Cut on second inquiry
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• A Manchester haulage company appearing at its second disciplinary inquiry in three years has had three vehicles suspended from its licence for a month.
A Barry & Sons, which holds a licence for nine vehicles and two trailers, was called before North Western Deputy Traffic Commissioner Patrick Mulvenna because of its maintenance record and four overloading convictions.
Vehicle examiner Cohn Brown said he carried out a maintenance investigation in April following a series of prohibitions. He examined three vehicles, issuing one immediate prohibition for defective indicators and three defect notices. There was no pit at the company's base. The prohibitions covered brake, steering and suspension faults: a large number of vehicles were still defective when produced for clearance.
Director Kenneth Barry Jr said his father was a skilled mechanic and he was semiskilled. Previously, both he and his father had driven regularly but they now made sure that one of them was always available in the garage. Leyland dealers roller-brake test. ed the vehicles every 12 weeks.
The driver involved in the most recent overloading conviction had been sacked as a result.
Mulvenna pointed out that 15
immediate and nine delayed prohibitions had been imposed on the company's vehicles in the past five years, four of them showing significant maintenance failures. Barry replied that they had not really been doing a good enough job with the maintenance checks.
For the company, John Backhouse said that it had substantially improved its systems following a previous public inquiry in 1995, but not enough to avoid further prohibitions.