Learning how to recover
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by Steve Gray
FOUR years ago the Road Transport Industry Training Board set up intensive fiveday courses on vehicle recovery at its Multi-Occupational Training and Education Centre at Livingstone, near Edinburgh.
These courses are open to all of the Board's levy payers and its membership is not solely confined to apprentices. In fact, any workshop personnel who may require training in the use of recovery vehicles and their equipment are eligible, provided their employers are paying the levy.
Motec runs two separate series of recovery courses, one for light vehicles and the other for heavies.
For the heavy course, apprentices should have completed stage two of the Vehicles Trades Apprentices (Heavy Vehicle Mechanics) Training Recommendations and have started on stage three of their training.
The Motec brief for all its courses is to provide the best skills and arrange courses not readily available elsewhere.
With the heavy recovery course it has both of these things and has earned a reputation for being the best.
Five instructors, led by Jim McCourt, take groups of six members through the training programme. The courses are roughly 60 per cent practical to 40 per cent theory and are intended to give pupils a basic, but at the same time intelligent appreciation of all the facets involved in vehicle recovery.
In the classroom, models are used to demonstrate possible accident situations, and the class discusses how they would remove the disabled vehicle.
They are then taken out to the Motec grounds where a vehicle has been put in just such a situation and is recovered.
All kinds of modern recovery equipment are demonstrated to the pupils and the correct method of using them is shown. This section also includes maintenance of the equipment.
To-ensure that those pupils unfamiliar with modern truck systems are brought up to date,
the course instructors use components, such as spring brakes, from other courses to show how they work.
Students are also taught the principles of recovery, and given examples of the effort required to move a casualty during a simulated excercise.
An important, yet often forgotten, part of any recovery job is collecting the right information before going out to tow in the vehicle.
At Motec each pupil takes it in turn to receive a breakdown call (made by another pupil). It is up to him to make sure that he gets the correct location, The final exercise of the Motec course is the recovery of an abandoned vehicle usin all the techniques demonstrate during the previous five days.
He will need to show that h can accomplish this in a efficient and legal mannei while taking care not to bloc the highway or cause undu inconvenience to other roai users.
For the heavy recovery tes Motec uses a 6x4 Ford I 1000 which is fitted witl Holmes 750 twin-boom equip men t.
The Ford is equipped with turbocharged 360 power uni driving an eight-speed range change gearbox to double-drivi rear axles. The booms can b, split to enable a side windt recovery to be performed, usinc stabilizer legs.
At the beginning and end o the courses the students arE tested. These tests are corn pared and Motec can gaugi the effectiveness of the cours( from the results.
Jim McCourt believes tha the course gives the recoven operatives a good grounding He cites the example wherE untrained personnel ripped thE front axle and cab off a vehicIE during a recovery, simpl) because they had not though. carefully enough about the job.
At Motec, says Jim, th( course members are taught tc think before they start,