Haulage Boss Given Jail Sentence

The director of a haulage firm in Kent, who taught lorry drivers how to cheat vehicle logs so that they could travel ‘as far and as fast as they wanted’, was given a seven-year jail sentence after one of his drivers fell asleep at the wheel causing an accident in which he and two other drivers were killed.

Melvyn Spree of Keymark Services taught his 13 drivers how to jam tachograph recorders and immobilise the lorries’ speed limiters so that it looked as though they were complying with the law when they were in fact working grossly excessive hours. The driver fell asleep during an 18-hour shift.

Mr Spree pleaded guilty to two charges of manslaughter and one count of conspiracy to falsify drivers’ records. In sentencing him, the judge commented that the scale of the fraud was shocking. He said that ‘… every driver was involved, encouraged by the incentive of a profit-sharing initiative. It was an absolute way of life. It was the way the business was run’.

The company was also fined a total of £50,000 and the drivers prosecuted and fined after pleading guilty to more than 400 offences of altering tachograph records.