Too much ... and too little
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• A Yorkshire haulage company has been fined 21,680 for occasionally running almost double the number of vehicles on its operating licence and for letting one of its drivers take insufficient weekly rest periods.
George Barker & Co (Leeds) appeared before Bradford Magistrates last week and admitted seven offences of permitting Kenneth White to fail to take a weekly rest period, and 13 offences of using vehicles without the authority of an operator's licence. It asked for 12 other offences to be taken into consideration.
Prosecuting for the North Eastern Traffic Area, Richard Wadkin said that White had worked from 1 November to 20 November, and from 4 January to 16 January, without taking the required amount of weekly rest. When interviewed, White had said that he had thought he had been exempt because he only drove for about four hours a day.
The court also heard that even though Barker held a licence for eight vehicles, an examination of its tachograph charts revealed that the company had used between four and seven vehicles above the number authorised on its licence from time to time.
For the company, David Holroyd said White was not a fulltime driver because only part of his duties were driving. He drove for short distances, and for short periods of time, between the company's two depots said Holroyd. Consequently, he was unlikely to be tired because of the number of hours driven.
\The company had also wrongly thought that it could hire additional vehicles without varying its licence because it did not keep them for longer than a month.