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Poor defect reporting and prohibitions led to inquiry
Page 24
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HOUGHTON LE SPRING, Tyne & Wear-based international haulier JF International was called before North Eastern Deputy Traffic Commissioner Elizabeth Perrett after its drivers failed to report defects Taking no action against the 12-vehicle/21-trailer licence,theDTC warned that if the problem continued, particularly on the same scale, she could not rule out serious action against it.
Vehicle examiner Peter Thompson said when a vehicle and trailer were checked at Portsmouth, Hampshire, in January 2007 the vehicle was given a delayed prohibition for an inoperative trailer coupling safety device and the trailer picked up an immediate prohibition for defects including a missing ISO cable. Both prohibitions were S-marked.
There were no inspection records for the trailer. He had been told it was hired out and the company believed it was the hirer's responsibility to maintain it.
The pass rate at annual test was 50% with seven immediate and 13 delayed prohibitions. He agreed that the prohibitions were primarily driver related.
For the company, Gary Hodgson said half the drivers were British and the rest Polish:They were away for weeks at a time on international work. External training of the drivers was being undertaken with the assistance of a Polish interpreter.
Director Jose Ferreira said the company now had duplicate inspection records for maintenance carried out in Portugal on trailers which were with a Portuguese subcontractor. There were English and Polish versions of the company's drivers' handbook.
Transport manager Paul Mackintosh said the company had two Polish speakers in the office.
Unfortunately it was very difficult to get UK-based drivers and they had a big turnover of Polish drivers. The test failures were primarily for headlamp aim on left-hand-drive vehicles.
Hodgson said some drivers on the road had caused the problem by making lazy mistakes—he concluded that the prohibitions had been"silly ones".