JOB CENTRE FOR TRAFFIC MANAGER • With reference to you
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article entitled "The Head Hunters" (CM 26 November — 2 December): on reading it very carefully and objectively it gives the impression that there are many positions available to persons such as myself — but I have yet to find one!.
I have scoured your Situations Vacant pages but only a few traffic operators/transport managers jobs appear and those that do seem to ask for a lot more qualifications than the average person in my position would possess, though it is not stated in the advertisement. I personally started off as an HGV Class III driver with some fifteen years 'grass roots' experience and then realised the only way to progress was to take the RSA exams for the Certificate of Professional Competence for Goods National, and Goods International for which I paid myself and took the two exams at the one sitting. I then passed these and went on to take and pass the PSV exams as well.
I thought I was now on the way up the ladder in the transport industry.
After six months searching I managed to obtain a position as transport manager (which incidentally came to me via the Job Centre) but unfortunately it only lasted two months, through no fault of mine as the firm closed the transport operation in the South East owing to a loss of contract, the only one that it had!
It seems to me that a person who is trying hard to prove himself and gain a worthwhile position, who has written some 50 or 60, letters of application just cannot get anywhere.
I have a great deal of experience even though it is a couple of years since I was a traffic clerk doing exactly the same work as a transport manager for an international haulage company, but this seems to count for nought when my application is considered.
[was told by many other persons engaged in the transport industry that I should have no trouble getting a manager's job having gained an InternationaJ CPC (Goods).
As for the difference between 'own-account operation and 'hire & reward', I believe that both groups operate the same types of vehicles bound by the same EEC drivers' hours and records regulations; I have found that many managers of own-account operators do not know the regulations and this I know from personal experience.
It seems that so-called ownaccount operators can flaunt the rules and get away with it. A Robertson Bentley nr Farnham Surrey.