Isle of Man Harbours has become aware that there is some concern over the weighing of vans on arrival at Douglas Harbour from Steam Packet vessels. I hope the following reassures anybody who has been concerned by some of the earlier comments.

Isle of Man Harbours has had a long established procedure for checking to see that overweight vehicles disembarking from Steam Packet vessels do not get on to the highway network. This procedure has only just been reviewed and was written in conjunction with the Department of Infrastructure’s Chief Vehicle Inspector. The Port Security Officer (PSO) who carried out the original vehicle check, acted entirely in accordance with normal procedure and even arranged for the duty Vehicle Examiner to telephone the driver after he had reached his destination on the Island to verify that the PSO acted properly.

Our procedure is aimed at finding overweight vehicles and giving the driver the opportunity to download the excess on to another vehicle. These drivers are also warned that if they opt to proceed they will be reported to the Police. If the vehicle is slightly overweight and within an agreed margin the driver will be warned that his vehicle is overweight and allowed to proceed. This is what happened to the original complainant.

All articulated freight trailers are check-weighed as this can be carried out easily and quickly given the relatively limited permutations of numbers of axles and gross weights and the relatively small number of vehicles involved. However, given the time and difficulty in dealing with all the other variations of commercial vehicles, from small pickups to furniture removal vans, they are chosen randomly for check-weighing. It is therefore possible that despite this procedure having been in place for several years the complainant has not been stopped previously before his recent disembarkation from Ben-my-Chree when he was stopped for a check-weigh. His van was only 40kg over weight, which is within the agreed margin for a warning, and allowed to proceed. However, the complainant was annoyed at being stopped and checked and disputed the Port Security Officer’s powers. He supplied contact details so that he could be contacted by a Vehicle Examiner. He then drove off Circus Beach and was telephoned later to be advised that the PSO had acted correctly.

Despite the information from the Vehicle Examiner it appears that he was still sufficiently annoyed to put his thoughts on the TT website but unfortunately they contained some inaccuracies. For example:
1. He was telephoned by the Department’s Vehicle Inspector and not the Police. This call appears to have been prompted by his disbelief that the PSO had the powers to stop and weigh his vehicle and was made in order to reassure him.
2. There is no database of disembarking vehicles being established for TT;
3. All incoming vans will not be stopped as this is too time-consuming and would much inconvenience disembarking drivers as well as risk delaying the ship turnaround. Instead the long-standing procedure of random checks will be maintained.

Director of Harbours