Tacho charts 'went in bin'
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Fullers Logistics, a limited company formed by merging Fullers Transport (Slough) with Fullers Warehousing, has to wait to see if West Midland Traffic Commissioner David Dixon is prepared to grant it a licence in his area.
The company had applied for a licence for 15 vehicles and 18 trailers based at Solihull. The IC was concerned about the company's repute because Fullers Transport (Slough) had been ordered to pay fines and costs of £38,700 after admitting 17 offences of permitting drivers to exceed hours limits and 55 offences of failing to produce tachograph records ( CM 5-14 July).
Neylon considered that the missing charts had been more down to administrative ineptitude at the depot rather than anything deliberate.
For the company, Jonathan Lawton said the management responsible for the depot had allowed Woodall to run it in a way that illegally maximised the number of hours the drivers were to work. Slater and Wedlake must have been aware of what was going on to some extent but made no mention of it to other board
members, who were assured that everything was all right.
The agency driver had been so horrified by what he was asked to do that he complained, saying Woodall was offensive and abusive to the drivers, telling them that if they did not do the assigned work they would be shown the door. The drivers had been put under phenomenal pressure to work illegal hours, said Lawton. Neither the company nor its drivers had previously been convicted of a single offence. Then Woodall arrived and within a short time he created mayhem.
Driver David Swirling said they were told the depot had to make an amount of money or it would be closed. Woodall had been on their backs all the time.
arrived n a short created hem.
Admitting he had worked 23 hours on one day, driver David Howe said Woodall had said not to worry about the tachograph charts as they just went in the bin.
Conceding that these were serious offences, Lawton asked the IC to note the speed and efficiency of Fullers' response.
Dixon reserved decision on the company's application. He suspended the NOV driving entitlement of nine of the drivers for between three and five days.