When Roe Distribution of Kendal appeared at a Birmingham disciplinary
Page 19
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inquiry, its inability to produce tachograph charts was blamed on the proprietor of a driver agency who has disap peared. The company holds a licence for six vehicles and three trailers based at Ettington, Stratford-upon-Avon.
Last August it was fined £10.000 with £350 costs by Stratford-upon-Avon magistrates after pleading guilty to 92 offences of failing to produce tachograph charts (CM 26 August-1 September).
Traffic examiner William Hutchinson said that an investigation was launched after a member of the public handed in some tachograph charts belonging to Nigel Patterson, trading as NOP Services, which had been left in a pub after Patterson had bra ed that he was fiddling the ministry. Those charts showed that Patterson had been driving excessive hours and falsifying charts while driving as an agency driver for the company, An examination of the company's charts for August and September 1998 revealed that more than 16% of them were missing, representing 188,809km.
For the firm, Michael Carless said there had been two problems. First. Patterson had supplied a number of drivers on an agency basis but had disappeared taking their charts with lin. Second, one driver who had been driving two vehicles in a day had been putting a chart in the tachograph of only one of them.
The firm still used agencies, but they were not paid until the tachograph charts were returned.
Curtailing the licence
to five vehicles and three trailers for two weeks, West Midland IC David Dixon said he wondered how long the situation would have continued had Patterson not boasted in a pub.