Dave Ashford, Transport & Compliance Manager at KBC Logistics commented, “The reason I looked at a licence checking system emanated from the experience last year where I used to check and copy licences and counterparts every six months. One particular driver was checked in November 2012 and unbeknown to us he was subsequently disqualified in March 2013. By pure luck we had put this driver on shunting duties at another site although he had covered other drivers shifts a couple of times which would have meant driving one of my trucks on the public road.
On June 9th this driver in his private car was involved in a collision with a motorcyclist the motorcyclist died at the scene. Click here to read the full article.
My traffic office were contacted by the drivers brother on Monday morning and he informed them that the driver would not be at work that day and may be off for a while.
Nothing further was said until two CID and two traffic collision investigation officers appeared at my office door later that day. They informed me that he had been involved in a accident and also that he was disqualified, even though on this occasion I had fulfilled my obligation, it was a scary prospect to think that this could have been any one of my operational drivers and it identified a flaw in my systems.
I have since signed up to Licence Bureau, I chose them because they notify me if there is an issue and they also include skeletal records for non UK licence holders. Only today I had a call from them telling me that one of my drivers with a Polish licence possess a UK counterpart with 6 points. I would have no way of knowing this if the driver did not inform me which in this case he hadn’t unsurprisingly!
Dave Ashford AmSOE AmIRTE
Director/Transport & Compliance Manager
