The lorry driver is responsible for the freight they carry and that means they are responsible for the way it’s loaded. Is it time for the driver to share that responsibility with the consignor? On the 14th December 2018, just after midday, the ‘Humber Roads Police’ posted an update on its twitter feed. That’s right. It’s polystyrene. Government advice for ‘lightweight and fragile’ loads is that even if it is polystyrene ‘it’s still important that the load is stopped from moving due to the danger to the person responsible for unloading the vehicle’. Internal straps may retain the load sufficiently dependant on the size of the objects, or ‘some sort of internal frame or roll cage to provide the necessary securing’ with the caveat; ‘make sure the frame itself is secure if you use this method’. Overkill? Well, it brought 256 responses from mainly professional dyed-in-the-wool truckers mostly expressing disbelief and frustration. I concur but rather than shoot the messenger you need to look at who is responsible for this situation. To date I can say that I have not knowingly lost a load from any truck I have driven… Oh, I’ve come close a few times.
And I’ve been stopped a few times too by the haulage police keen on assessing my pallets fastened down with good intentions within a curtainsided wagon. I’ve been lucky, no doubt. In each case I point the finger at me just like Humberside’s finest did to the driver hauling polystyrene. The law states that lorry drivers have sole responsibility for the roadworthiness of the wagon while they are driving it and security of its contents. And it has to be like that because if it wasn’t you-me-us wouldn’t even bother carrying straps or chains or sheets to tie the mother down. But should the lorry driver carry the burden alone? There is a clamour for drivers to have a co-conspirator, a partner in crime, in the shape of the consignor. Imagine, the person or firm (usually the seller) who provides a consignment to a carrier for transporting to a consignee (usually the buyer) named in the transportation documents also taking responsibility for how their goods are loaded. Better known as Consignor Liability. You may not have been aware of it – unless you have been stopped – but we are in the middle of Vehicle load security enforcement campaign week (22 – 26 July 2019). It is a joint effort by the National Police Chiefs' Council with Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) to highlight the risks both to drivers and other road users if goods aren’t transported properly. Safety is its watchword. DVSA uses proactive enforcement to identify unsafe vehicles and take appropriate action. Remember: ‘It is essential that, whatever load is being carried, it is secured properly on the vehicle. If loads are not secured, they can fall from the vehicle on to the road, or move so much they make the vehicle unstable. Unstable loads can also fall out of or off the vehicle when it arrives for unloading.’ And here comes the punchline, the National Police Chiefs' Council adds that: ‘While drivers are responsible for the safety of their vehicle on the road, consignors and vehicle operators are also responsible for ensuring that the load a vehicle carries is safe and secure from the point of loading right through to unloading.’ Under current government advice – endorsed by DVSA, Traffic Commissioners, Freight Transport Association and Road Haulage Association – it is only under the heading 6.2 Double-deck trailers that ‘operators and consignors should make sure that a thorough risk assessment has been carried out to identify the most practicable means of loading and securing goods on the vehicle’. Consignors and operators are encouraged to get involved but only if they want too. No driver has yet taken their employer or their employers’ customer to court over being prosecuted for unsafe loading citing mitigating circumstances like ‘they told me to do it that way’. From my experience the consignor is not interested in safety, they are interested in profit. They turn a blind eye to the extra pallet or scoop from the front loader irrespective of weight, or poorly maintained trailers, overloaded axles or more boxes of fruit and veg than a 14-litre Gardner 8LXB in a Seddon Atkinson 401 could possibly cope with. All justified by the immortal get out of jail card: ‘the last driver took it, drive…’ Introducing Consignor Liability that makes both the shipper and driver accountable for how a trailer is loaded and its weight should already be in place if only to stamp out bad practice. After all, its their shipment and its their property until its sold. So why not ensure it is delivered properly? It’s feasible that polystyrene has been put on different types of trailers without anything ever happening before. It may well be the consignor’s decision to move it like that and agreed by the haulier in advance, after all its just polystyrene. Had the haulier known their duty according to the Operator’s License they would have found a way to secure the load according to their legal responsibilities. Internal roof straps, integral frame… More likely that the load was deemed insignificant and so any old trailer was deployed, that’s how it looks to me. I’ll go one step further. It looks like a tautliner, so an overseas haulier where – more often than not – a lack of legislation means this load would have been fine. I also suspect the driver was stopped for other reasons. An insecure load might well have been a bonus for Humberside’s finest. But the real issue is what happens if the truck is involved in a road traffic collision (RTC). Often the delays associated with RTC are to do with clearing up the mess. Should polystyrene escape it’ll go everywhere, like snow or hailstones. Ultimately if a curtainsided trailer is involved the load has to remain on the bed of the trailer. That is the true acid test; and that is why the police chose to act. The load was not secure.
