Fitters missed VI training
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311, Three vehicles have been suspended from the licence held by Isle of Wight haulier
George Jenkins for two weeks after he broke an undertaking to send maintenance staff on a Vehicle Inspectorate training course.
However, Western Traffic Commissioner Christopher Heaps granted Jenkins application to increase his licence authorisation from 25 vehicles and 50 trailers to 34 vehicles and 56 trailers from the end of the suspension period.
Vehicle Inspectorate area manager Bob Tingay reported a series of immediate and delayed prohibitions on Jenkins' vehicles for defects including brake faults, missing driveshaft bolts and loose wheelnuts.
For Jenkins, James Backhouse said that since January 1998 a total of 163 vehicles had been examined by the VI with 12 or 14 prohibitions being issued, which amounted to 7-8% of the vehicles stopped. That compared with 9-10% of the 194 vehicles stopped at the time of the last public inquiry.
Tingay, however, expressed concern about the number of avoidable prohibitions, saying he felt that the prohibition rate could have been cut to 4-5%.
Vehicle examiner Roger Britton said that Jenkins had a forward planning system and there were adequate maintenance facilities and staff, Jenkins said that in future trailers based on the mainland at the Blue Circle Cement depot at Westbury would be maintained by a local agent on a fourweekly cycle. A transport manager was being appointed at the Isle of Wight depot to take control of maintenance. Wheelnut mark era were being used to
identify when wheels had been replaced to ensure that they were tight, and a system had been introduced in which the fitters checked each other's work.
Asked about his failure to comply with the undertaking given at the previous public inquiry, Jenkins said that a senior fitter had been lined up to join the business but had let him down. He had found a basic fitter after that and since then they had been trying to get his vehicles tested a month before their expiry dates, which had caused extra work.
He undertook to send the new transport manager on a VI course by the end of July and to have three other fitters attend courses before Christmas.
Suspending the three vehicles, the TC said there had been a clear breach of the undertaking given at the public inquiry just over a year ago. The whole system depended upon TCs being able to rely upon undertakings given by operators.