Williams drivers fined
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• Drivers' hours and tachograph offences have cost 37 TD Williams drivers a total of £3,864 in fines and costs. The company had already been cleared of 80 allegations of permitting drivers to commit offences (CM 1-6 Nov).
The drivers had admitted a total of 157 offences before Llanelli magistrates.
Stephen Kirkbright, defending, said that they were due to either mistakes or the drivers' enthusiasm to get the job done.
Former Williams driver David Iorwerth Jones, of Llangadog, claimed that management had given him charts with false names on and ordered him to put them in his tachograph. He alleged that other charts had been burnt in an office ashtray. He agreed that he had been dismissed on a number of occasions by Williams. Kirkbright said that out of the 125 drivers employed by the company, only two had pleaded guilty to falsifying charts and Jones was the only one making such allegations. The prosecution had not called him as a witness against the company. Timothy Douglas-Jones, for Jones, said that he now had no job and no prospects of one. More sinister, Jones had in his possession two tachograph charts with false names on — the names of other staff who had never left the office.
David Price, Williams transport manager, said Jones took longer to do jobs than other drivers and at times had taken the wrong trailer out.
Jones was fined £240 for five offences of falsification and one of exceeding 41 hours driving without the required break. David Aldridge, of Swansea, was fined £270 for 10 offences of falsification and one 41-hour breach. They were both ordered to pay £25 costs. The other drivers, who admitted offences of failing to use tachographs, excessive hours and insufficient rest, were fined between £20 and £305 each with £.50 costs.