Doubt over weighbridge
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• Leyland magistrates cleared Hoddesden, Herts-based RLC Services of an overloading offence, but they found its driver guilty and ordered him to pay 2125 in fines and costs.
The company and driver Peter Boon denied using a vehicle with a front axle overload.
Traffic examiner Ian Webster said that when a two-axled Scania was checked at the Salmesbury dynamic axle weighbridge its first axle was found to be 1,150kg over its 6,500kg permitted weight. However the gross weight of the vehicle, 16,640kg, was comfortably within its permitted limit of 17,000kg.
Boon said that he had asked the loader to move the packs of bricks back from the headboard tt ensure the weight was evenly distributed.
Questioned by Jonathan Lawton, defending, Webster said that he had not made any enquiries about the weight of the load. He agreed that the unladen weight of the vehicle was 7,320kg.
Boon said the load had weighed 7,500kg. Lawton said that there was clearly a discrepancy in the weights. If the bricks had weighed 7,500kg, and that was added to the unladen weight of the vehicle, the total was substantially less than the gross weight alleged by the prosecution. There had not been any evidence from the traffic examiner who had operated the weighbridge, and there was no indication that its accuracy had been checked since October 1989.
The Code of Practice required regular accuracy checks at not less than six monthly intervals.
The magistrates fined Boon £50 and ordered him to pay £75 costs, but they ordered the company's defence costs be paid out of public funds.