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'Friendly firm's five drivers
Page 33
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committed 42 hours offences
Company's licence cut after routine investigation reveals lack of a system to prevent the repetition of driver offences.
FIVE DRIVERS working for a 10-vehicle operation routinely breached the drivers' hours regulations, notching up 42 offences in a twomonth period.The offences resulted in Burton upon Trent-based TH Bird & Sons Haulage having its licence cut from 10 to eight vehicles for four weeks.
The company, which holds a licence for 10 vehicles and 10 trailers, had been called before the West MidlandTraffic Commissioner David Dixon at a Birmingham disciplinary inquiry.
Traffic examiner David Doolan said a routine investigation of the company's tachograph charts forAugust and September 2004 revealed 42 offences by five drivers, including exceeding the daily driving limit, driving for more than 4.5 hours without the required break, failing to use tachograph charts and, in one case, the falsification of tachograph records.
The company could not produce any evidence of tachograph analysis or of any written warnings given to drivers. The drivers had all said that the offences had not been brought to their attention by the company.
Doolan said he had looked at charts for 15 drivers. The company had carried out random checks on samples of the tachograph charts.
He agreed it was not a case of the company causing the drivers to commit offences, but rather the lack of a system to prevent the repetition of offences. Director Craig Bird said the company was operating 10 44-tonne artics working for blue chip companies. Since the traffic examiner's visit the drivers had received training on drivers' hours and tachograph rules from an outside agency. All the tachograph records were now sent for outside analysis and the company had attended an operators' seminar and joined the Road Haulage Association.
Iron rod
The company saw itself as a friendly firm, which did not rule with an iron rod, and drivers were treated as part of the family. A more robust disciplinary procedure, with a penalty point system for infringements, had now been instigated.
The company had grown rapidly over the past three or four years and it had been a steep learning curve with a hard lesson learnt. They had not realised how much information could be gained from a proper analysis of tachograph records. The company culture now was that of a professionally run business where the drivers knew their obligations.
The TC said the drivers had been convicted of 28 offences and the company of permitting 21 of them. It was abundantly clear that, at least until recently, there were no proper systems in place to ensure compliance with the law. The company claimed it was ignorant of what its drivers were doing. •