Three offences lead to fine
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• For overloading their truck, running it without an operator's licence, and paying the wrong rate of excise duty, Michael and Vincent McAlonan of M McAlonan & Son from Ballycastle, county Antrim have been fined a total of 2674.33. The company's 38-tonne artic ws stopped in a weight check at Doxey, Staffordshire and the McAlonans and driver Hugh McNeill denied a gross overload on the tractor of 9.93%.
Prosecuting for the West Midland Traffic Area, Patrick McKnight said the vehicle had been taxed at the 32-tonne rate of £2,450 a year instead of the E3,100 payable for a 38tonner. The vehicle would have been exempt from 0-licensing if it had been covered by a Northern Ireland Road Freight Licence which had expired.
The gross overload on the 2+3 combination had largely been caused by the incorrect weight distribution over the three compensating axles of the Crane Freuhauf trailer, the first of which was a tag axle. When interviewed, Vincent McAlonan had said that McNeill had told him that a valve on the second axle had malfunctioned.
Evidence concerning the weighing of the vehicle was given by traffic examiner Donald Buckley. He said that the tally roll for the reweighing was not available because the weighbridge had been broken into and vandalised.
McNeill said he had supervised the loading of the vehicle to ensure the load was correctly distributed. He had not check-weighed as it was the sixth load of that type and he had checked-weighed twice previously without there being any problems. A self-adjusting valve altered the pressure on the axles when the vehicle negotiated a tight turn, and the vehicle would have had to have been driven in a straight line for a few hundred metres afterwards before the valve readjusted itself. He had made a number of turns in the weighbridge site before being weighed but it ought to have adjusted before he passed over the weighbeam. He had not believed that he was overweight, so he had examined the trailer and found that the lever of the self-adjusting valve had stuck. Defending, Jane Farrer maintained that there was no proof that the vehicle had been overloaded on the road. Turning to the other offences, she said the tractor was normally used
with a tandem-axled trailer at 32 tonnes and it had been overlooked that the tax had been at the wrong rate. Application had been made to renew the road freight licence, but due to an administrative error in the Northern Ireland Freight Office it was not renewed in time.
Stafford magistrates disagreed and found the overloading offence proved, though they did give driver McNeill an absolute discharge after being told that he had travelled from Northern Ireland and lost two weeks' wages in order to fight the case. They fined the McAlonans a total of £466, and ordered them to pay £100 prosecution costs and £104.33 back duty.