• John Dee boss John Davison will have to wait
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for at least another month to find out if he will be allowed back into road haulage.
Following a tense licensing inquiry last week, North Eastern Licensing Authority Frederick Whalley said he would be taking advice from a financial assessor before making a decision on Davison's application.
Davison, former owner of the collapsed John Dee Group, wants to set up a new John Dee haulage firm with 166 vehicles, 250 trailers and bases in Ferryhill, Darlington and Knottingley.
His licence bid, which also covers the North Western, Eastern, Western and Scottish traffic areas, is being opposed by the Road Haulage Association on the grounds of repute and financial standing.
At a previous hearing in September Whalley gave Davison a month to inject further capital into his new firm, which is already trading on an interim licence with brewer Courage and kitchen manufacturer Magnet.
Last week Roger Hird, acting for Davison, said that neither Davison nor his operations director, Peter Newton, was responsible for the collapse of the John Dee Group. Davison had run John Dee successfully for 17 years before deciding to go into semi-retirement in 1988, said Hird; neither he nor Newton knew the true financial state of the company until too late.
Davison said that John Dee was running 138 vehicles and had made a profit of £428,000 in its first six months of opera tion. Anyone working for John Dee would be paid within 30 days, he promised.
Stephen Kirkbright, for the RHA, accused Davison of dishonesty, alleging that he had sold company assets for his own benefit. He said Davison and Newton were unfit to run a haulage company because their organisation was "clouded by debt and confusion". Vehicles had been sold to a shareholder, Cammac Coal, which was renting them back to John Dee.