'" Charged for diesel leak
Page 18
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
• Macclesfield Magistrates have cleared Ronald and Loretta Unterschutz, trading as Perth Removals. and one of their drivers, of using a vehicle in a dangerous condition.
DOT vehicle examiner Roger Byrom said he had noticed that fuel was leaking from the vehicle when it came off the mad into the check site. Ile maintained that it was a constant flow and formed a puddle about six feet wide. This was dangerous, he commented, because diesel was slippery stud. Driver Ronald Taylor said he had fuelled the vehicle at the Hilton Park Service Area and had seen no fuel leak. He would have noticed because the filler was only two feet away from the gauge.
John Tracey, operations manager for Volvo Truck & Bus Scotland, said that a fuel leak had developed on the DON van concerned some months earlier and it had been welded. Ronald Unterschutz had been told that there was metal fatigue and that the tank, which was a second-hand tank fitted earlier at his request, should be changed.
John Heaton, prosecuting for the Vehicle Inspectorate, expressed surprise that a Volvo dealer should have agreed to fit a second-hand tank supplied by a customer. Tracey replied that a new tank could also fail. The vehicle had been booked in for a new tank to be fitted on its return to Scotland.
Tracey pointed out that there was not necessarily any warning of a fracture, which could be caused by flexing of the tank or the chassis.
Unterschutz said he was not blaming the mechanics as the state of the roads was dreadful, and he disputed that there was a continuous leak.