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'Oversight' excuse fails to win return of impounded vehicle
Page 33
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A TC refused to believe that a vehicle working on international haulage did not have an 0-licence due to an"oversight -.As a result, the operator has lost his appeal to return the unit that had been impounded at Dover.
South Eastern & Metropolitan Traffic Commissioner Christopher Heaps heard that the vehicle had been impounded at Dover Eastern Docks on its return from France loaded with wooden beams.
It was displaying an expired 0-licence disc for a different vehicle and the driver said he was working under the instructions of Francis Meagher, a direc tor of FAM international. Enquiries revealed that neither the company nor Meagher held an 0-licence and the company had been dissolved.
The vehicle was overloaded, the driver had breached the drivers' hours rules and a delayed prohibition was issued for three defects.
Meagher said he had requested a licence for the vehicle while it was abroad and was told that the FAM licence had been terminated (CM 22 April). At this stage, he could have brought the vehicle back empty quite legally, but chose instead to load it with wooden beams.
For Meagher, Adam Dawson argued that the lack of an 0-licence was an oversight by a long established operator with a good track record.
Dismissing the appeal, the Tribunal said there was not only the lack of a licence, but a disregard for the correct entity in which a licence should be held, the drivers' hours breaches, the overloading, and the fact that the vehicle returned to the UK loaded when it could have been legally driven home unloaded. The claimed long unblemished record seemed incompatible with such a chapter of accidents, compounded by the failure to address the situation when the lack of a licence was discovered.