Cooper is fined on VED
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• North Shields haulier Carlton Cooper, trading as Percy Main Transport, has been ordered to pay fines, costs and back duty totalling £3,580 for a series of excise licence offences. He had been arrested and bailed to appear before the Stockton Heath Magistrates.
Cooper, of St Stephens Way, North Shields, admitted using a vehicle with a forged excise licence, forging an excise licence, fraudulently altering an excise licence, handling a stolen excise licence, using a vehicle without an excise licence, using a vehicle with a defective tachograph and using a vehicle which had a front axle overload.
Bryan Green, prosecuting for the North Western Traffic Area, said the offences wree discovered when one of Cooper's vehicles was stopped at a roadside check. A senior traffic examiner noticed that the 0-licence disc appeared to have been altered: beneath it was a duplicate excise licence which was also found to have been altered, from a duplicate licence issued for Cooper's wife's car. In an adjacent holder was an excise licence which was a complete forgery. Underneath that licence was another excise licence, which was discovered to be one of a batch stolen from Woking Post Office in Surrey. An examination of the vehicle revealed that the tachograph was not sealed and there was documentary evidence to show that the vehicle had been used over a considerable period. Cooper said that the vehicle concerned had occasionally been used to tow another vehicle under trade plates, but on a number of days it had not been used on the road. He had ceased to trade in his own name two weeks before the case. The business had been taken over by his son, who was now employing him.
Cooper was fined a total of £1,020 and ordered to pay £2,060 back duty and 2500 costs. Driver, James Hunter of Langley Road, North Shields, was fined £50 after admitting using a vehicle with a front axle overload, no excise licence and a defective tachograph.