So, you want to become an LGV or PCV driver? Good choice, I’m sure you will enjoy it; it can be rewarding, enjoyable and there is a large employment market. I’m going to guide you into how to ensure you choose a driving school that will enable you to pass your driving test.
Let's start at the beginning. The driving test has been around since the late 1960’s to try and improve the standard and safety of large vehicle drivers. The practical driving test hasn’t changed a great deal in the past 40 years, you still do a basic reversing exercise, controlled stop and a few simple moving away manoeuvres on the public roads over a period of up to 90 minutes. The driving test works in the same way as the car driving test, you are trained by a driving instructor and delivered to the test centre where the examiner takes over from the instructor and over the next 90 minutes you will have your ability assessed. The examiner works for a government department called the Driving Standards Agency and are not connected in any way with individual driving schools. There is no possible way to guarantee passing the test, the only way to pass is to demonstrate safe and professional driving.
So, who can legally carry out driver training with individuals who will be driving large vehicles that weigh up to 44,000kgs or carry up to 70 people on a passenger carrying vehicle? You would expect that only trained, professional, government approved instructors with years of driving experience would be able to become LGV and PCV driving instructors. You would be wrong, any person that has held a truck or bus driving licence for three years can teach new drivers. Indeed, you may pass your driving test on a lorry, wait three years, never drive a truck and then set up your very own truck driver training school. So, don’t expect every driving school to provide an experienced competent instructor, this requires investment by the company to train the instructor, so why bother? By the time you get into the truck and realise the instructor knows barely more than you and has no training qualifications it's to late too get your money back; read the small print.
But hang on, what about the Voluntary Register of Large Vehicle Driving Instructors? You see on some company websites they have DSA instructors. This is a voluntary test that LGV instructors can take. The key is that its voluntary, so again why bother doing this? A common trick is for one instructor within the company, most likely the owner of the company, to pass the test (because he won’t resign) and all the instructors he employs are not DSA registered but he can now use the DSA logo on his adverts, website and vehicles. His instructors are untrained and nothing more than just another truck driver with no instructional qualifications; don’t think this is a worst case scenario, it's actually the norm!
Why don’t the government make the Register of Instructors compulsary? Your guess is as good as mine. Tthrough their own assessments they have discovered registered instructors get a higher pass rate. So, that’s the first myth broken, don’t assume all LGV and PCV driving instructors are automatically any good at the job or qualified beyond a basic driving licence!
What about accredited training centres? There are very few specific truck/coach driving training accreditations; most training schemes concentrate on instructor qualifications to enable driving instructors to upskill and develop their career. The most common accreditations mentioned on misleading LGV driving school websites are not driving school related at all, they are instead Industry Federations that are placed to help their members deal with the complicated matters of running a haulage business. If the website says they are ‘accreditited’ by the road haulage association or freight transport association, they have in fact just joined a ‘club’ they will not have undergone any testing or commitments to gain membership of these haulage trade associations, they exist to benefit hauliers not learner drivers. So while it may look good to prospective customers it actually offers the customer very little added value.
Now, onto the facilities that all truck and coach driving schools must have, this is exactly none! Why pay thousands of pounds for a tarmaced yard with the reversing area set out using yellow lines, traffic cones and a parking bay with a barrier the same as the driving test centre, when a driving school doesn’t need one and can just use a car park or a spare area of surfaced yard. Of course this might mean the driver is rather unfamiliar with the reversing procedure that they will be expected to carry out on the test. The best you may find from a low cost driving school is a shared area that they will pay to use each time set out on an old airfield, sessions will be limited because the instructor will have to pay for using the area. The ideal situation is for the driving school to have their own private reversing area set out to the same design as the driving test centre. This costs a lot of money and is a very substantial investment for any driving school, but the driver will be taught the exercise in a suitable learning environment and therefore find the reversing exercise much easier on the test.
