Unknown offences
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• Manchesterbased W Maher's drivers escaped prosecution for overloading after their employer refused to identify them.
The company says it will not name the drivers unless Cheshire County Council is also prosecuted for aiding and abetting after it failed to inform the company of the offences and that action against the company was proceeding.
Fined £2,000 and ordered to pay £360 prosecution costs, the company said it did not know it was overloading, but admitted four offences of exceeding the train weight for 32-tonne artics. Prosecution dropped six similar allegations. Maher had a contract with Cheshire County Council to excavate a site at Appleton and dispose of the material. Because the material consisted of topsoil, the county wanted it to be delivered to the landfill site. Every vehicle going to the site was weighed, but because no payment was made, a ticket was not needed—and none of the drivers had proof to show their weight. The company was not informed by anyone that vehicles had gone in overloaded but every weighing was automatically recorded by Cheshire County Council.
Though the authority had the information available, nobody checked the weight of the vehicles going into the site and notified the company of a problem. Maher was allowed to complete the contract. It was not until some time later that it was told of the prosecution.
The company had no means of knowing whether the vehicles were overloaded unless it check weighed them itself and the nearest available weighbridge was at the landfill site. All the company needed to have given itself a statutory defence was to have asked for a weight ticket on each occasion.
If they had done so, all the journeys would have been legal, said John Backhouse, representing Maher.
The drivers had been given the "thumbs up" sign by the weighbridge operator when their vehicles were weighed and they had taken that to mean that everything was OK.