Of mice and men
Page 39
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RELAXATION of the minimum age limit for lorry drivers will probably coincide with the moment when the demand is at its lowest. Events have a habit of making nonsense of our plans.
Less than two years ago, the national joint training committee for young hgv drivers in the road goods transport industry—a title which must have looked much nicer in the original Chinese — was urging the Department of the Environment to make haste with the legislation. The associations and the trade unions on the committee all agreed that there was a growing shortage of drivers. The RTITB provided the statistics.
If a more recent assessment is available, nobody is saying much about it. Although qualified drivers are still not a drug on the employment market, the complaints that they are not available have become fewer.
Most of the work on the training scheme has been done. Before long, operators will be able to register and thereafter to take on trainees under the conditions to be prescribed by regulations. If some of the enthusiasm has evaporated with the surplus of drivers, no operator in a position to provide the necessary training should hesitate about taking at least the preliminary steps.
No time is better than the present for consideration. Within a few weeks, what may be the -first crop of trainee drivers will be leaving school. Already some of them with an inclination towards road transport have transferred their interest to some other occupation where the prospects seem a little closer at hand.
Other young people will not yet have made up their mind. Any operator who at least hopes for an improvement in his business before too long has the opportunity, which may not be repeated after this. year, of making a dummy run in advance of official approval for the official scheme.
An inquiry to the local youth employment service, or to one or two local schools, should produce likely candidates who could be offered the chance to begin training. If they are 16 years of age, they will in any case have to wait a year before they can hold even the ordinary driving licence, and a further year before qualifying for the hgv licence class 3. Long before that time, the scheme will have been launched. In fact, there are hopes that it will begin next September. Once this happens, the trainees who have already gone part of the way can enter the official scheme, and enjoy its advantages as well as accepting its conditions.
Flying start
If at this point the trainee decides that he does not like the work, or if he has not come up to expectations, there is no problem about his leaving the company. In most cases this would not happen, and the training programme would get off to a flying start.
Sooner or later It will be possible to announce, with some agreeable publicity, that the first hgv licence has been granted to an 18-year-old. His employer will share in the honour, and will most likely be somebody who has demonstrated a belief in the future by taking on a 1975 school leaver.
Even the operator who does not think he is ready at the moment can help by spreading the news through local educational channels. Outside the road transport industry—and to some extent inside it •as well—hardly anyone is aware that the law has been changed. Most young people still believe that they have a long wait before they can count themselves as lorry drivers.
Widespread publicity may have to wait until all the details are in order. The enterprising operator can anticipate this moment, He can get most of the details from his association and act at once. It is important that the scheme should get off the ground, and as soon as possible, Operators would look foolish if, after so much persuasion of officials and politicians on their behalf, they took no action.