HAULIER• FINED FOR FORGERY
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ROAD haulier, Jack's Transport (Dundee) Ltd, was fined £100 by Sheriff Cox at Dundee last week when found guilty of possessing a forged International Road Freight document.
Sarah Barber, of the Department of the Environment, Newcastle, said that the permit, made out for a trip to Bremerhaven, Germany, was included in a number of papers concerning a trip to the Middle East, returned to them in May last year by Jack's Transport.
As a result, a member of the Department of Transport staff in Dundee took a statement from Jack Knox, the firm's managing director.
Mr Knox said that he knew nothing about the permit, and assumed it had been given to his driver by J. M. Lieper, of Ballater, from whom he hired the tractive unit for the Bremerhaven trip.
Mrs Lieper said that all she had given the driver was his green card insurance and a mattress, so that he could sleep in his cab.
The driver, John Reid, agreed that he had not been given the permit by Mrs Lieper. He maintained that Mr Knox had given him E10 and an address in Forest Gate, London. He went there, and told a Mr Quigley that Mr Knox had sent him, handed over the cash and was given a permit. '
He had never seen one before, so had no idea it was forged, and did not know they had to come from the International Road Freight' office in Newcastle.
The Bremerhaven trip was the first venture into international haulage, and he was not too sure of procedures. He knew nothing at all about a permit being needed, and only found it some months later when Mr Reid handed back papers from a trip to Saudi Arabia.
Sheriff Cox said that he felt the sending of the permit was simply an act of negligence. He added that the fine would be recoverable by civil diligence.