£13,844 for hours case
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• Drivers hours and tachograph offences have cost Cumbrian live stock hauliers William Armstrong (Longtown) and 17 of its drivers £13,844 in fines and costs.
The company pleaded guilty to 46 offences of causing and permitting drivers to drive excessive hours and take insufficient rest; failing to secure the return of tachograph charts within 21 days; and failing to produce charts. Carlisle magistrates fined it £2,000 on each of five specimen offences with £94 costs.
Prosecuting for the DOT, Michael Fisher said that the offences had occurred in just a three-week period last autumn. An analysis of the company's tachograph charts for three weeks in October and November 1994 revealed that drivers had been exceeding the permitted hours limits by as much as five hours.
Drivers had run without charts in their tachograph and there some 10,000km could not be accounted for.
For the defence William McKenna, said that the threeweeks concerned were the company's busiest as it had to cover more than 70 livestock auctions. This period accounted for 20% of its annual turnover.
The company denied that drivers had been deliberately allowed to break the rules; the offences had arisen as the system for checking charts and timesheets had been inadequate. A new electronic checking system was now in place which would prevent any recurrence.
Some of the offences could be explained by drivers carrying livestock who wanted to complete their trips without discomfort to the animals.
The drivers were each fined fined between £75 and 050 with £50 costs.