From www.stuff.co.nz
Amanda Cropp13:01, Mar 19 2019
A Whangarei company whose logging trucks clocked up 116 speed and traffic-related offences over four years has been ordered off the road.
NZ Transport Agency has moved to revoke Stan Semenoff Logging's transport service licence over long standing safety concerns and the company has been told to park up from Friday.
The action comes as a result of issues relating to driver fatigue and behaviour, breaches of work time and rest time rules, problems with logbooks, and the long list of traffic offences.
Meredith Connell Managing Partner Steve Haszard is in charge of agency's regulatory work, and said it had been strongly encouraging the company to lift its safety standards since 2016.
"The Transport Agency has given Stan Semenoff Logging every opportunity to provide evidence of improvement, but over the course of two audits and three years we have seen that this company is either unwilling or unable to comply with the necessary transport operator safety standards."
"The revocation is a safety decision, plain and simple. It's not just about the safety of Mr Semenoff's drivers, it's about the safety of all Northland's other road users," Haszard said.
Haszard said the agency was aware of the impact on employees, which was why every effort was made to extensively engage with owner Stan Semenoff so he could demonstrate safety improvements and "avoid getting to this point."
In August 2018, the Transport Agency served a notice of proposal to Semenoff in a final effort to get him to provide evidence he was now complying with the required safety standards.
"We were given many assurances from his company that standards would be lifted, but in the end, they weren't," Haszard said.
The licence revocation will take effect on Friday 22 March and Stan Semenoff Logging has the right to appeal the decision to the District Court.
The transport company is the eleventh to have faced revocation action since the Transport Agency began taking a tougher stance of safety following criticism about its weak approach to enforcement.
The Transport Agency says Stan Semenoff Logging was either unwilling or unable to comply with the necessary safety standards.