Self-employed driver was to blame for overloading • The Vehicle
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Inspectorate dropped an overloading charge brought against Chorley-based Ruttle Plant Hire after evidence was produced before the Rochdale magistrates that the driver of the vehicle concerned was self-employed.
For the VI, John Heaton said that following the High Court decision in the Lex Vehicle Leasing vs West Yorkshire Trading Standards case, it was accepted that in such circumstances the company could not be said to be the user of the vehicle.
However, the magistrates rejected an application for the company's defence costs to be paid out of public funds.
Driver Robert Hodgson was given a conditional discharge for 12 months and ordered to pay £55 costs after admitting using a vehicle when the permitted compensating axle weights were exceeded by 4,880kg (22.1%).
Defending, Andrew Woolfall said that Hodgson was a professional helicopter pilot who ran his own training school but occasionally drove for Ruffle.
He had been asked to move a crane which was loaded by Ruffle's under his supervision. Hodgson had miscalculated the crane's centre of gravity and placed it a little too far forward. It was a complex calculation, said Woolfall, and it came down to a piece of plant being misplaced by a matter of inches. There had been no problem with the combination's train weight.
This had been an abnormal load which had to follow a specified route, Woolfall added. If Hodgson had deviated from the route to check-weigh he would have lost the protection of the Special Types movement order, laying himself open to being charged with a number of offences.
Even if he had been able to deviate from his route, the artic was too long to be weighed on a conventional plate weighbridge.