Manager goes after permitting offences
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• by Mike Jewell Permitting drivers to break the drivers hours rules and failing to produce tachograph records have led to Fullers Transport (Slough) being fined 137,200 with £1,500 costs.
The company pleaded guilty before the Solihull magistrates to 17 offences of permitting drivers to exceed the hours limits and to 59 offences of failing to produce tachograph records.
The 10 drivers involved had been ordered to pay fines and costs totalling £5,120 at an earlier hearing after they admitted a series of offences, including the falsification of tachograph records.
Prosecuting for the Vehicle Inspectorate, Beverley Bell said that an examination of the tachograph records at the company's Birmingham depot, covering the months of July, August and September 1998, revealed a whole string of offences.
Managing director Patrick Neyion had denied any knowledge of the situation, Bell added. However, if the Birmingham depot manager had given evidence he would have disputed that this was so.
For the company, Jonathan Lawton said that once the situation became apparent, swift remedial action was taken and the manager responsible was no longer with the company.
The company had done everything it could and had appointed a competent person to run the depot but, for what ever reason, he had failed to follow company instructions.
The majority of the missing charts related to agency drivers and there was a common problem of obtaining charts from agency drivers, said Lawton.
Fining the company, the magistrates said it was unfortunate that this had happened to a company with such a good record and that one man had put up this black mark.
The company is to appeal against the size of the fines.