Greens escapes action
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• A series of convictions and failure to notify the Traffic Area about them brought Stockport haulier Greens Transport before Martin Albu, North Western Traffic Commissioner.
Albu decided to take no action against the company's international licence for 28 vehicles and five trailers, after accepting that vehicle excise duty offences had arisen accidentally.
Managing director William Green said the company's main business was high-street distribution. He had not reported the convictions because he had assumed that when a Department of Transport official visited him to discuss them, they would automatically be reported.
For the company, John Backhouse said that the convictions fell into three groups: overloading, excise licence offences and employing an unlicensed HGV driver.
Green said that a conviction for using a trailer without a test certificate arose because there were two identical trailers and the driver took the wrong one out. Identification numbers had since been put on the trailers.
Convictions for using an unlicensed driver arose when a driver's HGV driving licence expired. Drivers licences were now checked monthly.
One of the excise licence offences arose after they applied for duplicate documents for a number of vehicles and trailers they had purchased. They received documents for three vehicles but not the fourth.
Fines and back duty totalling .£2,000 imposed by Felixstowe magistrates occurred after a customer changed the trailer, resulting in the use of the wrong excise licence.
As far as overloading was concerned, the vehicles were now being upgraded and drivers retrained for the larger vehicles. Vehicles were always weighed before leaving the company's premises, and they were weighed regularly throughout the country.
Albu said there had been a chapter of accidents. However, he accepted the explanations and that the vehicle excise offences were accidents rather than deliberate. As the company's licence expired at the end of May, he would content himself with issuing a formal warning.