No cash so tacho rigged
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• A driver formerly employed by Wrightway Trucking, of Trafford Park, Manchester, claimed before Trafford magistrates that he had been forced to falsify a tachograph chart after the company's managing director refused to give him money for a night away.
Stephen MacLean, of Jetson Street, Abbey Hey, Gorton, pleaded guilty to falsifying a tachograph chart and exceeding the daily driving limit. He was fined £100 with £50 casts.
Prosecuting for the DOT, John Heaton said it was a serious case. MacLean had created a chart and put a false name
on it-360 kiloThey had no money
metres were
involved. There were two charts in the name of S MacLean and one in the name of C MacLean, all in the same handwriting, covering one journey lasting 11 hours 44 minutes. It had been a very feeble attempt to conceal excess driving time.
MacLean said that before the journey began he spoke to Wrightway's managing director, who knew that it was a two-man job. That contract had always previously had two drivers, but he was told the company could not spare another driver, and he was asked to take his son as a labourer. He asked the managing director for night-out money, and he refused, saying that he had to pay it out of his own pocket and claim it back the next week.
He was guilty, said MacLean. but he felt he had been forced into the situation. They had no money for meals or to get bed and breakfast and it was illegal to sleep in the cab of a vehicle without a sleeper cab. He had since left the company because he did not like what was going on.
MacLean alleged that he discovered he had been driving a vehicle for seven months that had no test certificate. He said he got pulled by the police because there was no current excise licence on the vehicle, the tax being two months out of date. He was required to produce the vehicle's documents which was when he discovered there had been no test for seven months.
A second Wrightway driver, Albert Egerton, of 4 Thursfield Drive, Clayton, admitted three offences of falsifying tachograph charts and one of exceeding four and a half hours driving without the required break. He was fined £340 with £75 costs. Egerton said that on the first occasion he had started at Chepstow and forgot to put the chart in the tachograph until he got to the services on the M4. Asked about the other occasions, he said he must have done the same.
Hearing of allegations against a third Wrightway driver was adjourned until late April. Peter Kirkham, of Old Meadow Lane, Hale, Cheshire, is accused of two offences of chart falsification, one of exceeding the daily driving limit and one of exceeding four and a half hours driving without the required break.