• New dimension for demountable bodies?
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Textbooks tell you a swop body is classified as part of the load when vehicle dimensions are assessed. David Wilcox investigates a court case that comes to the opposite conclusion
WHEN A POLICEMAN waved Premier Transport's Leyland Boxer to a halt for a routine roadside check in Taunton in 1981, I doubt if he could have foreseen the full consequences of his action.
One result was that demountable bodies now suffer from an identity crisis. Are they part of the load or part of the vehicle? Not even the Department of Transport seems 100 per cent certain.
For most operators using demounts, however, it is of academic interest only. But other demount operators risk prosecution until the legal definition is clarified, purely because they have been clever and used demounts to exceed conventional vehicle dimensions. Bristol-based Premier Transport — Road Haulage Association's chairman Harold Russett's company — has a haulage, parcels and distribution fleet which is based around demountable bodies and is a long-standing user of the system; it acquired its first demount in 1969.
The Premier demount fleet now spans the 7.5-tonne — 16ton-gvw range, including 16-ton drawbar prime movers, fitted mainly with Ray Smith demount equipment. The bodies either boxes or flats and are 18ft, 20ft or 24ft long. The bodies are reserved for the ton chassis, but with this ex tion Harold's son Bob Ru: told me: "We thought we total interchangeability betv all the bodies and all the c sis."
The vehicle that was stoF on that fateful day in 1981 v% 13-tonne-gvw Leyland 13( 1325 with a 3.84m (151in) wl base. "I wish we had choser 4.34m (171in) wheelbase," mented Bob Russett with benefit of hindsight. It ng on general distribution and had a mixed load in
19 scaffolding and and was fitted with one of ?Oft demountable box bo 20ft body on a 13-tonner a fairly short wheelbase -ally looks a lot of body and apparently prompted the eman to measure the diions. Although the Boxer's axle was not overladen the lang rule (regulation 58) in Motor Vehicles (Construeand Use) Regulations 1978 been breached — that's the nce between the back of the ;le and the centre of the rear exceeded 60 per cent of the 3Ibase. Because the Boxer the shorter, 151-inch wheel, the overhang should be ad to 90.6 inches; it was
d to be three inches longer.
e police decided to proseand the case duly came up iunton magistrates' court in pring of 1982.
this point Premier Trans was not particularly wor the offence is not usually sidered as heinous as loading or driving hours irlarities and the company
confident that a successful nce lay in the same C and U Jlations 1978.
though the overhang defini in regulation 3 makes no tion of demountable bodies erely refers to the "rearmost t of the vehicle") Premier ad to the definition of overall th, also in regulation 3. This ascertaining the extreme ofecting points of a vehicle count should be taken of ly device or receptacle on or tached to the vehicle which creases the carrying Ca pa'y of the vehicle unless — )id (ii) deal with tailboards i) it is a receptacle which is instructed or adapted for the irpose of being lifted on or
f vehicles with goods or burm contained therein and is )m time to time actually ;ed for that purpose in the .dinary course of business.
us seemed to state that the lount body is not included
the vehicle when taking surements, provided it is reirly demounted. If this point 3W applied to the previously itioned overhang definition, e rearmost point of the cle" should therefore be
counted as the end of its chassis, not the back of a demount body.
This was the generally accepted view and using this criteria the Boxer's overhang, measured to the back of the chassis rather than the back of the demount body, was within the 60 per cent rule and hence legal.
With this defence, Premier Transport went to Taunton magistrates' court. "We thought we would win," said Bob Russett. "I'm not sure the magistrates fully understood the technicalities, but they found in our favour and said there was no case to answer."
Undeterred, the police decided to appeal. Bob Russett explained that because Premier Transport did not dispute the poliee measurements it was deemed that the case rested on a point of law, not a point of evidence and so the appeal went right up to the hallowed portals of the Royal Courts of Justice in London's Strand.
It was heard by Lord Justice O'Connor on July 26, 1982 and was in the name of Peter Ronald Hawkins — the policeman in charge of the case — v Harold A. Russett Ltd. A transcript of the Taunton magistrates' hearing was referred to and this confirmed Bob Russett's thoughts; the transcript was somewhat muddled.
