TROUBLE ITH TACHOS
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• Many hauliers rely on agencies to analyse their tachograph charts. They are secure in the knowledge that this fulfils their responsibility of ensuring that their drivers comply with the drivers' hours and tachograph regulations — but two recent cases involving major operators have worrying implications.
WARNINGS
Late in December the Russell Davies Group received severe warnings from the Eastern Licensing Authority, Brigadier Compton Boyd, following convictions for drivers' hours and tachograph offences. He also directed that the licences held by the three companies involved, Russell Davies Haulage, Russell Davies Europe, and Russell Davies UK, should all expire at the end of June 1991. The LA concluded that the offences had arisen out of management's failure to manage.
The three companies had been fined a total of £8,170 by Felixstowe magistrates after admitting a series of tachograph offences and failing to produce drivers' timesheets when requested to do so by a police officer.
FALSIFICATION
The 59 drivers involved were fined over £8,000 after admitting a variety of offences, including tachograph falsification. The offences fell into five categories: • Dock shunting off ences, where drivers had switched off their tachographs while loading and unloading containers in Felixstowe docks; O Electrical interference, where drivers had interfered with the operation of tachographs while out on the road; Taxi use, where drivers had used their tractive units as taxis to go to cashpoints or for a meal without recording it; • Centre field offences; Mode switch offences.
The group's managing director, Thomas Glyn Davies, said that it had been let down by two tachograph analysis agencies which had failed to detect abnormalities, includ ing missing kilometres.
Evidence was given by a traffic examiner that he had checked 537 of the Russell Davies (UK) charts for January and September. The January charts had been checked by the tacho graph agency and the September charts by Russell Davies' new in-house computerised system. He had disagreed with the computer analysis on 150 occasions.
The second case highlights the dangers even more graphically. Hours offences, among other matters, led to the revocation of the licence held by A One Transport (Leeds). North Eastern LA Frederick Whalley subsequently granted the company interim authority to continue operating while an application for a fresh licence was processed, but the company was off the road for around 36 hours.
During that case evidence was given about drivers' hours offences committed by drivers working for two wholly owned subsidiaries, DLS Europe and Henry Long Transport.
FAILED
In the DLS case a traffic examiner said that an agency had analysed that company's charts at one time — and he maintained that the standard of analysis was not good enough. In the Henry Long case it was said that chart analysis by an agency had failed to disclose the offences.
Senior traffic examiner Bryan Walscher concluded that the group had relied on tachograph analysis agencies, which did not provide the service they claimed to.
Commenting on the situation, Whalley said it was quite evident that agencies did not pick up every offence. It was a mistake for companies to put their reputations, their licences and their businesses in jeopardy by allowing tachograph analysis agencies to take over their responsibility to monitor tachograph charts.
LA s expressing disquiet about operators relying too heavily on tachograph analysis agencies is nothing new. As long ago as February 1986 the then Eastern (now Transport Tribunal member) Kenneth Peter, said that an operator must accept full responsibility for employing an efficient tacho analysis agent.
Orwell Transport had been called to a disciplinary inquiry because of convictions for drivers' records offences.
Peter took no action but warned he would not be so lenient on a future occasion.
He concluded: "It does seem to me that there is a warning to operators generally here that if they decide that they will go to a tachograph analysis agent to have the charts analysed, they need to be very careful what it is they are buying and need to be pE very sure that it will meet their requirements in protecting them against the consequences of breaches of the law by their employees or agents."