Safety storm over
Page 6
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
• Lorries which lay wrecked under water for eight weeks after the Zeebrugge ferry disaster are being rebuilt and sold — even though the former owner of one of the trucks has called them "deathtraps".
The vehicles were sold for scrap by the Belgian authorities, but many of them have been restored and bought by hauliers for as much as £11,000 each. Several of them are still equipped with their original tyres and brakes, it was revealed this week.
Roger Stringer, boss of Stringer Transport of Ampthill, Bedfordshire, owned one of the lorries which sank with the Herald of Free Entetprise. He says that Colchester dealer Brian Palmer had bought the Scania from a Continental insurance firm which was offering four of the salvaged trucks for sale. "I am dumbfounded that they should be back on the road. My lorry was submerged in salt water. It still has the original tyres, and they will be useless," says Stringer.
"This lorry could still pass its MOT. The defects will not show up until it is freighted up with a trailer and travelling down the motorway at 60mph. Then the tyres will explode. The truck must also have corroded linings and the aluminium on the brakes will be thrown. It is a potential deathtrap."
Stringer, whose lorry driver brother-in-law Barry Sopp died in the disaster, learned that Palmer had his lorry when he visited Palmer's depot looking for another Scalia. Stringer says: "He told me he had another of my lorries — the one on the ferry. I said "you must be joking". I presumed he was using it for scrap.
Palmer says that he bought four vehicles from the Herald. Two Volvo FL1Os were sold to a Sheffield dealer, Whiting and Biggins. Director Kenneth Biggins says they were then sold to another dealer: "They were certainly capable of being put back on the road," says Biggins.
Palmer sold another Mercedes 1633, for which he had paid 26,500, to Norwich haulier R&M International for scrap. Stringer's Scania, which he bought from a Dutch truck dealer, has been rebuilt with a new engine and gearbox — but it still has the original tyres.
Palmer intends to use it as a recovery truck, but claims that the tyres are in good enough condition to pass Department of Transport tests, which every rebuilt vehicle must go through: "I've never heard of salt water damaging tyres," says Palmer.
A warning comes from Michelin, however, whose tyres were fitted to the Scania: