Cleared on trade plates
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• St Helensbased John K Philips (Haulage Contractors) has been cleared of the misuse of trade plates by the town's magistrates.
However, Philips was fined £20 for failing to display trade plates on the rear of a tractor, and £400 for allowing a second vehicle to be used when the driver failed to operate the mode switch of his tachograph or enter his first name and finishing location on a tachograph chart, and when the tachograph seal was broken.
PC Gary Lyon of Merseyside Police said that he had stopped a Seddon tractor displaying trade plates; both plates were in the front window of the cab. He subsequently interviewed transport manager Graham Amer, who said the tractor had been sent to do a favour for suppliers and was on its way to North Florida Road, Haydock, to move a semi-trailer. No money was to change hands for the job. PC Lyons was unable to say under what authority he had seized the trade plates.
John Backhouse, defending, argued that the firm at North Florida Road was a motor trader and the movement of a vehicle to the premises of another motor trader was one of the permitted uses of trade plates. The use to which it was put at those premises was immaterial.
He said that Philips was concerned that the police had taken possession of the trade plates, which were the property of the DOT. They had to be returned to the DOT on demand, and he could find no authority enabling a police officer to seize them, They had now been returned to Philips, but the company had suffered a financial penalty in that it had been deprived of the use of those plates for a period.
Turning to the other offences, Backhouse said the company had been unaware the driver had failed to display a plate on the rear of the tractor unit. Three of the tachograph offences were committed automatically by the company if they were committed by one of its drivers. As far as the tachograph seal was concerned, Philips tachograph work was carried out by a calibration company and it was not aware the .seal had been put back incorrectly.