Trucker fined for sitting in friend’s passenger seat

A trucker was fined by the police for breaking work-time rules – even though he was sitting in the passenger seat of a colleague’s HGV.

The key worker was getting a lift from near his home in Telford, Shropshire, to Birkenhead Docks to collect his truck and trailer when he was penalised.

He said a police officer approached the cab while they were waiting and asked to see the pair’s digicards, which record data including hours on the road, before fining both hauliers for driving infringements.

The 42-year-old, who delivers food and drink to supermarket chains across the UK and Ireland, said that the officer first fined the driver £200 for insufficient rest after spending 15 minutes carrying out checks.

He told Metro.co.uk that the policeman returned around 40 minutes later and issued him with a £300 penalty notice for being in the passenger seat, apparently saying he should have had his digicard inserted in the cab’s reader, as it counted as working hours.

The driver, who did not want to be named, collected his keys from the Stena Line freight office a few miles from the docks in Merseyside on September 23 and was waiting for his colleague to drop him off at his truck and trailer, which was returning from Ireland.

He said: ‘The policeman said if you are getting a lift with another driver to a destination, it has to be within an hour. Anything over an hour and you have to put your digicard in because it’s classed as a double-manned drive.

‘I have never heard of this ruling and neither has my workmate, who has been driving for 30 years.

‘The officer also wrote that I was the driver, but I was in the passenger seat the whole way. It’s absolutely farcical at a time when the government are trying to find ways to get more drivers on the roads.

‘It’s an utter disgrace and a joke and people wonder why there’s a shortage of HGV drivers. I’m disillusioned with the whole industry.’

The 70-mile journey had taken an hour and a half before the pair arrived at Seaforth Dock, close to the main Birkenhead port, were they found a heavy police presence. Although the driver had inserted his digicard in the truck’s device during the trip, his passenger had not.

The man said: ‘One officer approached the truck and demanded to see the driver’s digicard to check it. He took it and came back around 15 minutes later and fined him £200 for insufficient rest. Then he looked up at me and asked to see my licence and who I was and was I a driver.

‘He had no reason to as I could have been a driver’s mate or just a passenger going out for the day. Around 40 minutes later he came back to me and gave me a £300 fine for just sitting in the passenger seat.

‘At this point you can imagine how angry I was.

‘He said that because I was a passenger and the journey was apparently 30 minutes over the allowed time of one hour, I had to put my digicard in.’

The trucker, who works for a logistics firm, is a Class 1 HGV driver with more than six years of experience on the roads across the UK and Europe.

He now plans to contest the penalty notice.