The agency assignment I’m on at the moment has me driving an 05 plate Scania p380. The truck is about 8 weeks old, but I noticed on my checks this morning that it still doesn’t have a ministry plate.
My question is how long does it take for these to reach the vehicle?
The firm is a fairly large company in this part of the country so I don’t believe there are any problems (ie not having one) but would like some feedback before I start shouting the odds about refusing to drive it until I have all the facts.
you could just ask nicely if it has arrived yet, it usually follows after a couple of weeks but it may have been placed in a file in it’s entirety if the recipient didn’t know what to do with it.
the plate cert is in 2 parts but they arrive as one and require seperation, one is clearly marked for the office files and the other is for the vehicle, the give away is that the office section is bigger than the vehicle section and won’t fit in the holder without being folded over.
you may find that some office bod has filed the whole lot.
All our new motors have arrived with an interim certificate until the proper ones arrive.
The layout is the same as a standard plate, but they are printed on plain paper - and look as though Thomas Hardie’s had them made up by their local testing station.
As for the actual time allowed before the proper plate is displayed I am uncertain. I do vaguely remember reading somewhere that the plate must be displayed within 2 weeks of being issued. IIRC
My guess is it probably does need one, to state the plated weight.
Say you got pulled they’d need to know this to decide whether you were overloaded. The vehicle for all they know could be registered as a 7.5 tonner etc
It will take a short while to arrive though, but as the operator will have a “paper copy” in the office as a temporary measure, it’s perfectly legal to use the unit on the road.
The Ministry Plate should be fixed in the cab (if it has one) of a Goods Vehicle in an easily accessible and conspicious position within 14 days of the Plate being issued. This is usually within one month of the vehicle being registered. This applies to type approved vehicles, which is most of the goods vehicles on the road.
Trailers get their Ministry Plate after first test; by the end of the month, 12 months after they were first sold by retail.
Kit Kat…i`m surprised at you not knowing the legal requirements of a ministry plate…and you being an old hand as well.
the plate is a legal requirement…and should be affixed to the vehicle via a tamper proof bracket/holder. This certificate gives the train weight…gross weight…and the legal weights allowed as per axle…as at the test station…it is there as a warning to the legal weights allowed depending on what tyres were used at the test station and to what gross weights were assigned to that vehicle. of course it also depended on the fifth wheel, whether it was a fixed or a slider, and how many bolts were used to hold it in place. But after all this baloney…its still a legal requirement to have one fixed onto the vehicle…
