Company with Card Pulling Drivers Escapes Revocation at Traffic Commissioner’s Public Inquiry

This company, represented at Public Inquiry by Harry Bowyer, had been visited DVSA in November 2019. The traffic examiner had found that a number of drivers had been committing drivers’ hours offences including a number of instances of “card pulling.” Little had been done between DVSA visit and the call in letter. At the time of the DVSA visit the Transport Manager of the family run company was both Transport Manager and Director. In retrospect he plainly did not have enough hours in the day. The company was bought by a third party who retained the Transport Manager in his post. Within four weeks of the sale the call in letter arrived. The new Director, whilst cursing this failure in his due diligence, was a man of some substance and immediately set about correcting the company’s systems.

When it came to Public Inquiry the Deputy Traffic Commissioner was highly impressed with the efforts that the company had taken in order to upgrade their systems. He said that were the company in the same state as the traffic examiner had found it he would have revoked the licence and disqualified the directors. In this case because so much had been done to render the company compliant he allowed the licence to continue subject to a short curtailment. The Transport Manager kept his repute, although now tarnished, owing to the efforts that he had made in support of the new Director and in pursuit of his own education.