Milky weigh: Fines dropped
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• Overloading offences imx)sed on S J Bargh of Lanc,aser and two of its drivers were plashed last week when Mold :rown Court was told that raffic examiners had forced largh's unbaffied tankers on to !dynamic axle weigher without Mowing the milk inside to stop urging.
Judge Roberts said the proecution accepted that insuffiient time had elapsed between he tankers' coming to rest and >eing weighed, and thus the veights had not been accurate. je told the court that he had io alternative but to substitute ibsolute discharges for the ines imposed.
The company had been fined total of 21,720 for two off:nces of overloading the pin ode of an artic milk tanker and )ne offence of grossly overoading the tractive unit. Driver Vlichael Muncaster had been hied a total of 2500 for a gross )verload and a pin axle overoad, and driver Mark Nixon ii250 for a pin axle overload.
court was told that those ines were in line with the re:ommended tariff for such offmces of 2400 plus 220 per )ercentage point of overload. For the prosecution, Derek Halbert said an expert report )n the case had found that :hose operating the weigh)ridge had allowed insufficient .line for the surging milk iloshing around inside the tank
er to settle down. The expert had suggested that a period of at least 10 minutes would be necessary and one tanker had been weighed after two minutes, the other vehicle after three minutes.
An offence had still been committed, said Halbert, as it had been the transient axle weight that had been recorded, and the surge phenomenon would occur every time a tanker braked while travelling.
Jonathan Gosling, for the defence, said there would have been an appeal against conviction if the defendants had not foolishly pleaded guilty before the magistrates. The prosecution had been unable to prove the alleged overloads, as surge resulted in nonsensical results. The Code of Practice for Dynamic Weighing stated that possible errors caused by surges in the liquid load of singlecompartment unbaffied tankers should be taken into account.
The prosecution had to show that the vehicles had been weighed in accordance with the Department of Transport's guidelines. Two to three minutes was totally inadequate a time for the milk to settle before weighing.
Because of the way they were designed, it was impossible to overload a milk tanker, said Gosling. That showed how absurd the tests carried out had been.