Transfleet ruling
Page 8
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TRANSFLEET Services has failed to win an absolute discharge after it pleaded guilty to running a lorry without iii operator's licence. Instead, magistrates in Birmingham gave the firm a conditional discharge for one year.
The big contract hire and rental firm was prosecuted by the West Midlands Traffic Area in what was an unprecedented case brought under Section 61(3) of the 1968 • Traosport Act. Transfleet had
• taken a lorry out of its -rental fleet as a temporary substitute for a licensed vehicle on contract hire.
Putting the traffic area's case in court last week, Barbara Stubbs said that one of Transfleer's lorries was stopped on September 3 last . year on the A423 at Sheptorr_Under-Cherwell, and found to be displaying no operator's licence.
.Driver Alan Howie was unable to assist and further inquiries were nude at the company by traffic examiner jack Green.
The vehicle, a Volvo box van, was A-registered and had been with Transfleet since new Transfieet's lorry, a Volvo box van, was doing contract work for Coventry firm Owen Owen. It was A-registered and had been with Transfleet since new, she said.
Transfleet was defended by Geoffrey Davies, from the Freight Transport Association's legal pool. "The only appropriate adjudication is an absolute discharge," he told the court, although he conceded that an offence was committed.
"The offence is very, very technical and there isn't a scrap of mischief in what has happened." He added: "There is no question of this cornp an y thinking for one moment they were breaking the law."
Transfleet runs 1,400 coinme;cials on contracts which obliges it to provide vehicles, and a separate fleet of 350 in its truck rental business, he explained.
It used a vehicle from the rental fleet to replace temporarily the vehicle on the licence running on the Owen Owen contract, which was out of service. Transfleet has made similar substitutions on many occasions and the practice is common in the industry, he told the court.
The rental operation is a separate entity in all but name, although the same legal entity has the operator's licence and owns the rental vehicles. "The formation of a separate company is an artificial way of circumventing the law."
The decision to give a conditional discharge means that Transfleet, which is owned by Lex Service, will almost certainly now set up two separate companies. Company secretary Raficq Shail Abdulla would not be drawn but commented that it could take at least two years to change the law..