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Opinions are like arseholes, everybody has one; the trouble starts when opinions are challenged. "…the only way you’ll get a decent job now is if you’re an immigrant or a…”
Credit where its due, Colin (we all knew it was Colin because he’d written his name on a small card and placed it in front of him for us all to see) stopped mid-sentence before delivering the coup de grâce that would have merely confirmed what we all suspected him to be, a racist. Not that he was alone. He was in a room with others who were also homophobic and misogynistic. What set Colin apart was that he was the first to show restraint. In the vacuum created by Colin’s abbreviated sentence our ‘driver trainer’ tried to wrestle back control of the group. Something he’d freely given up just two hours earlier when he said he’d welcome input from his captive audience. Sat at tables lined up on three sides of the room, are 27 participants of the mandatory Driver CPC course. It is also a Saturday, which seems to put everyone in a bad mood. It is one of the few times lorry drivers gather en masse. For seven of the next eight hours we are to have the fine detail of the Analogue and Digital Tachographs & Drivers Hours Regulations course shown to us on slides, which are then repeated word for word by our host for the day. I’ll call him Derek. Driver trainers tend to spend too long justifying their credentials, deliver time-honoured industry stories and provide a platform for lorry drivers to air their list of grievances. Derek fitted the bill perfectly. Gaz got the ball rolling with a query about the 24-hour working day and wondered if its best to start from midnight. Derek explained that every 24-hour period is best established at the beginning of his shift, say five o’clock, and to work from there to five o’clock the following morning. “That’s a lie in,” cut in Geoff with a twinkle in his eye, “I start at four most mornings – bloody silly o’clock.” A chuckle rippled through the masses bringing Derek light relief, he then took the opportunity to go through a lengthy yarn about starting at 3am and deploying the split-rest solution every day so he got three hours kip at midday, which was the punchline. A core of four or five delegates took up the mantle offering their experiences of early starts. The best of which was delivered by Mike: “I used to start driving again 20 minutes before I finished my last shift…” It was more than half an hour before we got back to the slide show. Then came Period of Availability. Only a few drivers actually used this but POA provided delegates with a chance to turn their ire towards warehouse and security staff where being an ethnic minority was clearly more of a problem to the drivers than being held up for hours on end. In the end both were treated with distain in equal measures. Looking uneasy, Derek decided not to challenge the casual racism and moved onto situations where POA is relevant. Either side of a coffee break the ponderous anecdotes turned to feckless transport managers and clerks, colleagues’ inadequacies, women in the workplace and fellow driver’s poor hygiene. As we got to graduated fixed penalties attention turned to the DVSA (Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency) highway officers. Here bile rose quickly in the throat as ‘these parasites’ were roundly condemned for being petty, ineffective, hiding up lanes ‘dogging’ or watching mucky DVDs as ‘Johnny Foreigner’ roared past busy watching their own mucky DVDs. After some brief mentions Brexit popped up in its entirety as several confirmed their unswerving allegiance to Nigel Farage and the debate moved swiftly to the flip-flop and white sock brigade, and those who came here looking for work. Colin’s brief outburst proved to be the final straw. It was Gaz who bravely stepped into the breach to counter the wildly unsubstantiated hearsay spoken as unalienable truths. He argued that the industry had to recruit from all walks of life as road haulage has a significant driver shortage problem that British middle-aged men alone cannot fill. Gaz added that being out of Europe isn’t going to help that. It opened the floodgates. Lee (although he might have been called Les as his handwriting was shockingly bad) took us back to warehouses and said that they are usually run as poorly as transport companies so expecting it to be anything to the contrary is simply unrealistic. He also said that bullying colleagues has no place in today’s society. Derek grew a pair and said that DVSA enforcement officers are only doing their job and will act if your boss is less than watertight or you have done something blatantly wrong, after all leaving the yard with a bald tyre is down to you. Another gentleman, with ‘Twat’ written on his card, suggested that we considered the wages (or peanuts as he described it) drivers get for working long hours for scrupulous eastern European hauliers. He added that we would not accept being holed up with a colleague for 24 hours a day seven days a week for a whole month cabotaging across this fetid isle. “It’s bad enough doing it on your own,” he concluded. As things looked likely to boil over Derek wisely sent us out for an early lunch and hoped the fresh air might help restore calm. I’ve been on 10 Driver CPC courses and this was by far the worst. I want to believe that it is the exception and not the norm. As Big Dave pointed out, the Driver CPC is an opportunity for people who don’t usually meet in large groups to interact. “Drivers,” he said, “are a solitary beast, allowing them to hunt in packs means the odd deer might get taken down.” To his credit it’s a fair analogy brought on by his love of Sir David Attenborough. The afternoon dragged. No one shared anecdotes, everyone avoided eye contact and focussed on Derek as he read the slides word for word. As the seventh hour clicked over we left quickly and quietly. The only consolation was that I won’t have another ‘seven hours tuition’ for another five years and by which time I will hopefully be retired. |
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August 2021
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