10 Ryder trucks suspended
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• by Mike Jewell Logistics giant Ryder has had 10 vehicles suspended for two weeks by West Midland Traffic Commissioner David Dixon for allowing breaches of domestic hours rules by drivers working on a contract for Avonmore Dairies.
Last December the company pleaded guilty before the Aldridge Magistrates to 19 offences of permitting drivers to exceed the 11-hour working day, 35 of falling to issue record books to drivers and five of failing to produce tachograph records. It was fined a total of £15,750 and ordered to pay £2.500 prosecution costs. The 24 drivers involved in the offences were each given a conditional discharge for 12 months and ordered to pay £25 costs.
The case follows that of Wincanton, which had previously operated the Avonmore contract. It was fined £29,200 with £1,465 costs by Walsall Magistrates for similar breaches of the domestic hours rules.
The IC was told that the collection of raw milk from farms was exempt from the EC drivers' hours and tachograph rules. Ryder had chosen to record their work using tachographs together with drivers' worksheets, rather than log books.
The inquiry heard there was an unexpected backlog of uncollected milk, the new vehicles obtained for the contract suffered mechanical problems and computer control equipment on the vehicles failed. Although managers were seeking to resolve urgent operational problems, little attention was paid to drivers' hours offences.
Suspending the vehicles, the IC said he concluded that there was no deliberate attempt to flout the rules, but a company of Ryder's size and experience should not be in a position where it broke the law on drivers' hours.
This was the second time in less that a year that a major haulier with an otherwise good record had been before him in connection with the same contract, said the IC. Few drivers these days were ever required to work under the domestic rules. If the exemption was removed, or if domestic rules were brought into line with EC rules, compliance by well-intentioned but busy operators and drivers would be easier to achieve, he said.