Driver at home during search
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by Jane Sayer
• 1 Ialifax-based haulier Spruce International looks to have been the innocent victim of a "sting" after appealing for help to find a missing driver and his £80,000 load of shoes who turned out to be at home.
Liverpool driver Ian Quilliam, who had last been seen in Spain, was completely unaware the police and Interpol were looking for him until he saw the story reported in Commercial Motor (10-16 April).
Meanwhile the Scania R113 he had taken out to Spain has been impounded by French police and two men driving it arrested for carrying drugs.
Quilliam rang Martin Spruce, joint owner of the haulage firm, after seeing the story to tell him he had been at home since the day after loading the track in Murcia.
"He was quite upset about it all." said Spruce. "He said he was approached by a man claiming to be me who gave him £250 and told him to fly home."
Spruce believes his business has been the victim of a scam which was carried out while he and his wife Stephanie were away on holiday, "We'd left the business in the hands of a haulier friend who shares the office
and yard with us," says Spruce.
"He says he had a lad come in looking for a job showing Quilliam1s licence and he took him on.
"This person must have then approached Quilliam to do the work—and this is the person who approached him in Spain, claiming to be me."
When the truck was stopped by French police on 17 March, two days after Quilliam flew home, it was still fully loaded.
Since then Spruce has found it increasingly difficult running his business with just one truck. As CM went to press he heard that the French authorities had just authorised the Scania to he released.