French fined
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• Norbert Dentressangle Ltd, the British subsidiary of French haulage consortium Norbert Dentressangle SA, was fined 2720 last week and ordered to pay prosecution costs of 2134.34 after being convicted by the Knutsford magistrates of permitting drivers' hours offences.
The company denied five offences of permitting lorry driver Arthur Dingwall to exceed eight hours' driving in a day, and four offences of permitting him to take insufficient daily rest. The magistrates fined the company 280 on each offence.
Dingwall said he worked for the company for nine months until November 1985 and drove a 38-tonne articulated powder tanker — mainly between northern France and the UK. He had to maintain contact with the Manchester or London office when in Britain but his instructions came from France.
Once, when he had said he could not reach a ferry because he only had one-anda-quarter hours' driving time left, it was implied that he must make the ferry as the company did not want him to and miss a day's work in France.
Initially the tachograph charts were kept in France, but he insisted that he should hand them in to the London office. The company mapped out his work with deadlines which were impossible if he was delayed. He was told by the Calais office that he must load one day and deliver the next and if he could not do the job it would get someone who could.
He had not falsified any charts and they were handed to the company, showing his excessive hours.
Questioned by Michael Fryer, defending, Dingwall said he had left the company because of the pressure on his family. He denied he had been given two verbal warnings about the offences.
He said that after he was stopped by the police a director, Alan MacKay, told him that he would have to find a route avoiding Knutsford.
Police-constable Aston of Cheshire police said MacKay had told him that he had not seen all the tachograph charts as they had been left at the Calais office. He was not a director of the French company.
Questioned by Fryer, PC Aston denied that it was the practice to stop Norbert Dentressangle vehicles as a matter of course in Knutsford.
Transport consultant Colin Ward said that, following his recommendations, the company had taken steps to see that such offences did not occur again. In his opinion the company's schedule could be adhered to within the drivers' hours limits.
Fryer said MacKay's remarks about avoiding Knutsford had to be considered against a background that, for a considerable period, any vehicles bearing the words Norbert Dentressangle had been stopped in the area.
MacKay did not know, and could not reasonably have been expected to know, the way that Dingwall had been conducting himself at the time.
He was operating independently and there was no evidence that any responsible person in the UK company condoned, hinted or threatened Dingwall that he had to do as he was told.