Don’t they need to have an operators licence to run a driving school truck or coach? You must have an operators licence to run a transport business but driving schools don’t need one! This means they are exempt from having a qualification in operating large vehicles called a Certificate of Professional Competence. Companies inscope of needing ‘O” licence will need to have systems in place such as 6 weekly mechanical vehicle inspections, drivers hours records and many policies on transport related safety issues. Because driving schools are exempt all that is required that the vehicle passes an MOT once every twelve months. Also, because driving schools are exempt from EC drivers hours legislation that govern truck/coach drivers this can mean that where a truck driver will have to take a break after 4.5 hours driving a pupil learning to drive a truck can keep on going! Also the instructor may work seven days a week all year round. A truck driver must have 45 hours free time per week for rest between weeks worked, but not a driving instructor. Is this safe and does it provide good instruction if the instructor is worked 6 or 7 days a week by his boss?
What about the quality of driving school vehicles, surely wherever I go for training I will have a decent truck to use. You might hope you get a good vehicle but a new truck will cost around £50,000 and an old truck with 600,000kms on the clock can be bought for a lot less and still have some life left in it. All the driving test requires is that the vehicle must have 8 gears minimum, a box body, at least 8 metres long for class 2, ABS brakes and an MOT with motor insurance. Not too hard to find a vehicle that meets those rules for around £10,000 or even less. So don’t automatically expect to be driving a good vehicle that is well maintained, if it will manage the driving test and scrape through an MOT once a year it will do fine. If you can’t see a picture of the vehicles used by a driving school on their website then maybe they are trying to hide the fact that they use old trucks. The truck or coach may therefore be hard to drive; common faults are the gears being hard to select due to worn syncromesh, steering feeling loose due to worn steering boxes, brakes that are grabby due to worn foot valves and many electrical faults caused by age.
So far we have discovered that driving schools don’t need trained instructors, they can be overworked, don’t need a training centre to operate from, no sort of operator licence, the vehicles may be of any quality or lack of it and they can lack regular servicing. So far its looking like it would be very easy to set up a 'shady' truck driving school, and you would be right!
So, enough of the negatives, how do I choose a good driving school to spend my money with? The only way to find out if the company is any good will be by going to see them for one short driving lesson, known as an assessment drive. This will give you the chance to see their premises and ensure they have a reversing area for practice. Ensure that the owner of the company is easily accessible should you need to talk to them – some companies have unadvertised head offices in another part of the country and the instructor will not help you contact them. By driving the vehicle you will be able to tell if it drives easily or looks old and worn out and finally if the instructor is skilled, knowledgeable and approachable. You may wish to ask for his qualifications to ensure that he/she is a DSA Registered Instructor, he will have a badge with the DSA logo and photo.
But what if you’ve seen this great deal for training but can’t visit the company because they seem to be a broker? Just think of it like this, would you pay £1,000 for a sofa without first at least sitting on it? I doubt you would, and you should apply the same pratice to buying driver training. Also, be wary of fast track courses that advertise you will be able you to get your C+E artic licence quicker, because frankly this system doesn’t exist. It would be fair to say it’s a fast track system to enable the driver training provider access to your money more quickly! It's not possible to pass or even book your C+E test before you have passed the category C driving test. You can book the artic training before passing the smaller truck driving test known as category C (you can’t go straight to C+E from a car licence); but if you don’t pass the driving test on the smaller truck you can’t use the C+E training that you’ve already paid for and in the small print you will notice that this may mean you will lose the fees you’ve paid for the C+E training and test because you don’t have the appropriate driving entittlement (not passed the C test). You may get told that if you don’t book the fast track course you will have to wait weeks, months, years before you will be legally able to take the C+E artic test. This is not true, at any time after passing the category C test you are legally entitled to take the artic test, there is no wait required, so it's best to make sure you pass the first test before booking the second.
