89 Offences Admitted by Operators
Page 65
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AFTER pleading guilty to 89 hours and records" offences at Lambeth last week, Tuborg Lager (Great Britain), Ltd.. Mandrell Road. Brixton, were fined .a total of £267 with £26 5s. costs. Offences were alleged to have taken place in the autumn of last year.
Mr. L. E. Barker, prosecuting, said that four drivers had told traffic examiners that they had to complete their journeys during the day-time and return to base in the evening. There was no question of subsistence allowances being paid for nights away.
"They said it was quite impossible to cover the journeys they had to do in a day without breaking the law in respect of the hours they worked. They all said that if they had in fact put in their records the true number of hours they had worked, there would have been more serious offences apparent than those actually shown in the records." stated Mr. Barker.
Absurd times had been recorded for certain journeys; One 384-mile journey appeared.to have been run in eight hours and another of 374 miles in nine hours.
For the defendants, Mr. Douglas Potter said that the situation had arisen because the company had been growing too quickly. At the time of the offences there was a dock strike, which meant that the company's competitors had difficulty in supplying, customers arid the defendants obtained extra business.
He said that it was not a case of a company wilfully conniving with the drivers to make false entries on records.
"In my submission, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. There has been only one accident involving one of the firm's lorries since the war. and that was caused by a broken spring. It had nothing to do with the driver's fatigue," Mr. Potter submitted. Stringent precautions had been taken to make certain that there would be no repetition of the offences.