Overloading fines come to 121,000
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• Michael Jewell
Steve Parr Haulage & Plant Hire and six of its drivers have been fined a total of £21,000 for a series of loading offences. The defendants, all of whom denied the charges, were also ordered to pay £15,000 costs.
The company, which is based at Standish near Wigan, was convicted of 98 offences of overloading and 36 offences of using a vehicle with a dangerous load after a two-week hearing before Fleetwood magistrates.
It was fined 116,400 and ordered to pay £12,000 costs.
Constable Graham Robinson of Greater Manchester Police told the court the drivers had been moving spoil from Squire's Gate Airport to a landfill site near Blackpool.
Acting on information that the drivers were breaching hours rules, he examined the tachograph charts and weight tickets from the weighbridge at the site.
It was clear that vehicles were repeatedly being overloaded, he said.
Lancashire trading standards officer Gordon Pickup said that of 165 loads carried over a three-day period in January, only 24 were within the permitted legal weight. Where the excess exceeded four tonnes, he believed the load to be dangerous.
But consultant engineer Alan Widgery, for the defendants, disagreed that overloads of more than four tonnes made the vehicles dangerous, given their design weight and number of axles. Driver Gary Hardingham was fined /1,000 after being convicted of a total of 13 overloading offences and seven dangerous load offences; David Barrow was fined £400 for 10 overloading offences and one dangerous load offence; Andrew Mills was fined £800 for 16 counts of overloading and five dangerous load offences; Gary Jones was fined 1700 for 11 overloading offences and four relating to dangerous loads; Stewart Campbell was fined £1,100 for 13 overloading offences and eight dangerous load offences; Derek Donahue was fined 1600 for 14 overloading offences and four dangerous load offences.
Each of the drivers was also ordered to pay £500 costs.
The company and the drivers are considering appealing against their convictions.