Tache needed
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with a trailer Staff were a problem
Lichfield magistrates gave Northampton-based Peter Nightingale, trading as Premier Car Transport, an absolute discharge for using a vehicle without a tachograph after they heard that a tacho was only required if the vehicle concerned was towing a trailer, as that took it over the 3,000kg threshold. Nightingale admitted the offence. The court was told that he had been stopped while driving a two-axled Mercedes rigid towing a two-axied trailer carrying two cars.
The trailer was rarely used, said Nightingale. When he had previously been stopped by Thames Valley police, a police inspector had told him he only needed to keep a log when he used the trailer, lie had now ceased trading because of the prohibitive cost of installing a tachograph in the vehicle.
Asked whether the police advice had been wrong, traffic examiner Maxwell Brakewell said it was correct that Nightingale needed to keep a record when the trailer was attached—hut it had to be a tachograph record, not a logbook. Without the trailer the Mercedes did not need a tachograph as it weighed less than 3.000kg.
The magistrates ordered Nightingale to pay 165 costs.
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