Judge throws out tipper axle fine
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• A fine imposed on a tipper operator for overloading an axle has been quashed because the vehicle's gross and train weights were within legal limits.
A crown court judge reduced an £800 fine to an absolute discharge and ordered that the company's appeal costs should be paid out of public funds after deciding the breach was minor.
Operator James Booth (Bolton) had been fined by Barnsley magistrates after pleading guilty to overloading the compensating trailer axles of an artic tipper by 1,700kg (some 10%).
Arguing that the fine was excessive, Andrew Woolfall, for the company, told Judge Robert Bartfield at Sheffield Crown Court that the vehicle and driver had been working on a longstanding contract.
The vehicles on that contract were weighed regularly at the loading point and were always weighed at the delivery point. On that occasion the driver had not weighed at the loading point but had been given a delivery note showing that the permitted train weight had not been exceeded. The driver had examined the load and it had appeared in order.
Because of the design capability of the vehicle, there was nothing to suggest visually, or in the way that it handled, that there was a problem.
Arguing that the company had done all that could be expected of it, Woolfall said that it had fitted on-board weighing devices to all its vehicles which showed the train weight but did not give the axle weights.
Drivers could not check their axles accurately because so few dynamic axle weighers were publicly avail able. Split weighing on a conventional plate weighbridge was tricky and therefore not an option for the drivers.
Judge Bartfield said he did not believe that the company was morally culpable and he considered that it had done all that it could to avoid breaking the law.
Given the lack of publicly available dynamic axle weighers, he questioned why the operator should have been penalised.