An inspector calls Tam writing in respect of 'Dennis Beale's
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letter (CM 22-28 Jan) and GW Hemmaway's letter (CM 12-18 Feb).
Firstly, I would like to reply to Mr Hemmaway's letter. He felt he had to write a letter regarding my dispute with the Vehicle Inspectorate. It amazes me that somebody would write like he did after only reading one side of the story. Here we have another clever fellow who can listen to your brakes on the side of a busy main road and tell us whether or not they are working. Why bother to invent a rolling road?
Secondly, so that everybody's got the full story, my vehicle was stopped at a spot check on 7 November 1997.
After the vehicle was examined my driver was issued with a PG9 to return to our premises. He contacted me on my mobile phone and I asked him if the examiner got underneath the trailer to inspect the slack adjusters. He said no, so I asked him to go back to the examiner and ask, in the presence of a police officer, if he would measure the travel on the slack adjusters.
This the examiner refused to do—his comment was: "Don't tell your granny how to suck eggs."
I phoned the testing station at Llantrisant, where I spoke to a Mr Taylor. I explained to him what had happened and pointed out that due to the 4 construction of the trailer it was very difficult to see the slack adjusters from between the wheels. He said he would contact his examiner and call me back; when he called me back he said that the two examiners could hear the brakes were not working and that they thought the end of the threaded bar section was actually hitting the inside of the air pod.
I asked Mr Taylor if he was a mechanic; he said he did not have to answer that. I asked if he understood the function of an S-Cam braking system; again he said he had no need to answer that, and went on to lecture me about the handbrake cable being snapped and how the examiner should have prosecuted me for this offence but because the vehicle was lightly loaded he had been lenient.
The conversation got heated and I asked if I could be put through to his superior. He laughed and said he was sat alongside him. I asked for his name and he told me it was Dennis Beale, area manager. He then handed the phone over to Mr Beale saying "there's some chap on the phone with a foreign sounding name".
I related the facts to Mr Beale and asked if he would meet me at my premises to inspect the trailer. He said he could not do so. I asked if the trailer could be immediately brought back to the testing station for him to inspect the trailer there. He said he could not do this as the prohibition had already been issued.
I became persistent and insisted that he attend my premises. He eventually agreed to do this and we met at my garage where he went down into the pit and inspected the slack adjusters etc.
He said that somebody had adjusted the brakes prior to him arriving at my premises as he could see the marks on the slack adjuster nut covers.
In the letter from RJ Lintern of the Vehicle Inspectorate, dated 14 January 1998, he confirms that Mr Beale should have shown me any marks and pointed out that the adjusters had been tampered with. This Mr Beale failed to do, which was why I insisted on him coming to my premises in the first place: because of previous weather conditions there was a crust of road material all around the slack adjusters and axles of the trailer and it was quite clear to see that nobody had tampered with the brakes.
When I asked Mr Taylor right at the start if he understood S-Cam braking it was because if the inner part of the flange was hitting against the chamber I would think that you would have no brakes whatsoever. The "light load" on the vehicle weighed about 10 tonnes.
I then received a letter from Mr Beale on 25 November 1997, which I read to be most threatening and transport lawyer Jonathan Lawton agreed. We then had a visit to our premises from the Vehicle Inspectorate on Saturday 29 November 1997, when a number of vehicles were inspected.
I also insisted that, due to the contents of Mr Beale's letter questioning my competency to run and maintain vehicles, they should inspect the building, maintenance facilities and records, which were a11,719%01 to be satisfactory. h ext,I Mr Ward of the ates,. Inspectorate, who #iteh led out the inspection ld Ad also the examiner on the roadside spot check on 7 November 1997; if he would, in front of witnesses, show us how he could see the slack adjusters clearly through the wheels. He declined, stating that the trailer was too near a building. I offered to move the trailer to the centre of the yard, but he said it was now between myself and his boss and he would rather not make any more comments!
This all started just because I asked a man to do his job properly. As hauliers we obviously have no right to question and must carry on taking the flak from the public, the authorities and Uncle Tom Cobbly and all.
Wouldn't it be interesting to see a general strike and see how long this country would last without the efficiency of the road haulage industry!
Perhaps then the industry could get the proper rate for doing the job and drivers could get wages equal to the responsiblity they carry PL Pesticcio, Falcon Low Loaders, Cardiff