It’s possible that brokers will tell you all sorts to get your money such as how you can earn lots of money being a driver and that there are vast numbers of jobs available, this is not always the case – ask your local employers. Tockwith Training have had customers who have been told by a broker that they would send them to a particular training school that they asked for (us) but we don't work for a broker. All along they have intended to send them somewhere else that will be cheaper and less inclusive than our training. Driver training brokers do not own any trucks, the only vehicle they have is the bosses leased car, they are normally based in an office block somewhere and if you want to complain they will be hard to track down. You will not find many long established successful driving schools doing contracted work for training brokers because the rates are too low, they often take advantage of a self employed instructor struggling to find work or driving schools that may do as little driving as possible to save money. Recently a number of large brokers have gone bust leaving customers who have paid up to £2000 with no training or any hope of getting their money back and also many driving instructors/driving schools who carried out driver training for them were left owed money for completed but unpaid work.
What you need to think about is that driver training costs money, the better it's done the more money it costs. So, if you don’t pay much, don’t expect to get much either. However paying lots isn’t the best way to guarantee quality because some national providers look and sound very good on their websites and on the telephone but may not provide the quality of training you may be expecting. If a broker says they can manage to get a discount for you with a local driving school because they do a lot of business with that particular driving school don’t always believe it. The cost of training one driver is the same per driver as it is if you train hundred drivers.
So, to sum up, don’t use a middle man, go direct to your local good quality driving school. Don’t be tricked by fancy looking websites from training brokers that promise everything because they offer less value for money than going direct to a local driving school. You want facilities that you're happy with, old trucks aren’t a problem if they are well maintained but new ones are best and an instructor that you have confidence in their ability to get you through the driving test.
Now on to the familiar debate of one-to-one training vs. two-to-one training. Companies will tell you all day long that they do it the right way and that 2:1 is best or 1:1 is better. What really matters is what is right for the customer. You need enough time to practice driving a truck or coach which is very different to a car, you can’t learn how to drive in just a few hours. All that matters is the time you spend learning. Do you really think you will learn much after you have seen a driver from the spare seat negogiate a roundabout for the 20th time that day, or do you think you might have switched off before then? So really if you do a 2:1 course you still need just as much time behind the wheel to pass the driving test. Some 1:1 training courses only last the morning or afternoon session, ensure you still have enough time driving, you will need more than just 4 or 5 training days equal to 12 hours to pass if your training is conducted over half days as this means you will be with instructor only in the morning or afternoon.
Tockwith Training have found that to enable average drivers to pass the driving test first time, you will need to drive for a minimum of 30 hours, one-to-one or two-to-one, it doesn’t matter. Ideally a two-to-one course should last round 10 days. The other option is to train one-to-one over a week – full days, you will then get enough practice and a good result. With only one driver per instructor each day, you will have to pay all the instructor wages, fuel, bills yourself but for that you get more time to practice, a more enjoyable course, the instructor won’t be as tired and you will stand a better chance of passing first time.
It's often hard to convince individuals that they need more than just 16 hours practice, it’s a lesson that some only learn when your driving to the test centre and thinking they don’t feel ready for their test and are still making driving mistakes. Do you really think that in just around 12 to 16 hours its possible to become competent enough to pass a very stressful 90 minute driving test in a very large vehicle? We all think that we are good drivers, but driving a truck or a coach is not like a car, it feels very different and don’t underestimate the driving test, it's not easy. Normally it takes one day to get familiar with the gearbox, the length and width of the vehicle. The second day is more of the same and you're still struggling to cope with everything happening around you, the odd kerb my be hit, a gear missed here and there and some poor observation. Day three and its all getting much better, the finer details can be worked on, day four is confidence building and day five is the warm up before the test. Take the driving test after just 15 hours and you're still at the stage described in day 3, you may pass but you would be lucky to do so.
So, Tockwith Training advice is:
- Ask local employers/drivers for advice on which school to go to in your area
- Importantly visit the company(s), ensure the instructors are trained, facilities are up to scratch and vehicles are well maintained
- Book direct with the training school and ensure you have given yourself enough time behind the wheel to pass first time
- Listen carefully to any advice the assessor gives you on the driving assessment
