Diesel theft costs £3,500 plus service
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• Stoke-on-Trent lorry driver Norman Coventry has been ordered to do 200 hours cornmunity service after admitting stealing over £.9,000 worth of diesel from his employer, Quantock Transport, Appearing at Mold Crown Court Coventry, of Victoria Road, Hanley, pleaded guilty to six counts of the theft of diesel and to two counts of falsifying tachograph charts. He was ordered to pay £3,500 costs.
Prosecuting, Derek Halbert said that Coventry would fill his vehicle with fuel and drive to the premises of customers he had for the fuel. They would syphon it off and he would refuel his vehicle at the next convenient point.
Auditors found a deficit of about 1,000 gallons of fuel per
month worth about £150 a gallon, making the deficit about £9,000 over a six-month period.
Last February Coventry was watched by police as he filled his tractor and drove to an industrial estate three kilometres away. He returned to the depot shortly afterwards, coupled up his trailer and drove to the diesel pump.
The falsification of the tachograph charts came to light when police analysed the records. It seemed that a fuse had been pulled.
For Coventry, Andrew Lowcock said the chart falsification took place because Coventry had run out of hours. As far as the theft was concerned, there was nothing that could be said.
Recorder Geoffrey Still said these were serious offences, easy to commit and difficult to detect. It was the sort of offence that invariably led to a defendant going to prison "without their feet touching".
I Iowever, Coventry was a man of previous good character and standing in the community. He had had the present case hanging over his head for nearly two years and had suffered medically from the stress.
Quantock Transport was a firm of high repute but it seemed to him that the court might be dealing with a lesser situation if the systems that were now in operation to prevent such theft had been in operation at the time.