Forged records denied • A Barnsley haulier who allegedly forged
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maintenance records and committed drivers' hours offences had his licence revoked at a Leeds disciplinary inquiry.
John Hepworth, trading as J&M Transport, and driver David Jones appeared before North Eastern Traffic Commissioner Keith Waterworth after concern over maintenance and breaches of the hours rules. Hepworth held a national licence for two vehicles and two trailers.
DOT vehicle examiner Anthony Fielding said that a tractor and trailer were given immediate prohibitions after an accident in the Felixstowe area last December. The examiner believed brake defects were due to a lack of routine maintenance. The inspection records for that vehicle appeared to be forgeries, as the maintenance contractors claimed no-one had been in the company's workshops and had not filled in the inspection records.
Denying that the records were forged, Hepworth said the contractors had been "funny" with him as he had owed them money. He had paid them £1,300 in February for work they had carried out.
DOT traffic examiner Timothy Shaw said examination of three months' tachograph charts revealed that both Hepworth and Jones had committed various drivers' hours offences, including driving for 4.5 hours without the required break, exceeding the daily driving limit and taking insufficient daily rest.
Hepworth had been on duty for as long as 29hr 30min and had driven for as much as 17 hours in a day. Nearly 35,000km were unaccounted for and there were many centre-field omissions.
Hepworth said four drivers had failed to return tachograph charts. A lot of the time he had forgotten to change the mode switch to rest. They had been on container work and he never drove for six or seven hours on the trot; where there were two charts for the same day another driver had used his name.
Waterworth decided there was a series of failings that justified the revocation of Hepworth's licence.
He took no action against the HGV driving licences held by Hepworth or Jones after receiving assurances they would follow the drivers' hours rules in future. But he warned that he would not take such a lenient view if there were further problems.