An Orange-based trucking company says it has improved its training methods after one of its drivers was caught driving a truck that was 22.66 per cent overweight.
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Westruss was fined $1500 and ordered to pay an extra $330 in professional costs when the matter was brought before Orange Local Court on Monday.
The company was represented in court by solicitor Dannielle Ford who said her client understood it was a serious incident.
“It’s made known to each driver that they should check the load weights prior to each departure,” she said.
“It’s rare for truck to bring stocks back to Orange and this breach happened on one of those rare occasions.”
Mrs Ford said the last breach the company had been charged for was another mass overload in 2011.
Despite Mrs Ford's assurances that the company was educating its drivers on requirements and had not been convicted recently, magistrate Bruce Williams warned the company.
During sentencing he said the company was building up a record and penalties would increase.
The overload was detected on the Mitchell Highway at Mt Boyce when one of the company’s tabletop trucks was returning to Orange from St Mary’s with a load of timber.
The truck weighed 11.04 tonnes, 2.04 tonnes more than its allowed weight of nine tonnes.
When the load was detected the driver said he was not present when the timber was loaded on to the truck, but he did take two packets off and said he did not weight the load because there was no weighbridge.
The company was last charged with exceeding weight requirements when one of its trucks was 22.89 per cent overweight on August 2, 2011, and hit has four earlier convictions for the same thing.
DRIVER FINED FOR CRASH ON SUMMER STREET
A DRIVER who turned right into oncoming traffic causing a crash on Summer Street last year has been fined $300 in Orange Local Court.
Solicitor Toby Tancred said the green arrow at the intersection changed quickly before the crash involving his client Edward Richard Fryer, 22, of Westhaven Place.
Mr Tancred said the light changed while Fryer was turning right from Summer Street, and a green Mitsubishi Lancer that was travelling in the opposite direction collided with the front of his car, and the other driver received a laceration that required skin graft surgery.
