... If I had not would not have had a job. In two years I saw a lot of people getting sacked for not doing it. It was not a crime of choice."
The case involving one driver, currently in hospital, was adjourned until December and a warrant for the arrest of another, Martin Trundle, of Carlisle., was issued after he failed to turn up at the hearing.
The drivers were fined between £150 and £4150 with £35 costs.