Licence victory for Transmart
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• Keighley-based Transmart Delivery Services, which had operated without a licence for more than 12 months, has been granted a licence for four vehicles and two trailers by North Eastern Deputy Licensing Authority Brian Horner.
Transnnart, of Gresley Road Industrial Estate, Keighley, had applied for a new national licence for eight vehicles and two trailers.
Stephen Kirkbright, for the company, admitted that it had no authority to operate the five vehicles it had, and that managing director John Gibbons had previously held a licence in the name of a partnership which had subsequently been dissolved with the licence transferred to Gibbons' name. When the company had been formed in 1987, Gibbons had applied to transfer the licence to the company but had been told that a completely new application was required. He had also been advised by the Traffic Area that he had had to surrender his existing licence before the new application could be made. That had been done but a request for an interim Licence, pending the consideration of new application, had been turned down.
Traffic examiner Howard Mountain said that in September of last year, five of Transmart's drivers had been convicted of 24 offences of falsifying their tachograph charts, 120 offences of failing to keep tachograph records correctly and 25 offences of excessive hours and insufficient rest.
Gibbons said he had continued to operate because he did not feel that it was fair to have to close down a business he had worked very hard for for five years to build.
Following the convictions, Gibbons had installed a computerised system for checking tachograph records and had been forced to sack four drivers for repeated offences.
In reply to Homer, Gibbons said he had operated for twoand-a-half years as an ownerdriver with a transit van and had not really been ready for the step he had taken. He agreed that the business had grown too quickly.
Homer said that Gibbons had clearly not been properly prepared for the big step from owner-driver to operator. The company had been operating illegally since November 1987, the drivers had been out of control and the maintenance had been totally inadequate.
He felt, however, that what had occurred had been due to ignorance, rather than contempt. Attempts had been made to put the company's house in order and he would give it one last chance. Saying that during the next 12 months there would be a further full fleet inspection and examination of the tachograph records, Homer hoped that his judgement had not been misplaced.