what was going on
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West Midland Traffic Commissioner David Dixon granted Fullers. Logistics a licence for 10 vehicles and 15 trailers, rather than the 15 vehicles and 18 trailers applied for, because he was concerned about its repute.
The company was formed by merging Fullers Transport (Slough) with Fullers Warehousing. Fullers Transport (Slough) had been fined £37,200 (reduced to £20,300 on appeal) after admitting 17 offences of permitting drivers to exceed the hours limits and 59 offences of failing to produce tachograph records (CM 8-14 July, 16-22 Sept and 23-29 Sept).
The TC said Fullers Transport (Slough) was in clear and substantial breach of its undertaking to enforce the hours and tachograph rules and to keep proper records.
Because that company's licence had been surrendered in March he could take no action against it. The licence now being applied for was for a successor operation, Dixon added. The two family shareholders were the same and they were directors of both companies. The operating centre and the number of vehicles were the same.
If he were to grant the licence as applied for, the operator would have avoided any disciplinary action, irrespective of its motives. That might accord with the letter of the law but not
its spirit. When the licence was applied for, the company was aware of the offences. It was required to advise the TC of all convictions, which Fullers Transport did in July.
There was no obligation to advise the TC of offences or pending prosecutions. But to apply for a new licence and request the surrender of the old one without mentioning what was going on was a failure of the trust between operator and TC which underpinned the licensing system.
This put the operator's repute in considerable doubt, said Dixon, but because the company had not technically made any false statements he had decided to stop short of declaring that it had lost its repute.
He had been assured that new arrangements were in place to prevent a recurrence but he could not be sure that they would work for the full number of vehicles applied for. Recent history gave him grounds for doubt.