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Magistrates grant conditional discharge for overloading
Page 38
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BUCKINGHAM-BASED Gates & Co escaped with a conditional discharge for 12 months and an order to pay £50 costs after it pleaded guilty to a 17.7% overload before the Oxford magistrates.
Prosecuting for Oxfordshire Trading Standards Department. Tom Edwards said a vehicle belonging to the company and driven by Timothy Coughlan which was carrying building materials was stopped in a check at Watlington Road.
It was taken to the Cowley Marsh weighbridge where it was found lobe overloaded.
For the driver, Mark Gordon said it had been impossible for him to weigh the load on site and he was carrying sand.which could have been wet. Coughlan had in fact left part of his load behind in case he was overloaded and could just as easily have left more material for the second trip. His journey had been barely a quarter of a mile. Chris Butterfield, for the company, said the vehicle concerned was a 3.5-tonne pickup. With such a small vehicle, even a small weight excess led to a large percentage overload. The company had been in business since 1955 with no convictions of any type, even though it operated 10 vehicles.
The driver had been under no pressure to complete the work in a set time and it had been up to him to decide how many journeys were necessary.
He pointed out that if the driver had taken advantage of the statutory defence and gone to the nearest available weighbridge it would have been the Cowley March weighbridge, a much greater distance away than to his destination:The defence would then have enabled the vehicle to travel to the nearest point to unload, which would have been either where it was loaded or its destination.
The magistrates lined Coughlan £150 with £50 costs.