Licence in balance over finance
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A Co Durham express freight carrier has been given seven days to produce satisfactory financial evidence or face having its licence revoked.
Darlington-based Cleminsons Express Services was called before the North Eastern Traffic Commissioner Tom Macartney because of concerns over maintenance and finance. The company held a licence for six vehicles and four trailers.
Vehicle examiner Keith Gillingham said that in the past five years three immediate and three delayed prohibitions had been issued to the company's vehicles. Two variation notices had also been issued. He examined two vehicles and a trailer in May, issuing the trailer with an immediate prohibition for loose wheelnuts.
Inspection records were not signed and mileage was unrecorded, Gillingham added. Drivers appeared to be reporting defects verbally and there was a 100% initial failure rate at annual test.
For the company, Paul Carless said that daily walk
round checks were now carried out by director Christopher Cleminson and a driver/fitter. The inspection periods had been reduced to two weeks for vehicles and three weeks for trailers; roller brake tests would be carried out every three months.
Cleminson said it was a family business, operating for 32 years. Two of the three vehicles operated on local work and one on long-distance work. Maintenance had been contracted out but unsatisfactorily, so the maintenance had been taken in house. A qualified fitter had been taken on in March, he added. Curtailing the licence to three vehicles for 21days, the TO said that one driver had been convicted of a driver's hours offence, never a trivial matter. He also viewed the failure of vehicles presented for prohibition clearance as serious.
However, he gave weight to various undertakings given, including the promise that the drivers would go through a half day professional training course; that vehicles would have two tests per year; and that an outside audit of the company's maintenance systems would be completed within 12 months.