Pickups picks up £300 fine
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• An axle overload and drivers hours offences that were discovered on a trip to Boulogne cost Pickups Coaches of Rochdale and four of its drivers £1,035 when they appeared before the town's magistrates.
The company was fined £330 with £75 costs after admitting to exceeding the permitted second-axle weight of one of its coaches, and also to 10 offences of permitting its drivers to take insufficient rest.
Prosecuting for the North Western Traffic Area, John Heaton said that two of the company's coaches were stopped in Kent while returning to Rothdale from Boulogne last December. The coaches, which were double manned, had left Rochdale the previous day and were on their way back after the passengers had done their duty free shopping.
During the journey they had only stopped for three hours and none of the drivers had taken the required eight hours continuous rest. They had mistakenly believed they could take their rest in a bunk while the vehicles were moving.
Tachograph charts collected from the company's premises for October to January revealed further offences. The first coach was overloaded on its rear axle by 540kg, some 5.1%.
Defending, John Backhouse said the company had run a similar pattern of operation for a number of years. It was an operation that could legally be done with two drivers, but not the way Pickups had done it, with the two drivers accompanying the vehicle on the whole trip. At first drivers were replaced at Dover. Proper bunks were then fitted in the coaches, leading to the drivers taking their rest in the vehicle.
The 540kg rear axle overload was "minimal", said Backhouse.
Driver Gerard Gray was fined £60 for overloading the rear axle of his coach and taking insufficient rest; Clifford Morris, fined £30 for one offence of insufficient rest; Dennis Bamford, fined £120 for four rest offences; and Wilfred Dewhurst, fined £120 for four rest offences.