Boss's name costs driver dearly
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Using his employer's name on tachograph charts has cost Lancashire lorry driver Anthony Lees £2,150 in costs.
Lees pleaded guilty to four offences of falsification when he appeared before the Middleton, North Manchester magistrates.
Prosecuting for the Vehicle Inspectorate, John Heaton said the offences had came to light during a routine
check of the tachograph records belonging to Milnrow-based Ashlea Transport On each of the days in question there were two charts. Both were in Lees' handwriting—one in his own name and one in the name of his employer Anthony Leach, who traded as Ashlea Transport.
When interviewed, Leach had denied doing any of the driving or asking Lees to break the law. Instead, he said, Lees would have wanted to get home to his family.
Leach accepted that he was guilty of falling to check the charts thoroughly. During the course of the investigation the prosecution had ruled out the possibility that Leach had told Lees to commit the offences.
For Lees, Ian Mann said that he had previously been an agency driver and had started working for Ashlea in May 1999. Lees had said that the work involved Continental express deliveries and that he had been required to do the impossible. Lees claimed that Leach had told him to put his name on the charts so he could do the necessary driving, which was mainly into Germany.
Lees had not benefited from the offences, Mann added; he had been unable to spend extra time with his children as he had been required to wait for return loads and there was no bonus or enhanced pay. Mann claimed that Leach had benefited as he ought to have employed a second man on the journeys.
Lees had gone along with it as he had been told that he would be sacked if he did not, said Mann. The fact that the handwriting was the same was obvious when the charts were looked at. Leach had suggested to the VI that Lees had been sacked for falling to hand in tachograph charts, but that was not true—he had resigned to spend more time with his children.
The magistrates fined Lees £400 per offence with £150 costs.