BR's Disregard of obligations
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• A Leicester shire haulage company, said to have blatantly disregarded its Operator Licensing obligations for commercial reasons has had its licence reduced by almost a half.
Hinckley-based JK Transport had been called before Eastern Traffic Commissioner Brigadier Compton Boyd following convictions for drivers hours and tachograph offences and the unauthorised use of vehicles (CM 17-23 July).
In May the company pleaded guilty before Leicester magistrates to sample offences of permitting drivers to exceed the hours' limits and take insufficient rest, of failing to produce tachograph charts and of the unauthorised use of vehicles, It was ordered to pay fines and costs totalling £2,600. An examination of its tachograph charts in January revealed wholesale breaches of the drivers' hours rules and the use since last September of 12 to 13 vehicles not specified on the licence.
Cutting the authorisation on the company's licence from 11 vehicles and four trailers to six vehicles and four trailers, and refusing its application for an additional live vehicles and four trailers, Brigadier Boyd said it was a company that had allowed its commercial aspirations to dominate the way it conducted its affairs to the extent it had blatantly disregarded its obligations.
The company claimed to have put its house in order but the level of its misconduct was on a significant scale.
There had been a whole raft of drivers' hours and tachograph offences and the constant use of unauthorised vehicles. He could find no real mitigating circum stances. The fact that all was now apparently well was a comforting thought but it hardly qualified as a redeeming feature to explain past actions.
However, said the commissioner, he had decided to give the company one last chance but it had been a close-run thing and its repute had been greatly