TC didn't trust the director
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The Operator's Licence held by Kilmarnock-based A&D Transport Services has been revoked by Scottish Traffic Commissioner Michael Betts, who disqualified the company and its sole director John Cullen from holding an 0-licence indefinitely.
Traffic examiner David Deacon told the TC that the company which held a licence for six vehicles and seven trailers, had been convicted of two offences of unauthorised use and one of using an untaxed vehicle. Cullen had been convicted of a tachograph offence—a wire had been fitted to stop the tacho working.
Vehicles belonging to Cullen were checked at Belfast in August and at the Forth Road Bridge and Craigavon in September. When asked to produce his charts for April-September 1998, Cullen had claimed he was not operating any vehicles.
Cullen said he personally owned two vehicles which he hired out to DJD in Northern Ireland. He had signed a partnership deal with DJD after A&D won a contract to move food to Northern Ireland.
One of the prohibitions had been issued to a vehicle displaying an 0-licence disc in the name of Kilmaurs Freight Services, which owned and shared A&D's operating centre at Burnside Road.
A conviction for unauthorised use had arisen because Cullen had thought it was legitimate for his drivers to drive to Scotland in one of the vehicles hired to the Irish company while an equivalent A&D vehicle was in Northern Ireland.
Cullen told the TC that after falling out with Kilmaurs Freight Services, A&D had to leave the Burnside Road site in February 1998. He had moved the two specified vehicles into storage at Lugar, near Cumnock, while negotiating with the local authority for a new operating centre.
The vehicles had not been used since, he said, except when a driver took the truck stopped at the Forth Road Bridge without permission after a vehicle on hire to DJD had broken down. He denied that he had been driving the vehicle stopped in Belfast and said the truck checked at Craigavon was one of two on hire to DJD.
Asked why the drivers of three vehicles should all have said they were employed by his company, Cullen said the drivers sometimes got confused because of the close working arrangement with DJD.
Revoking the licence, Betts said there had been a web of confusion, and certainly a failure to tell the whole story. The way the vehicles were mixed around, the convictions, the failure to notify the Traffic Area of the convictions and the fact that the drivers always said they were employed by A&D, led him to conclude that Cullen was not a credible witness.
Betts added that the conviction for having a wire to earth-out the tachograph coloured his view about Cullen's integrity; he concluded that he did not trust him.