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RDG admits breaches
Page 20
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• Pines totalling c.8,170 were imposed on three members of the Russell Davies Group, after they admitted breaching tachograph regulations and failing to produce drivers' timesheets at Felixstowe Magistrates.
Russell Davies Haulage, Russell Davies Europe and Russell Davies UK admitted a total of 56 specimen offences of being the employers of drivers using tachographs incorrectly and three of failing to produce timesheets. They asked for 95 other offences to be taken into account. Earlier, this year 59 drivers employed by the three companies were fined more than 28,000 by magistrates, after admitting a variety of offences (CM 1-7 March and 29 March-4 April).
John Everitt, prosecuting, said that checks were carried out on Russell Davies vehicles during three weeks in April and May 1989. The offences became obvious when the vehicle sitings were compared with tachograph charts obtained from the three companies.
In many cases drivers had worked during their rest periods, loading and unloading containers in Felixstowe Docks. It appeared that Russell Davies was only employing two shunters on the docks at that time, when at least six were needed to service a fleet of 50 vehicles. Large numbers of drivers were caught working well into their rest periods, representing a considerable saving to Russell Davies. It was also clear that some drivers had interfered with their tachographs, by pulling fuses and so on to hide any discrepancies.
For Russell Davies, Michael Gotelee said that none of the companies in the Group had any previous convictions for tachograph offences. He said the offences stemmed from the fact that the tachograph analysis agency the company used had failed to pick up missing kilometres on the charts.
There had been no intention to deceive anyone or to gain any advantage, said Gotelee. The Group was concerned the situation did not recur and so in conjunction with the research department of Stirling University, it has devised its own computerised system for checking charts at a cost of about 225,000.
The chairman of the magistrates said operators should structure work so that drivers were not put in a position where it was almost inevitable that they would breach the regulations.