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148 
J Nuttall tightens up
Page 20
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• No action was taken against Rochdalebased James Nuttall (Transport) by North Western Licensing Authority Martin Albu, at a Manchester disciplinary inquiry on 15 June.
The LA had considered taking action against the company's licence, authorising 90 vehicles and 44 trailers, because of convictions for 13 overloading offences, two Construction & Use offences and 18 drivers' hours offences.
The prosecution at Rochdale in February (CM 2-8 March) arose from an analysis of 2,500 of the company's tachograph charts. Fifty-seven charges of permitting hours offences by drivers were laid, but a substantial number were dismissed.
However, the company was convicted of 18 offences on the grounds that it had taken insufficient disciplinary action against the drivers concerned. A stricter disciplinary system had now been introduced, three drivers had been sacked and others had left.
A computerised tachograph analysis system had been installed and the level of infringement was now negligible_ Side-loading vans had been bought to get round weight problems when part-loads were delivered. However, the police were now considering a prosecution for an insecure load where a part-load had been taken off the front of the vehicle to distribute the weight evenly, and cartons in the middle had fallen over when the driver had had to brake suddenly. It seemed that in solving one problem, they were creating another.
For Nuttall's, John Back.house argued that the company's record was good; the number of convictions was minimal when set against the background of the total operation. He said the company had adopted a more severe disciplinary system.
Albu said that few checks were carried out compared with the number of vehicles on the road today, so he could not accept the overloading was entirely negligible. He noted the action taken to improve the situation. It was a very important responsibility of management to ensure that the workload given to drivers did not in any way encourage them to break the law.