At the end of the Appeal's first day Bob Russett felt that it was
not going well. "I had the impression that Lord Justice
O'Connor was not a lover of lorries. He made a comment about lorries being big enough already."
The situation seemed to improve a little on the second day. When Lord Justice O'Connor concluded by saying that he would retire to consult the Law Lords, Bob Russett believed that there was a 50/50 chance that the police appeal would be overturned.
Because of the summer recess it was October 12, 1982, before both sides were recalled to the Royal Courts of Justice for the judgment to be handed down. Lord Justice O'Connor could not attend and so his written judgment was read out by Justice Comyn.
Lord Justice O'Connor pointed out that the C and U definition of overhang did not mention demountable bodies when establishing the "rearmost point of the vehicle for the purposes of to decide what was included in the vheicle for the purposes of measuring overhang.
He acknowledged that the body was removed at frequent intervals (usually daily in the Premier case) in the ordinary course of business but declared: "Free of any statutory provision or authority I do not think there is any difficulty about answering the question whether this container was part of the vehicle or the load. In one sense the justices answer the question in their findings of fact when they said "the vehicle was loaded with jam, scaffolding and paper. . items which were intended to be off-loaded at various places .. ." They did not say nor would anyone say "the vehicle was loaded with a container."
In court Lord Justice O'Connor had pursued this point when he asked Bob Russett whether the vehicle could carry a load if the demount body was not fitted. Bob had to admit that this would be difficult ...
So he reasoned that because Premier's Leyland Boxer was delivering the goods inside the body and not the body itself, the body must be regarded as part of the vehicle as far as overhang measurements were concerned.
His judgment then moved on to find a definition of "rearmost part of the vehicle" for overhang and he turned to the version in the C and U overall length definition in regulation 3 (quoted earlier).
Premier and everybody else in the industry thought paragraph OW of regulation 3 . . . "it is a receptacle which is constructed or adapted for the purpose of being lifted on or off". . . was their answer. Not so, said Justice O'Connor. He turned their attention to the opening part of the definition: "In ascertaining the extreme projecting points of a vehicle account shall be taken of any device or any receptacle on or attached to the vehicle which increased the carrying capacity of the vehicle unless..."
Lord Justice O'Connor noted that the demount body did not increase the carrying capacity of the vehicle — it provided the carrying capacity, and so the exemption for demount bodies in paragraph (iii) is not operative. He added: "It is plainly desirable that rearmost point for overhang should be the same as extreme projecting point to the rear for overall length."
He reiterated the point in layman's terms: "It is obvious that parts of a vehicle which are detachable do not cease to be parts of the vehicle; for example, the wheels. When overall length or overhang are in issue in a case such as the present, (think the correct question to ask is "Is this vehicle fitted with a body?" The body of a vehicle does not cease to be a body because it can be detached with ease . . This does not make the body "a receptacle on or attatched to the vehicle" . . .; it is a part of the vehicle."
This clearly extends the judgment beyond the Premier overhang case and by demolishing the exemption in paragraph (iii) of C and U regulation 3 gives a new definition of a conventional demountable body; it is part of the vehicle for the purpose of measuring legal dimensions.
So Premier's Boxer was found to have excessive overhang and the case was sent back to Taunton magistrates with a direction to convict. The outcome was a £40 fine and, rather more punitive, Premier had to pay both sides' costs — around £3,000. The RHA has contributed towards this because Premier Transport would probably not have pursued the case had it not been for Harold Russett's chairmanship of the RHA.
Since the judgment last October, what have been the repercussions? At Premier Transport they now know that the 20ft bodies, as well as the 24ft bodies, can be used only on the 16-tonners in the fleet.
In the couple of weeks that followed the judgment Bob Russett received almost two dozen phone calls from other operators who use demountable bodies. Their concern stemmed from the fact they had used paragraph (iii) of the C and U Regulations as a loophole to gain some extra cube in their demount bodies.
In their belief that the body was part of load and that the load could legally exceed the maximum vehicle dimensions they had ordered bodies that rendered their vehicles slightly over-width or over-length.
