HAULIERS TALK DRIVER CPC
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David Clarke, MD, Shipley Transport Services, West Yorkshire: "If we'd have had more time and more information, I would have trained up myself [to become an instructor]. There's been a lot of uncertainty on whether it's going to go through. The first two years, nobody did anything about it because people were arguing. My problem is if I've got to get a load from A to B and there are no drivers with their [Driver] CPC, what are we going to do?"
Kevin King, MD, Heritage International, Dover, Kent: "All my drivers have started their training. It hasn't done them any harm, but each module is time consuming. To make it cost-effective, we try and get all 16 drivers in at the same time, and that is a problem because the only time this can realistically happen is over a weekend, so we are paying drivers to come in on a Saturday to do something, which is for their benefit. I don't think the amount of UK drivers will diminish, I just think there'll be that panic, like there always is." Terry Hicks, MD, Hicks Logistics: "All our drivers have started [in-house] training and we're about 75% of the way through it. We're getting mixed responses [from drivers] — the younger ones are more enthusiastic, while the older ones
are perhaps more inclined to think that they don't need so much training in the final years of their job. I think it may encourage some drivers who are approaching retirement age to possibly look at retiring early. I think the principle of Driver CPC is good, but the application and the way it has been handled has been pretty poor."
Michael Gough, Partner, AE Gough & Sons, Powys: "All our drivers have finished the training. My feeling is that more hands-on training would be better. When you have a tachograph course it's good because it refreshes the information you've got. But with some of the courses, it's difficult to keep any sort of interest going. At the end of every course, we ask our drivers what their opinion is and we get little positive feedback — the drivers don't want to be in a classroom."