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Overloading penalty
Page 22
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• E &J Meeks has had its South Wales licence — for 40 trucks and 50 trailers based at Newport — cut so that it now expires next June.
The Northamptonshire-based firm appeared before South Wales Licensing Authority John Mervyn Pugh in Cardiff following three overloading convictions and several prohibition notices. Meeks appeared at public inquiries in South Wales in 1982 and 1986.
For Meeks, John Backhouse said the convictions had related to axle overloads and not to gross overloads. Steps had been taken to educate drivers about overloading, and warning letters were posted on the company notice board.
Mervyn Pugh said that putting letters on the notice board was valueless and the mitigation that these were not gross overloads did not wash.
Group fleet engineer John Hudson did not believe that any of the defects constituted a danger. He agreed that he had heard of the system of maintenance recommended in South Wales, but admitted that though the drivers had defect books Meeks did not operate a daily defect reporting system. He admitted that though drivers had received letters pointing out their responsibilities, they were not in duplicate.
Hudson said that the maintenance of the vehicles was controlled from the main base at Kirby, using wall charts with lists faxed to the depots, Asking why other companies could control their drivers when Meeks could not, Mervyn Pugh said he was saddened to see that the Meeks livery was nowhere near as smart as it had been.
Hudson said that since the Meeks family had sold out, the new Swedish owners had increased the average age of the fleet. It had been a difficult year, he said.
Directing that the renewal of the company's licence be heard at public inquiry, Mervyn Pugh said that Hudson was clearly working hard to get matters right. In the nine months before the licence ran out he would like Meeks to have all of its South Wales fleet put through the MoT test.