0-licence refusal seems to outlaw partial flagging out
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• by Mite Jewell Scottish Deputy Traffic Commissioner Richard McFarlane has effectively outlawed the partial flagging out of vehicles by ruling that vehicles specified on a British Operator's Licence must be registered in this country.
McFarlane refused a bid for a new international licence by Turriff-based Market Transport. The company had originally applied for a six-vehicle/six-trailer licence; at the start of the hearing the application was amended to two vehicles and two trailers.
Director Edward Quirie said that following the refusal of interim authority to start operation, he had registered the other four vehicles in Holland and Dutch Community Authorisations had been issued. All six vehicles and trailers would be maintained and serviced in Scotland and would be driven by
drivers living in Scotland, he said. Rut the Deputy TC replied that according to the EC legislation Community Authorisations could only be issued by a member state to a haulier who was established in a member state. It therefore followed that international carriage could only be carried out by a haulier established in a member state and whose vehicles were registered in that member state.
So an international haulier established in Scotland must have his vehicles registered in Scotland, said McFarlane, and that meant Market Transport needed an 0-licence for all of its six vehicles and trailers.
The Deputy TC added that the corn
pany's attempt to get around the refusal of interim authority by registering four of its vehicles in Holland led him to conclude that it was not of good repute.
McFarlane did not accept that Quirie believed that by registering those four vehicles in Holland he could opt out of the 0licensing system, If that was so, he asked, why did he not register all the vehicles in Holland and withdraw the company's licence applicators? He concluded that the company had defied the decision to deny it interim authority and had been operating vehicles without lawful authority to do so.