Stobart drivers fined
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• Twenty-eight drivers employed by Carlisle haulier Eddie Stobart are to pay nearly £12,000 fines and costs for falsifying tacho• graph records.
Following a two-year investigation by Cheshire Police the drivers appeared before Crewe Magistrates last week to plead guilty to specimen counts of falsifying tachograph records between March and December 1990.
Reginald Motley of Great Gonerby, Lincs—said by the prosecution to be manager of Stobart's Woolfox depot—was charged with aiding and abetting the drivers to falsify the records, as were traffic planners John Davies and Trevor Pullen, both of Grantham. The magistrates decided that these charges were so serious that they should be dealt with at a Crown Court. Commital proceedings will begin in August Motley denies he was W'oolfox depot manager at the time the offences took place.
A number of methods were used to falsify the charts. False names were inserted on records and the tachographs' electrical supplies were interfered with so they showed rest periods when the vehicles were being driven.
Defending, Martin Bloom said that Eddie Stobart was making deliveries to supermarkets such as Gateways and Sainsbury's which would look for another haulier if deliveries were late.
There was no effective level of control to ensure the rules and regulations were being complied with, he added, but the organisation was now vastly different to 1990 and this sort of thing would not happen again.
Warrants were issued for the arrest of three other drivers who failed to appear before the court.
Eddie Stobart is recruiting 90 staff at Kingstown. Carlisle after winning a £1.5m pick-and-pack contract with an unnamed food and drinks giant