Councils blitz overloads
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• County council Trading Standards officers are asking the Government to support their campaign against overloaded trucks. Nine county councils in the west of England have asked the DTp to: 0 Invest in new technology to make law enforcement more effective; [7 to increase the level of fines; 0 to revoke the licences of persistent offenders; 0 to make overloaders pay for additional enforcement costs involved in removing prohibition notices.
Figures just released for 1990/91 by Trading Standards departments show that over 1,593 vehicles were found to be overloaded in the West Country, of which 606 (38%) were reported for prosecution. In a more recent co-ordinated check, 108 vehicles were found to be overloaded, with 41 (38%) reported for prosecution.
In Wiltshire in the past two years over 30% of goods vehicles checked were found to be overloaded.
Wiltshire averages more than 50 prosecutions a year for over loading, but says that 45% are axle rather than vehicle offences and denote sloppy loading rather than deliberate law-breaking.
"I'm sure our problems in the West are not unique," says Bill Jaggs, deputy Trading Standards officer for Dorset County Council. "We do a lot of work at Poole docks, weighing vehicles before they leave. Some hauliers use us as a form of quality control — we can't prosecute drivers there, but we can stop overloaded vehicles leaving until the weight has been adjusted."
Jaggs also believes that some LGV drivers are abusing Poole's self-weigh facility: "In a one week period in November last year, 3,194 vehicles entered the country, 686 were weighed, 179 were found to be overloaded," he says, "but only 18 had their loads re-adjusted."