Operator fails to prove it was detained vehicle owner

The TC has refused an application for the return of a car transporter after the applicant failed to satisfy him that it was the vehicle’s owner. The truck and drawbar trailer was stopped by the police and DVSA at a check-site near the M4, where it was found that no O-licence disc was displayed. The driver, Sorin Paul, stated that he worked for a company called EMK Trading, a business whose licence had been revoked. The HGV was then impounded by the enforcement agency. An application for its return was later received from a company called NPB, which claimed it was the vehicle’s owner and it had a valid licence in place.

At a hearing before TC Kevin Rooney, NPB director and transport manager Niall Black claimed he had bought the vehicle from EMK and although he did not know who had been driving the detained vehicle, he was also in the process of buying EMK too. However, the TC found that the evidence “overwhelmingly” showed EMK Trading was the operator of the vehicle at the time of its detention: “For the transport manager to have no idea who was driving one of his two trucks, what the load was, and where it was going, would be wholly unacceptable, if it were true,” TC Rooney said.