BRIEFS Loaded by forwarder
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• A Grimsby owner-driver has been fined £1,410 for an overloading offence and orderecl to pay £55 prosecution costs, Frank McClennan pleaded guilty before Macclesfield magistrates to exceeding the permitted second axle and gross weights of his 34-tonne artic.
John Heaton, prosecuting for the Vehicle Inspectorate. said there was a 330. overload on the
second axle even though the train weight was almost dead on the limit. He maintained that such an overload, which would cause damage to the road surface, must have been apparent to the driver.
Defending, Andrew Woolfall said McClennan had been unaware of the overload.
He pointed out that the groupage load had been incorrectly distributed inside the trailer, having all been loaded at the front, and claimed that there would not have been a problem if it had been evenly distributed.
McClennan had left his vehicle to be loaded at freight forwarders in Germany overnight while he took his daily rest, said Woolfall. The load was then sealed for Customs and McClennan had no opportunity of inspecting it.
McClennan was aware from the documentation that the load was within the carrying capacity of his vehicle, and there was nothing to indicate that the vehicle was overloaded from a visual inspection, said Woolfall. He pointed out that there were very few dynamic axle weighers in Germany and that in England there were only nine which were publicly available. Surprisingly, there were none on the English side of the Channel Tunriel,he added.
Woolfall produced cuttings from CM in which hauliers had been given absolute discharges in similar circumstances.
The High Court had laid down that such a course was appropriate where the defendant was morally blameless and had not been negligent, he concluded.