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Learning the hard way

26th February 2004
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Page 22, 26th February 2004 — Learning the hard way
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Barring a major accident, an early morning visit from the police and VI must be every operator's worst nightmare. David Taylor talks to William Hockin, who has lived through that nightmare and survived.

The date and time are burned into William Hockin's memory: Wednesday 2 August 2000, 9am. "I was called down from my office to find seven people in my reception area — four from the Vehicle Inspectorate and three police in uniform," says Hockin, founder and MD of Barnstaple, Devon-based William C Hockin.

"After they left I felt a terrible pain in my chest," he recalls. "If I hadn't sat down I'd have fallen down."

That day marked the beginning of Hockin's three-and-a-half-year battle to stay in business. The VI inspectors told him that following a "reliable tip-off' the company had been investigated and his vehicles had been under constant surveillance for six months, They demanded all his tacho charts, diesel receipts and worksheets for that period.

Sloppy practice

Following the initial shock, Hockin's stress level rose as the VI built up its case against him and his drivers. Eventually 23 drivers and one manager were found guilty of 207 tacho offences and a number of associated offences, and in June 2002 Western Traffic Commissioner Philip Brown revoked the company's 0-licence and took away Hockin's CPC for a year.

Hockin appealed to the Transport Tribunal — but at the end of a two-day public inquiry Deputy TC David Dixon increased the 0-licence revocation and Hockin's CPC disqualification to two years. And, for good measure, he disqualified Hockin's wife and codirector Irene for a year.

To this day Hockin insists that he had the best drivers in the South-West: "They were the very best. We were a team." At the time of the offences. Hockin employed up to 50

drivers, including casuals.The tacho and hours irregularities were, for the most part, the result of sloppy practice and poor managerial control a consequence. he says, of trying to take on too much himself.

"It was just a handful of drivers that were my downfall," he says. -They were winding clocks. wiring clocks... But it was not my entire workforce, as the local paper reported at the time."

Inevitably, with the company's future in the balance, some of Hockin's drivers took the first opportunity to jump ship. "I don't blame them for that, because their jobs weren't secure," he says. "But they all went to good firms M Way of South Molton, Gregory Distribution down in Torrington, and M&Dli.ansport and they wouldn't have taken drivers from a cowboy outfit that couldn't be trusted."

The "handful" of tacho cheats got the sack immediately, but Hockin has kept on other drivers, despite their prosecution and subsequent convictions. His reasoning is that if he, as MD, deserves a second chance then so do his drivers, some of whom have been with the company for more than 20 years.

"Everyone who's in my firm today is a better person for what we've been through," Hockin believes. He reckons that a driver who's been prosecuted. fined and had his HGV licence taken away will think twice before risking it all again. Hockin must have been doing something right because his customers stood by him he didn't lose a single one: "Obviously they were concerned, but a lot of them have been with me ever since I started and they knew I was no criminal. I told them 1 would fight to win, and they stuck with me."

At one point Hockin was given just seven weeks to wind up the company. He could have sold the £3m-turnover business and retired in luxury. but for him, as for many self-made businessmen, the idea was unthinkable: "I couldn't simply give up. This isn't just a job for me... this is my life, my heart and soul. If! failed I'd have let everybody down."

Immediate action

Hockin certainly wouldn't be in business now if he hadn't taken immediate action to sort things out. But when the VI returned to check his tacho records just before his second (successful) appeal, they found them correct in every detail.

But that victory came with strings attached. He was forced to cut the fleet from 44 vehicles and 77 trailers to 20 vehicles and 36 trailers, and Edward Matravers, the manager convicted of falsifying tacho charts, had to go; a loss Hockin says he deeply regrets: "Eddie was with me for 20 years and losing him really upset me. Whatever he did it was under my ultimate control and I feel he's been done by."

Hockin's CPC is still suspended so he take on a CPC-holder to act as traffic mi

Hockin has certainly learned some I the most obvious of which is -don't try everything yourself". But there is also a lesson here for the industry as a wholi kind of nightmare can be a direct result ing to cut running costs to the bone to , modate rock-bottom haulage rates.

"If you can't charge enough to emp people you need to run professionally,tht do the job," Hockin concludes. "Don' cheap; charge the price for the job an yourself room for error. Because with t will in the world. we can all make mistaki


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