Fined for 0-licence photocopy
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• A haulier who used a photocopy of another firm's 0-licence disc in his truck, because he did not have an 0-licence himself, has been fined £600.
Leicestershire international haulier Nigel Calif, trading as Torbay Continental Haulage of Harwell, pleaded guilty before Birmingham magistrates to using the photocopy with intent to deceive.
He also admitted using a vehicle without an 0-licence, using it without an excise licence, failing to take sufficient daily and weekly rest and failing to make entries on tachograph charts. Prosecuting for the DTp, Barbara Stubbs said that a vehicle belonging to Calif was stopped in a check on the M6 at Perry Barr last November.
In the windscreen was a photocopy of an 0-licence disc issued to Trio International. A number of tachograph charts in Calif's name were recovered from the cab. They revealed a series of offences of which the charges before the court were specimens.
Calif had told a traffic examiner that the photocopy had been in the windscreen when he bought the vehicle. It had suited his purpose to leave it there, in the hope that it would not be noticed that he did not have a licence, he said.
Calif said it had been impossible to take the required rest when in the "bandit country" of Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria. He had carried on driving as he had not wanted to be murdered in his sleep, he said.
He had originally worked for Trio International and he decided to buy the vehicle from it. Trio International had sent its 0-licence discs back, as it was changing its name, and had put photocopies in the windscreens of the vehicles until the new discs came through. When he bought the vehicle, the photocopy was still in the windscreen.