Trade plates are no defence
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• A truck being delivered under trade plates should use a tachograph says Hartlepool magistrates court, which last week convicted lorry driver Lawrence Hawkes of failing to employ recording equipment in his vehicle in accordance with the regulations.
After clearing Hawkes' employer, Desborough Haulage of Wellingborough, of causing the infringement, however, the court awarded the driver an absolute discharge.
Evidence was given by a police officer that he had stopped Hawkes' Leyland truck as it had been travelling under trade plates. There had been a current excise licence in the windscreen but no 0-licence identity disc said the officer, and when asked why he had not had a chart in the tachograph, Hawkes replied that he had been using trade plates and therefore had not needed a tachograph.
The prosecution maintained that the law could not be avoided merely by displaying trade plates on a vehicle that had been properly taxed. The company had nothing to say.
Defending, Stephen Kirkbright argued that the differing wording of the hours and tachograph regulations meant that Hawkes had to comply with the hours rules, but need not use a tachograph. The hours regulations referred to "carriage by road", while the tachograph regulations referred to "vehicles used for the carriage of passengers or goods by road". It could not be said that a vehicle under trade plates was "used for the carriage of goods by road" when it was illegal for it to do so.
As far as the employer was concerned, said Kirkbright, the prosecution had to show that Hawkes had been given an express or positive mandate to commit an offence, and there was no evidence whatsoever of any such involvement.