Haulier stretched the rules
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A haulier who encouraged his drivers to stretch the rules has lost his Operator's Licence after tech° charts revealed that 120 drivers' hours breaches had been committed in two months.
Doncaster-based F Levick & Son, which ran 11 vehicles and 13 trailers, was called before North Eastern Traffic Commissioner Tom Macartney.
Traffic examiner Mark Horton said that in January 2000 he had requested tachograph records for 1999 but the company had already destroyed them.
However, tacho analysis sheets showed widespread and regular abuse of the drivers' hours rules during that period. Records for January and February 2000 also revealed a total of 120 offences.
For the company, Ian Rothera said that managing director Martin Levick's wife had been in charge of administration but she became ill three or four years ago. Levick was distracted by the need to care for her.
Levick admitted: "I was not being sufficiently careful. I was over-stretched myself and there was not enough attention to paperwork."
lie claimed the 1999 (ache charts had been destroyed due to an administrative error. The Road Haulage Association now carried out this type of analysis. He told the TC that the company was also planning a seminar to familiarise drivers with the rules.
The drivers' pay structure included distance-incentives, with money for every 35 miles driven, and after 1,600 miles in a week, they received an hour's pay for each further 25 miles.
Rothera maintained that the drivers were not pressurised to break the rules but were merely left to get on with it with out adequate supervision.
Revoking the licence, the TC said that the pay structure was an incentive for drivers to "stretch the rules'.
In August Nottingham magistrates fined the company 11,960 with 1150 costs after it admitted 48 offences. Seven of its drivers were fined after admitting a total of 44 offences.