Loose brake bolts cost haulier £100
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)erbyshire haulier has been fined £100 after pleading guilty beBarnsley Magistrates on January 9, to using a vehicle with kes that had been improperly maintained.
or the prosecution it was said t a six-wheeler belonging to 1:rabtree Ltd of New Mills was pped in a roadside check on Dtember 15. An examination ealed that the bracket which d the brake actuator to the b axle on the nearside front eel had come adrift because four securing bolts were 3sing.
ividence was given by the npany's foreman fitter that he d carried out a routine )nthly inspection of the licle on September 2 and had usted the brakes all round.
he vehicle had worked on ht days since that inspection, averaging 180/200 miles per day and the driver had not reported any problem with the brakes.
The fitter could not understand how the bolts had come out since it was impossible to tamper with them as the hub would have to be dismantled to slacken two of the bolts.
The bolts had not been found so he was unable to say whether they had been stripped or failed in any. way.
The driver said he had completed two trips to Barnsley from Manchester and was on the return journey on the second when he was stopped in the check. When he applied the brakes, he heard a loud noise and found that the part was loose.
He had been using the brakes regularly during the course of that day and the nearside front brake could not have been in that state earlier. For the company, John Backhouse said that when the bolts were replaced the vehicle had been taken into a Department of Transport test station where it passed inspection, which showed that the general standard of maintenance was good.
The company, he said, had done everything possible to ensure that its vehicles were kept in good condition, and it would be wrong for any penalty to be imposed in such circumstances.