Les Walkden Enterprises fined $80K for fatigue records breach

One of the biggest names in Tasmanian trucking failed to ensure its drivers properly complied with their fatigue management requirements, with one driver recording 206 breaches.

Leslie James Walkden and his company Les Walkden Enterprises Pty Ltd were fined a combined $88,000 by Launceston Magistrates Court, May 4, 2023. Picture: Alex Treacy

Tasmania’s largest log haulage company has been fined $80,000 and its director an additional $8000 for failing to ensure truckers employed by the company complied with their fatigue management obligations.

Les Walkden Enterprises Pty Ltd and company director Leslie James Walkden faced a combined three charges of breaching a safety duty under the Heavy Vehicle National Law.

They both pleaded guilty and were sentenced in Launceston Magistrates Court on Thursday.

The company was fined $80,000 and Mr Walkden an additional $8000. Convictions were recorded against both.

Magistrate Sharon Cure told the court that 251 breaches occurred between December 1, 2019 and February 2020, with 206 of those breaches belonging to one driver in a single month.

The extent of the breaches was revealed after random spot checks of the diaries of Les Walkden truck drivers while they were on the job.

Ms Cure described the breaches as “mostly minor but include substantial critical and severe breaches”.

The prosecution had argued that Mr Walkden and his company were “flippant about his scheduling (of drivers)” and that their “moral culpability” was high, Ms Cure said.

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The defence agreed that Mr Walkden and the company “should have done more” to comply with its fatigue management obligations, but said there was a “human element” to the offending, in that the veterans of the industry had failed to keep with the times.

Another argument put forward in defence was that the breaches were substantially related to “truck drivers who don’t like paperwork”.

Ms Cure said that the company has since moved drivers onto a Navman Teletrac digital fleet management system, removing the need for them to fill out onerous paperwork.

She said she was satisfied that the company had now addressed future risk and that the defendants had no history of relevant breaches under the national law.

She described the company as an “industry leader” and said it was Tasmania’s “biggest carter of timber in the state”