Restriction taken off
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North Western Deputy Traffic Commissioner Mark Hinchliffe has removed the twovehicle margin on the bone held by Heywood-based Freightbroker Services following a series of convictions, During the past five years the company had been convicted of seven breaches of the Hazchem regulations, one offence of unauthorised use and six offences of overloading.
Freightbroker Services holds a licence for 30 vehicles and 12 trailers; in December the Deputy IC decided to cut the Licence by five vehicles for three weeks after being told that it was operating 25 vehicles. He was subsequently asked to review his decision because a mistake had been made and the company actually had an operational fleet of 28 vehicles.
Director Stephen Dickson said that during the December hearing he had mistakenly said that the company was operating 25 vehicles: there were 25 vehicles in the company's livery but another three ran in a customer's livery. Any encroachment into the operational fleet would have disastrous consequences, he added. The company specialised in the next-day delivery of hazardous chemicals using specially adapted vehicles.
Nobody else in the country did what they did and it would be impossible to subcontract work, said Dickson. Cutting into the operational fleet would cause a great deal of disruption to their customers, who would look elsewhere. He hoped and expected that the company would be seeking to increase the licence authorisation in the future.
Altering his decision, the Deputy IC said that he gave some weight to the fact that this was a specialised operator.
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