Sweet Dreams faces nightmare
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Bed manufacturer Sweet Dreams (Nelson)'s appearance at a Leeds
disciplinary inquiry turned into a nightmare when its licence was suspended for seven days. The Burnley-based company, which holds a restricted licence for three vehicles, was called before North Western Deputy Traffic Commissioner Mark Hinchliffe.
Vehicle examiner Philip Harrison said that last November one of the company's vehicles was stopped on the Humber Bridge Approachway and given an immediate prohibition for broken and jagged body parts. During a maintenance investigation in January he examined a loaded vehicle and imposed an immediate prohibition for a flat tyre.
The company had previously been warned about a lack of a drivers' defect reporting system, but there was still none in place and checks showed that maintenance intervals had been extended by up to five months.
Asked if the company was willing to listen and take action, Harrison said: "A vehicle rolled up by appointment and still had defects that were detectable by the driver."
General manager Keith Hudson said that when he took over responsibility for the vehicles at the end of December he had not known what the duties of an HGV operator were. He said the vehicle examiner's criticisms had been taken on board and that he was personally carrying out audits on the drivers' daily walk-round checks.
Suspending the licence, the DTC said that if an operator received a warning letter which was not fully and completely heeded, disciplinary action of some sort was more than likely. The vehicle at the Humber Bridge had been in a dangerous condition which was likely to cause injury.
In many waysthis was a bad case, he added, as the previous warning letter had not been fully heeded— had it not been heeded at all he would have revoked the licence.