Some of them seem to be drawbar operators (almost always hungry for cube) who have used demounts to go slightly over the 18m overall length limit, while others have demount bodies marginally over the 2.5m width limit.
When they chose this "dodge" they could not be blamed; most of the demount system manufacturers advised that this was permissible and well-respected sources such as the current editions of the Transport Manager's Handbook and the Freight Transport Assocation Yearbook also said this possible.
Such operators who are now in a dilemma because of the Premier Transport ruling are obviously not queueing up to make themselves known and I would not be so irresponsible to name them. Suffice to say that if almost two dozen took the trouble to phone Bob Russett there must be even more who are also affected by the decision and who risk prosecution. And I do know that they include some wellknown operators, including nationalised companies.
How have the demountable system manufacturers reacted? Ray Smith of Ray Smith Demountables told me: "We previously regarded the ability to go over the vehicle dimensions as a very minor selling point. Although only a small number of our customers used it, that's still a considerable number. The Premier case really shook us. Now we recommend customers to stay within the legal limit but would build 'illegal' ones if the customers asked us."
Ray Smith also wondered if the decision in the Premier case has been influenced by the recent change in the tax basis for lorries. Previously, when vehicles were taxed on unladen weight the demount body was discounted, but when the Finance Act 1982 was implemented on October 1 last year — around the time of the Premier judgment — the tax basis was changed to gross weight and so now included the demount body. Could the desire to bring the dimensional definition of demounts into line with their taxation treatment have influenced the decision?
For Abel Demountable Systems, managing director Neville Moulding told me that he still believed that the Premier decision referred only to overhang and so did not change the definition of demounts — he would continue to build "over-width" or drawbar demount systems beyond 18m for customers who wanted them. "But we will point out that it is open to interpretation by the local police or vehicle examiners." Cartwright of Altrincham, who makes Dobson demountables, commented: "We've never recommended it. It is a grey area."
The one source that should — and will eventually have to — clarify the matter is the Department of Transport. Are its vehicle examiners likely to prosecute the operators who are running over-width or overlength demounts?
Is the DTp going to turn a blind eye to the Premier ruling and continue as before or will it apply the ruling and/or modify the wording in the C and U Regulations to clarify matters?
Nine months after the judgment the Department of Transport is still "considering the implications", said a spokesman. In the meantime, he said, the Department would advise operators to build any new demount systems within the legal dimensions.
However, in the month following the Premier judgment, in answer to an enquiry, the Department's Vehicle Standards and Engineering Division sent a letter which contradicted this more recent advice and recommended that a demountable body should still be treated as part of the load for dimensional purposes and that the Premier overhang decisiin was quite separate.
It is on this that Neville Moulding of Abel bases his belief. The Department's letter would now appear to be in error. It does, however, conclude with what amounts to a disclaimer: ". , . but I must point out that only the courts can interpret the law."
Back at Premier Transport, Bob Russett said that his legal advice indicated that the judgment should now be regarded as the accepted defini
tion for demounts. He thoi the case of true containers I be different; because the c plete container is normally livered, does this make it pa the load?
"We've mixed feelings al the case," he said. "Althougl feel a little sorry for oursel because ours was an accidE offence, we can see the log the ruling when it is applie cases where demounts are liberately used to build bi bodies."
One company that openly mits that it has demount drawbar outfits that exceed 18m length limit by 0.3m i! lentnight. After extensive 1 this volume-hungry own count operator recently dec to go 100 per cent demoun1 drawbar, replacing all the a in the fleet.
With over 30 Abel-equij 18.3m drawbars already or road Silentnight transport r ager Fred Short is unrepen With clever modifications tc drawbar couplings he has I managed to go up to 25f1 long bodies instead of 24f1 dies, still at 18.3m overall, fo latest eight drawbar outfits rently in build.
All that cube is too goo ignore and Fred Short beli that the Department of Ti port is not going to take r pective action against dem table systems alread operation or in build. He h that if and when the C ar Regulations are subsequ, clarified and policy decidec lentnight will have achieve target of 60-70 drawbar mounts, all 18.3 long.
In the meantime, the ball in the Department of Transp court. The Road Transport cation, the Freight Transpor socation and a number of terested" operators are wa while the men from the Mir "consider the implications".