A HAULAGE firm owner took his own life amid concern a safety crackdown on illegal overloading threatened his livelihood, it has been claimed.
Friends say Raymond Tibbs, 52, from Islay, died shortly after ferry operators stopped turning a blind eye to the overloading of freight vans serving islands. Mr Tibbs, who was cremated in a private family ceremony on the island, had lived on Islay for 15 years and ran his own firm, Cameron Carriers.
Ferry company Caledonian MacBrayne began to weigh all commercial vehicles and goods vehicles from July 1 after a spot check of 16 vans revealed 14 were overloaded.
Steward Mundell, of haulage firm Mundell Ltd and a close friend of Mr Tibbs, said the crackdown had affected Mr Tibbs' livelihood.
He said: "He had a bad few years and everything just came to a head. With the changes his margins came down and down, the amount of goods he could carry came down. That was the final straw for him."
A Calmac spokesman said the crackdown was essential to improve safety. He added: "We have anecdotal evidence some vehicles may be overloaded and in the light of the recent South Korean ferry disaster, where overloading and falsified documents led to the deaths of nearly 300 people, we feel we have no option but to take this step."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article