Bulmans hit for driver offences
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• Penrith-based Bulmans Bulk & Haulage has had its licence revoked for aiding and abetting drivers to falsify tachograph charts.
However, North Western Licensing Authority Martin Albu directed that the revocation should not take effect for 14 days, saying that if the company made a fresh licence application within that period it would probably be granted.
Last September the company was ordered to pay fines and costs totalling £9,500 at Carlisle Crown Court after pleading guilty to 16 offences of aiding and abetting drivers to falsify tachograph charts (CM 12-18 Sept 1991).
For Bulmans, Clement Goldstone told a Manchester public inquiry that the two directors, David Brown and Peter Housby, had denied having actual knowledge of the offences.
The company had pleaded guilty because of its ultimate responsibility for the acts of its transport manager, said Goldstone. Between 1986 and 1991 turnover had grown from just over Elm to just under £6m. Bulmans was a successful company and there was no need to contravene the regulations.
Goldstone said that procedures had been tightened up. Five drivers who were found to have committed minor discrepancies had been warned. There had been one serious discrepancy and the driver concerned had been sacked. As a result minor infringements had decreased.
Questioned by the LA, Brown agreed that the drivers had been convicted in December 1990. He said that he had spoken to the drivers and warned them of the consequences of further offences. He conceded that the company had not pursued the matter as vigorously at the time as it had done since.
Albu pointed out that despite the company knowing about the drivers' hours problem in December 1990, further offences were committed in April 1991, after the previous transport manager had left the company. He said matters had got out of control in 1989 and 1990, when the company's drivers adopted a cavalier attitude to the hours rules.