TC rejects plot claim
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436 • The three vehicle licence held by West Bromwich based Jyote Haulage was revoked after West Midland Traffic Commissioner David Dixon rejected sworn affidavits by the firm's proprietor and transport manager that two vehicles had not been used.
The Commissioner also disqualified Jyote's proprietor, Narinder Kaur, and her transport manager and brother, Jatindor Singh, from holding or obtaining an 0-licence for 12 months.
They had both made sworn statements that the vehicles had not been used between 1 March 1997 and 1 January 1998.
Traffic examiner Patricia Earp said that on 17 September she had seen the two vehicles laden with sand entering the VHE construction site in Wolver hampton. Kaur was subsequently convicted for using the vehicles without tax and for failing to produce tachograph records.
For the firm, Tim England said the only feasible explanation was that the two vehicles were carrying number plates, which were very easy to produce, that linked them to Jyote Haulage while the Jyote vehicles were elsewhere.
Maintaining that the lorries were parked up in the yard that clay, Singh said there were a lot of operators in the Wolverhampton area with red Foden tippers with aluminium bodies. They had been fined nearly £6,000 for something they had not done, he added.
Singh claimed that when lorries were parked in the yard with full annual certificates some people would try to use their registration numbers on vehicles that were not properly tested. He said there had been a problem with another tipper operator over a contract. He had told one of Jyote's dri vers that he would make sure Jyote was not running around for long. All this had arisen within months of that threat. They had never been in such trouble before.
Holding that both Kaur and her brother were not of good repute, the C,ommissioner said he did not accept their version of events. There was no reason to doubt the evidence of the traffic examiner and there was no evidence at all of a plot against Jyote Haulage. In his view, the vehicles were being used at the time.